CHAPTER XLVI.

“I am perhaps going beyond my instructions,” Mr. Sturgeon said. “Your sister Katherine is a proud young woman, my Lady Stella—I mean my Lady Somers; I doubt if she will receive presents even from you. Your father’s will is a very wicked will. I remarked that to him when he made it first. I was thankful to believe he had felt it to be so after your ladyship ran away. Then I believed the thing would be reversed and Miss Katherine would have had all; and I knew what her intentions were in that case. It was only natural, knowing that you were two sisters, to suppose that you would probably act in some degree alike.”

“Not for people who know us, Mr. Sturgeon,” said Stella. “Kate and I never did anything alike all our days. I may not be as good as Kate in some things, but I am stronger than she is in being determined to stick by what is right. I would not interfere with papa’s will for all the world! I should think it would bring a curse on me. I have got children of my own, and that makes me go much deeper into things than an unmarried young woman like Kate can be supposed to do. Fancy Charlie, our boy, turning on us and saying, You made mincemeat of grandpapa’s will, why should I mind about yours? That is what I could not look forward to—it would make me perfectly wretched,” Stella said. She stood up, every inch of her height, with her head tossed back full of matronly and motherly importance; but the force of the situation was a little broken by a muffled roar of laughter from Sir Charles, who said—

“Go it, Stella! You’re going to be the death of me,” under his breath.

“My husband laughs,” said Lady Somers with dignity, “because our boy is a very little boy, and it strikes him as absurd; but this is precisely the moment when the mind receives its most deep impressions. I would not tamper with dear papa’s will if even there was no other reason, because it would be such a fearfully bad example for my boy.”

“I waive the question, I waive the question,” cried Mr. Sturgeon. “I will talk it over with the other executor; but in the meantime I hope you will reconsider what you have said on the other subject. There’s the servants and there is poor old Bob.”

“Oh, the servants! As they’re leaving, and a good riddance, give them fifty pounds each and be done with them,” Stella said.

“And Bob Tredgold?”

“I never heard of that person; I don’t believe in him. I think you have been taken in by some wretched impostor.”

“Not likely,” said Mr. Sturgeon. “I have known him, poor fellow, from a boy, and a more promising boy I can tell you than any other of his name. He is a poor enough wretch now. You can have him here, if you like, and judge of him for yourself.”

“Stella,” said Sir Charles, pulling his wife’s dress.

“Oh, Charlie, let me alone with your silly suggestions. I am sure Mr. Sturgeon has been taken in. I am sure that papa——”

“Look here,” said the husband, “don’t be a little fool. I’m not going to stand a drunken old beast coming here saying he’s my wife’s relation. Settle what he wants and be done. It’s not my affair? Oh, yes, some things are my affair. Settle it here, I say. Mr. Sturgeon, she’s ready to settle whatever you say.”

Sir Charles had his wife’s wrist in his hand. She was far cleverer than he was and much more steady and pertinacious, but when she got into that grip Stella knew there was no more to be said. Thus she bought off the powers of Nemesis, had there been any chance of their being put in motion againsther; and there was no further question of setting the worst of examples to Job by upsetting his grandfather’s will. Stella religiously watched over Mr. Tredgold’s fortune and kept every penny of it to herself from that day.

“And do you think of building that cottage, Miss Katherine, as your father suggested?” Mr. Sturgeon asked as he rose from the dinner at which he had been entertained, Lady Somers making herself very agreeable to him and throwing a great deal of dust into his eyes. He was going back to town by the last train, and he had just risen to go away. Katherine had been as silent as Stella was gay. She had not shown well, the old lawyer was obliged to admit, in comparison with her sister, the effect no doubt of having lived all her life at Sliplin and never having seen the great world, besides that of being altogether duller, dimmer than Stella. She was a little startled when he spoke to her, and for a moment did not seem to understand what was being said.

“Oh, the cottage! I don’t think I can afford it. No, Mr. Sturgeon,” she said at length.

“Then I have a good opportunity of selling the bit of land for you,” he said. “There is a new railway station wanted, and this is the very spot that will be most suitable. I can make an excellent bargain if you put it in my hands.”

“There!” cried Stella, holding up a lively finger, “I told you! It is always Kate that has the luck among us all!”

Katherinescarcely heard what Stanford said to her after that astounding speech about his little child. She rose to her feet as if it had touched some sudden spring in her; though she could no more have told why than she could have told what it was that made her head giddy and her heart beat. She had a momentary sense that she had been insulted; but that too was so utterly unreasonable that she could not explain her conduct to herself by it, any more than by any other rule. She did not know how she managed to get out of the room, on what pretext, by what excuse to the astonished visitor, whose look alone she saw in her mind afterwards, startled and disturbed, with the eyelids puckered over his eyes. He had been conscious, too, that she had received a shock; but he had not been aware, any more than she was, what he had done to produce this impression upon her.

She ran upstairs to her own room, and concealed herself there in the gathering twilight, in the darkest corner, as if somebody might come to look for her. There had been a great many thoughts in that room through these long years—thoughts that, perhaps, were sometimes impatient, occasionally pathetic, conscious of the passing of her youth from her, and that there had been little in it that was like the youth of other women. To be sure, she might have married had she been so minded, which is believed to be the chief thing in a young woman’s life; but that had not counted for very much in Katherine’s. There had been one bit of visionary romance, only one, and such a little one! but it had sufficed to make a sort of shining, as of a dream, over her horizon. It had never come nearer than the horizon; it had been a glimmer ofcolour, of light, of poetry, and the unknown. It had never been anything, she said to herself, with emphasis, putting her foot down firmly on the ground, with a faint sound of purpose and meaning—never—anything! She was the most desperate fool in the world to feel herself insulted, to feel as if he had struck her in the face when he spoke of his little child. Why should he not have a little child like any other man, and a kind wife waiting for him, amid all the brightness of a home? Why not? Why not? There was no reason in the world. The effect it produced upon her was absurd in the last degree. It was an effect of surprise, of sudden disillusion. She was not prepared for that disclosure. This was the only way in which she could account for the ridiculous impression made upon her mind by these few words.

She had so much to do accounting to herself for this, that it was not for a long time that she came to imagine what he would think of her sudden start and flight. What could he think of it? Could he think she was disappointed, that she had been building hopes upon his return? But that was one of the thoughts that tend to madness, and have to be crushed upon the threshold of the mind. She tried not to think of him at all, to get rid of the impression which he had made on her. Certainly he had not meant to insult her, certainly it was no blow in the face. There had been some foolish sort of talk before—she could not recall it to mind now—something that had nothing in the world to do with his position, or hers, or that of anyone in the world, which probably was only to pass the time; and then he had begun to speak to her about his child. How natural to speak about his child! probably with the intention of securing her as a friend for his child—she who had been a playmate of his own childhood. If she had not been so ridiculous she would have heard of the poor little thing brought from India (like little Job, but that was scarcely an endearing comparison) to be left alone among strangers. Poor little thing! probably he wanted her to be kind to it, to be a friend to it—how natural that idea was!—his own playfellow, the girl whom he had read Dante within those days. But why, why did he recall those days? It was that that made her feel—when he began immediately after to speak of his child—as if he had given her a blow in the face.

Katherine went down to dinner as if she were a visitor in the house. She passed the nursery door, standing wide open, with the baby making a great whiteness in the middle of the room, and Job watching like an ill-tempered little dog, ready to rush out with a snarl and bite at any passer-by whom he disliked; and her sister’s door, where Stella’s voice was audibly high and gay, sometimes addressing her maid, sometimes in a heightened tone her husband, in his dressing-room at the other side. They were the proprietors of the place, not Katherine. She knew that very well, and wondered at herself that she should still be here, and had made no other provision for her loneliness. She was a guest—a guest on sufferance—one who had not even been invited. William, the soldier-servant, was in possession of the hall. He opened the door for her with a respectful tolerance. She was missus’s sister to William. In the drawing-room was Mr. Sturgeon, who rose as she entered from the side of the fire. He was going back by the train immediately after dinner, and was in his old-fashioned professional dress, a long black coat and large black tie. One looked for a visionary bag of papers at his feet or in his hands. His influence had a soothing effect upon Katherine; it brought her back to the practical. He told her what he had been able to do—to get gratuities for the servants, and a pension, such as it was, for poor old Bob Tredgold. “It will keep him in comfort if he can be kept off the drink,” he said. All this brought her out of herself, yet at the same time increased the sense in her of two selves, one very much interested in all these inconsiderable arrangements, the other standing by looking on. “But about your affairs, Miss Katherine, not a thing could I do,” Mr. Sturgeon was beginning, when happily Sir Charles came downstairs.

“So much the better; my affairs have nothing to do withmy sister,” Katharine said hastily. And, indeed, it was plain neither they nor any other intrusive affairs had much to do with Stella when she came in radiant, the blackness of her dress making the whiteness of her arms and throat almost too dazzling. She came in with her head held high, with a swing and movement of her figure which embodied the supremacy she felt. She understood now her own importance, her own greatness. It was her natural position, of which she had been defrauded for some time without ever giving up her pretensions to it; but now there was no further possibility of any mistake.

As I have already related the concluding incident of this party it is unnecessary now to go through its details. But when Mr. Sturgeon had gone to his train and Sir Charles to the smoking-room (though not without an invitation to the ladies to accompany him) Stella suddenly took her sister by the waist, and drew her close. “Well?” she said, in her cheerful high tones, “have you anything to tell me, Kate?”

“To tell you, Stella? I don’t know what I can tell you—you know the house as well as I do—and as you are going to have new servants——”

“Oh! if you think it is anything about the house, I doubt very much whether I shall keep up the house, it’srococoto such a degree—and all about it—the very gardens arerococo.”

“It suits you very well, however,” Katherine said. “All this gilding seems appropriate, like a frame to a picture.”

“Do you think so?” said Stella, looking at herself in the great mirror over the mantelpiece with a certain fondness. It was nice to be able to see yourself like that wherever you turned, from head to foot. “But that is not in the least what I was thinking of,” she said; “tell me about yourself. Haven’t you something very particular to tell me—something about your own self?”

Katherine was surprised, yet but dimly surprised, not enough to cause her any emotion. Her heart had become as still as a stone.

“No,” she said; “I have nothing particular to tell you.I will leave The Cliff when you like—is that what you mean? I have not as yet made any plans, but as soon as you wish it——”

“Oh, as for that,” said Stella, “we shall be going ourselves. Charlie wants me to go to his horrid old place to see what can be done to it, and we shall stay in town for a little. Town is town, don’t you know, after you’ve been in India, even at the dullest time of the year. But these old wretches of servants will have to stay out their month I suppose, and if you like to stay while they’re here—of course, they think a great deal more of you than of me. It will be in order as long as they are here. After, I cannot answer for things. We may shut up the house, or we may let it. It should bring in a fine rent, with the view and all that. But I have not settled yet what I am going to do.”

“My plans then,” said Katherine, faintly smiling, “will be settled before yours, though I have not taken any step as yet.”

“That’s just what I want to know,” cried Stella, “that is what I was asking! Surely there’s nothing come between you and me, Kate, that would keep you from telling me? As for papa’s will, that was his doing, not mine. I cannot go against it, whatever anybody says—I can’t, indeed! It’s a matter of conscience with me to do whatever he wished, now he is dead. I didn’t when he was living, and that is just the reason why——” Stella shut her mouth tight, that no breath of inconsistency might ever come from it. Then once more putting her hand on Katherine’s waist, and inclining towards her: “Tell me what has happened; do tell me, Kate!”

“But nothing has happened, Stella.”

“Nothing! That’s impossible. I left you alone with him on purpose. I saw it was on his very lips, bursting to get it out; and he gave me such a look—Oh, why can’t you fade away?—which isn’t a look I’m accustomed to. And I don’t believe nothing has happened. Why, he came here for that very purpose! Do you think he wanted to see me or Charlie? He was always a person of very bad taste,” Stella said with alaugh. “He was always your own, Kate. Come! don’t bear any malice about the will or that—but tell.”

“There is nothing whatever to tell. Mr. Stanford told me about his child whom he has brought home.”

“Yes, that was to rouse your pity. He thought as you are one of the self-sacrificing people the idea of a baby to take care of—though it is not a baby now—it’s about as old as Job——. The mother died when it was born, you know, a poor little weakly thing. Did I never tell you when I wrote? It must have gone out of my head, for I knew all about it, the wedding and everything. How odd I didn’t tell you. I suppose you had thought that he had been wearing the willow for you, my dear, all this time!”

“It is not of the slightest consequence what I thought—or if I thought at all on the subject,” said Katherine, with, as she felt, a little of the stiffness of dignity injured, which is always ludicrous to a looker-on.

“I’ll be sworn you did,” cried Stella, with a pealing laugh. “Oh, no, my dear, there’s no such example now. And, Kate, you are old enough to know better—you should not be such a goose at your age. The man has done very well, he’s got an excellent appointment, and they say he’ll be a member of Council before he dies. Think what a thing for you with your small income! The pension alone is worth the trouble. A member of Council’s widow has—why she has thousands a year! If it were only for that, you will be a very silly girl, Kate, if you send James Stanford away.”

“Is it not time you joined your husband in the smoking-room, Stella? You must have a great deal to talk about. And I am going to bed.”

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Stella cried, “you want to get rid of me and my common-sense view. That is always how it happens. People think I am pretty and so forth, but they give me no credit for common-sense. Now that’s just my quality. Look here, Kate. What will you be as an unmarried woman with your income? Why, nobody! You will not be so well off as the old cats. If you and your maid canlive on it that’s all; you will be of no consequence. I hear there’s a doctor who was after you very furiously for a time, and would have you still if you would hold up your little finger. But James Stanford would be far better. The position is better in every way—and think of the widow’s pension! why it is one of the prizes which anyone might be pleased to go in for. Kate, if you marry you may do very well yet. Mind my words—but if you’re obstinate and go in for fads, and turn your back on the world, and imagine that you are going to continue a person of importance on five hundred a year——”

“I assure you, Stella, I have no such thought.”

“What then—to be nobody? Do you think you will like to be nobody, Kate, after all the respect that’s been paid to you, and at the head of a large house, and carriages at your command, and all that—to drop down to be Miss Tredgold, the old maid in lodgings with one woman servant? Oh, I know you well enough for that. You will not like it, you will hate it. Marry one of them, for Heaven’s sake! If you have a preference I am sure I don’t object to that. But marry one of them, James Stanford for choice! or else, mark my words, Kate Tredgold, you will regret it all your life.”

Katherine got free at last, with a laugh on her lips at the solemnity of her sister’s address. If Stella had only known how little her common-sense meant, or the extreme seriousness of these views with which she endeavoured to move a mind so different from her own! Lady Somers went off full of the importance of the question, to discuss it over again with her husband, whose sense of humour was greatly tickled by the suggestion that the pension which James Stanford’s widow might have if he were made member of Council was an important matter to be taken into consideration, while Katherine went back again to her room, passing once more the nursery door where Job lay nervously half awake, calling out a dreary “Zat oo, fader?” as her step sounded upon the corridor. But she had no time to think of little Job in the midst of this darkness of her own life. “What does it matter to me, what does itmatter to me?” she kept saying to herself as she went along—and yet it mattered so much, it made so great a change! If she had never seen James Stanford again it would not have mattered, indeed; but thus suddenly to find out that while she had been making of him the one little rainbow in her sky—had enshrined him as something far more than any actual lover, the very image of love itself and fidelity, he had been the lover, the husband of another woman, had gone through all the circle of emotion, had a child to remind him for ever of what had been. Katherine, on her side, had nothing save the bitter sense of an illusion fled. It was not anybody’s fault. The man had done nothing he had not a perfect right to do—the secret had not been kept from her by any malice or evil means—all was quite natural, simple, even touching and sad. She ought to be sorry for him, poor fellow! She was in a manner sorry for him—if only he had not come to insult her with words that could have no meaning, words repeated, which had answered before with another woman. The wrench of her whole nature turning away from the secret thing that had been so dear to her was more dreadful than any convulsion. She had cherished it in her very heart of hearts, turned to it when she was weary, consoled herself with it in the long, long endless flatness of those years that were past. And it had all been a lie; there was nothing of the kind, nothing to fall back upon, nothing to dream of. The man had not loved her, he had loved his wife, as was most just and right. And she had been a woman voluntarily deceived, a dreamer, a creature of vanity, attributing to herself a power which she had never possessed. There is no estimating the keenness of mortified pride with which a woman makes such a discovery. Her thoughts have been dwelling on him with a visionary longing which is not painful, which is sometimes happiness enough to support the structure of a life for years; but his had not been satisfied with this: the chain that held her had been nothing to him; he had turned to other consolations and exhausted them, and then came back. The woman’s instinct flung him from her, as she would have flung some evil thing. She wrenched herselfaway twisting her very heart out of its socket; that which had been, being shattered for ever by this blow, could be no more.

There was, as Stella said, no common-sense at all in the argument, or proper appreciation of a position which, taking into consideration everything, inclusive of the widow’s pension, was well worth any woman’s while.

Itis very difficult to change every circumstance of your life when a sudden resolution comes upon you all in a moment. To restless people indeed it is a comfort to be up and doing at once—but when there is no one to do anything for but yourself, and you have never done anything for yourself alone in all your life, then it is very hard to know how to begin. To resolve that this day, this very hour you will arise and go; that you will find out a new shelter, a new foundation on which, if not to build a house, yet to pitch a tent; to transfer yourself and everything that may belong to you out of the place where you have been all your life, where every one of your little possessions has its place and niche, into another cold unknown place to which neither you nor they belong—how could anything be harder than that? It was so hard that Katherine did not do it for day after day. She put it off every morning till to-morrow. You may think that, with her pride, to be an undesired visitor in her sister’s house would have been insupportable to her. But she did not feel as if she had any pride. She felt that she could support anything better than the first step out into the cold, the decision where she was to go.

The consequence of this was that the Somerses, always tranquilly pursuing their own way, and put out in their reckoning by no one, were the first to make that change. Sir Charles made an expedition to his own old house of which all the Somerses were so proud, and found that it could not only be made (by the spending of sixty thousand a year in it) a very grand old house, but that even now it was in very tolerable order and could receive his family whenever the family choseto inhabit it. When he had made this discovery he was, it was only natural, very anxious to go, tofaire valoiras far as was possible what was very nearly his unique contribution to the family funds. There was some little delay in order that fires might be lighted and servants obtained, but it was still October when the party which had arrived from theAurungzebeat the beginning of the month, departed again in something of the same order, the ayah more cold, and Pearson more worried; for though the latter had Lady Somers’ oldrivièrein her own possession, anotherrivièreof much greater importance was now in her care, and her responsibilities instead of lessening were increased. It could scarcely be said even that Stella was more triumphant than when she arrived, the centre of all farewells and good wishes, at Tilbury Docks; for she had believed then in good fortune and success as she did now, and she had never felt herself disappointed. Sir Charles himself was the member of the party who had changed most. There was no embarrassment about him now, or doubt of that luck in which Stella was so confident. He had doubted his luck from time to time in his life, but he did so no longer. He carried down little Job on his shoulder from the nursery regions. “I say, old chap,” he said, “you’ll have to give up your nonsense now and be a gentleman. Take off your hat to your Aunt Kate, like a man. If you kick I’ll twist one of those little legs off. Hear, lad! You’re going home to Somers and you’ll have to be a man.”

Job had no answer to make to this astounding address; he tried to kick, but found his feet held fast in a pair of strong hands. “Me fader’s little boy,” he said, trying the statement which had always hitherto been so effectual.

“So you are, old chap; but you’re the young master at Somers too,” said the father, who had now a different meaning. Job drummed upon that very broad breast as well as he could with his little imprisoned heels, but he was not monarch of all he surveyed as before. “Good-bye, Kate,” Sir Charles said. “Stay as long as ever you like, and come to Somers as soon as you will. I’m master there, and I wish you weregoing to live with us for good and all—but you and your sister know your own ways best.”

“Good-bye, Charles. I shall always feel that you have been very kind.”

“Oh, kind!” he cried, “but I’m only Stella’s husband don’t you know, and I have to learn my place.”

“Good-bye, Kate,” cried Stella, coming out with all her little jingle of bracelets, buttoning her black gloves. “I am sure you will be glad to get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done, and clear out all your cupboards and things. You’ll let me know when you decide where you’re going, and keep that old wretch Simmons in order, and don’t give her too flaming a character. You’ll be sending them all off with characters as long as my arm, as if they were a set of angels. Mind you have proper dinners, and don’t sink into tea as ladies do when they’re alone. Good-bye, dear.” Stella kissed her sister with every appearance of affection. She held her by the shoulders for a moment and looked into her eyes. “Now, Kate, no nonsense! Take the good the Gods provide you—don’t be a silly, neglecting your own interest. At your age you really ought to take a common-sense view.”

Kate stood at what had been so long her own door and watched them all going away—Pearson and the soldier in the very brougham in which Stella had driven to the yacht on the night of her elopement. That and the old landau had got shabby chiefly for want of use in these long years. The baby, now so rosy, crowed in the arms of the dark nurse, and Sir Charles held his hat in his hand till he was almost out of sight. He was the only one who had felt for her a little, who had given her an honest if ineffectual sympathy. She felt almost grateful to him as he disappeared. And now to think this strange chapter in her existence was over and could never come again! Few, very few people in the world could have gone through such an experience—to have everything taken from you, and yet to have as yet given up nothing. She seemed to herself a shadow as she stood at that familiar door. She had lived more or less naturally as her sister’s dependentfor the last week or two; the position had not galled her; in her desolation she might have gone on and on, to avoid the trouble of coming to a decision. But Stella was not one of the aimless people who are afraid of making decisions, and no doubt Stella was right. When a thing has to be done, it is better that it should be done, not kept on continually hanging over one. Stella had energy enough to make up half a dozen people’s minds for them. “Get us out of the way for a bit to get your packing done”—these were the words of the lease on which Katherine held this house, very succinctly set down.

This was a curious interval which was just over, in many ways. Katherine’s relation to Stella had changed strangely; it was the younger sister now who was the prudent chaperon, looking after the other’s interests—and other relationships had changed too. The sight of James Stanford coming and going, who was constantly asked to dinner and as constantly thrown in her way, but whom Katherine, put on her mettle, had become as clever to avoid as Stella was to throw them together, was the most anxious experience. It had done her good to see him so often without seeing him, so to speak. It made her aware of various things which she had not remarked in him before. Altogether this little episode in life had enlarged her horizon. She had found out many things—or, rather, she had found out the insignificance of many things that had bulked large in her vision before. She went up and down the house and it felt empty, as it never had felt in the old time when there was nobody in it. It seemed to her that it had never been empty till now, when the children, though they were not winning children, and Stella, though she was so far from being a perfect person, had gone. There was no sound or meaning left in it; it was an echoing and empty place. It wasrococo, as Stella said; a place made to display wealth, with no real beauty in it. It had never been a home, as other people know homes. And now all the faint recollections which had hung about it of her own girlhood and of Stella’s were somehow obliterated. Old Mr. Tredgold and hisdaughters were swept away. It was a house belonging to the Somerses, who had just come back from India; it looked dreadfully forlorn and empty now they had gone away, and bare also—a place that would be sold or let in all probability to the first comer. Katherine shivered at the disorder of all the rooms upstairs, with their doors widely opened and all the signs of departure about. The household would always be careless, perhaps, under Stella’s sway. There was the look of a desecrated place, of a house in which nothing more could be private, nothing sacred, in the air of its emptiness, with all those doors flung open to the wall.

She was called downstairs again, however, and had no time to indulge these fancies—and glancing out at a window saw the familiar Midge standing before the door; the voices of the ladies talking both together were audible before she had reached the stairs.

“Gone away? Yes, Harrison, we met them all—quite a procession—as we came driving up; and did you see that dear baby, Ruth Mildmay, kissing its little fat hand?”

“I never thought they would make much of a stay,” said Miss Mildmay; “didn’t suit, you may be sure; and mark my words, Jane Shanks——”

“How’s Miss Katherine? Miss Katherine, poor dear, must feel quite dull left alone by herself,” said Mrs. Shanks, not waiting to waste any words.

“I should have felt duller the other way,” said the other voice, audibly moving into the drawing-room. Then Katherine was received by one after another once more in a long embrace.

“You dear!” Mrs. Shanks said—and Miss Mildmay held her by the shoulders as if to impart a firmness which she felt to be wanting.

“Now, Katherine, here you are on your own footing at last.”

“Am I? It doesn’t feel like a very solid footing,” said Katherine with a faint laugh.

“I never thought,” said Mrs. Shanks, “that Stella would stay.”

“It is I that have been telling you all the time, Jane Shanks, that she would not stay. Why should she stay among all the people who know exactly how she’s got it and everything about it? And the shameful behaviour——”

“Now,” said Katherine, “there must not be a word against Stella. Don’t you know Stella is Stella, whatever happens? And there is no shameful behaviour. If she had tried to force half her fortune upon me, do you think I should have taken it? You know better than that, whatever you say.”

“Look here—this is what I call shameful behaviour,” cried Miss Mildmay, with a wave of her hand.

The gilded drawing-room with all its finery was turned upside down, the curiosities carried off—some of them to be sold, some of them, that met with Stella’s approval, to Somers. The screen with which Katherine had once made a corner for herself in the big room lay on the floor half covered with sheets of paper, being packed; a number of the pictures had been taken from the walls. The room, which required to be very well kept and cared for to have its due effect, was squalid and miserable, like a beggar attired in robes of faded finery. Katherine had not observed the havoc that had been wrought. She looked round, unconsciously following the movement of Miss Mildmay’s hand, and this sudden shock did what nothing had done yet. It was sudden and unlooked for, and struck like a blow. She fell into a sudden outburst of tears.

“This is what I call shameful behaviour,” Miss Mildmay said again, “and Katherine, my poor child, I cannot bear, for one, that you should be called on to live in the middle of this for a single day.”

“Oh, what does it matter?” cried Katherine, with a laugh that was half hysterical, through her tears. “Why should it be kept up when, perhaps, they are not coming back to it? And why shouldn’t they get the advantage of things which are pretty things and are their own? I might have thought that screen was mine—for I had grown fond of it—and carried it away with my things, which clearly I should have had no right to do, had not Stella seen to it. Stella, you know,is a very clever girl—she always was, but more than ever,” she said, the laugh getting the mastery. It certainly was very quick, very smart of Lady Somers to take the first step, which Katherine certainly never would have had decision enough to do.

“You ought to be up with her in another way,” said Miss Mildmay. “Katherine, there’s a very important affair, we all know, waiting for you to decide.”

“And oh, my dear, how can you hesitate?” said Mrs. Shanks, taking her hand.

“It is quite easy to know why she hesitates. When a girl marries at twenty, as you did, Jane Shanks, it’s plain sailing—two young fools together and not a thought between them. But I know Katherine’s mind. I’ve known James Stanford, man and boy, the last twenty years. He’s not a Solomon, but as men go he’s a good sort of man.”

“Oh, Ruth Mildmay, that’s poor praise! You should see him with that poor little boy of his. It’s beautiful!” cried Mrs. Shanks with tears in her eyes.

“You’ve spoilt it all, you——” Miss Mildmay said in a fierce whisper in her friend’s ear.

“Why should I have spoilt it all? Katherine has excellent sense, we all know; the poor man married—men always do: how can they help it, poor creatures?—but as little harm was done as could be done, for she died so very soon, poor young thing.”

Katherine by this time was perfectly serene and smiling—too smiling and too serene.

“Katherine,” said Miss Mildmay, “if you hear the one side you should hear the other. This poor fellow, James Stanford, came to Jane Shanks and me before he went back to India the last time. He had met you on the train or somewhere. He said he must see you whatever happened. I told Jane Shanks at the time she was meddling with other people’s happiness.”

“You were as bad as me, Ruth Mildmay,” murmured the other abashed.

“Well, perhaps I was as bad. It was the time when—when Dr. Burnet was so much about, and we hoped that perhaps—— And when he asked and pressed and insisted to see you, that were bound hand and foot with your poor father’s illness——”

“We told him—we told the poor fellow—the poor victim. Oh, Ruth Mildmay, I don’t think that I ever approved.”

“Victim is nonsense,” said Miss Mildmay sharply; “the man’s just a man, no better and no worse. We told him, it’s true, Katherine, that the doctor was there night and day, that he spared no pains about your poor father to please you—and it would be a dreadful thing to break it all up and to take you from poor Mr. Tredgold’s bedside.”

“No one need have given themselves any trouble about that,” said Katherine, very pale; “I should never have left papa.”

“Well, that was whatIsaid,” cried Mrs. Shanks.

“So you see it was us who sent him away. Punish us, Katherine, don’t punish the man. You should have seen how he went away! Afterwards, having no hope, I suppose, and seeing someone that he thought he could like, and wanting a home—and a family—and all that——”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Shanks with fervour, “there are always a hundred apologies for a man.” Katherine had been gradually recovering herself while this interchange went on.

“Now let us say no more about Mr. Stanford,” she cried with a sudden movement. “Come into the morning room, it is not in such disorder as this, and there we can sit down and talk, and you can give me your advice. I must decide at once between these two lodgings, now—oh,” she cried, “but it is still worse here!” The morning room, the young ladies’ room of old, had many dainty articles of furniture in it, especially an old piano beautifully painted with an art which is now reviving. Sir Charles had told his wife that it would suit exactly with the old furniture of his mother’s boudoir at Somers, and with Stella to think was to do. The workmen had at that moment brought the box in which the pianowas to travel, and filled the room, coaxing the dainty instrument into the rough construction of boards that was to be its house. Katherine turned her visitors away with a wild outbreak of laughter. She laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks—all the men, and one or two of the servants, and the two ladies standing about with the gravest faces. “Oh, Stella is wonderful!” she said.

They had their consultation afterwards in that grim chamber which had been Mr. Tredgold’s, and which Somers had turned into a smoking-room. It was the only place undisturbed where his daughter, thrown off by him upon the world, could consult with her friends about the small maidenly abode which was all she could afford henceforward. The visitors were full of advice, they had a hundred things to say; but I am not sure that Katherine’s mind had much leisure to pay attention to them. She thought she saw her father there, sitting in his big chair by the table in which his will was found—the will he had kept by him for years, but never had changed. There she had so often seen him with his hands folded, his countenance serene, saying “God damn them!” quite simply to himself. And she, whom he had never cared for? Had he ever cursed her too, where he sat, without animosity, and without compunction? She was very glad when the ladies had said everything they could think of, although she had derived but little benefit by it; and following them out of the room turned the key sharply in the door. There was nothing there at least which anyone could wish to take away.

Katherinewas restless that afternoon; there was not much to delight her indoors, or any place where she could find refuge and sit down and rest, or read, or write, or occupy herself in any natural way, unless it had been in her own bedroom, and there Hannah was packing—a process which promoted comfort as little as any of the others. This condition of the house wounded her to the bottom of her heart. A few days, she said to herself, could have made no difference. Stella need not have set the workmen to work until the house at least was empty. It was a poor thing to invite her sister to remain and then to make her home uninhabitable. With anxious justice, indeed, she reminded herself that the house was not uninhabitable—that she might still live in the drawing-room if she pleased, after the screen and the pictures and the curiosities were taken away; or in the morning-room, though the piano was packed in a rough box; but yet, when all was said, it was not generous of Stella. She had nowhere to sit down—nowhere to rest the sole of her foot. She went out at last to the walk round the cliff. She had always been fond of that, the only one in the family who cared for it. It was like a thread upon which she had strung so many recollections—that time, long ago, when papa had sent James Stanford away, and the many times when Katherine, still so young, had felt herself “out of it” beside the paramount presence of Stella, and had retired from the crowd of Stella’s adorers to gaze out upon the view and comfort herself in the thought that she had some one of her own who wanted not Stella, but Katherine. And then there had been the day of Stella’s escapade, and then of Stella’s elopement all wovenround and round about the famous “view.” Everything in her life was associated with it. That blue sky, that shining headland with the watery sun picking it out like a cliff of gold, the great vault of the sky circling over all, the dim horizon far away lost in distance, in clouds and immeasurable circles of the sea. Just now a little white sail was out as it might have been that fated littleStella, the yacht which Mr. Tredgold sold after her last escapade, and made a little money by, to his own extreme enjoyment. Katherine walked up and down, with her eyes travelling over the familiar prospect on which they had dwelt for the greater part of her life. She was very lonely and forlorn; her heart was heavy and her vitality low, she scarcely knew where she was going or what she might be doing to-morrow. The future was to-morrow to her as it is to a child. She had to make up her mind to come to some decision, and to-morrow she must carry it out.

It did not surprise her at all, on turning back after she had been there for some time, at the end of her promenade to see a figure almost by her side, which turned out to be that of Mr. Stanford. She was not surprised to see him. She had seen him so often, they were quite accustomed to meet. She spoke to him quite in a friendly tone, without any start or alarm: “You have come—to see the last of them, Mr. Stanford?” It was not a particularly appropriate speech, for there was no one here to see the last of, unless it had been Katherine herself; but nevertheless these were the words that came to her lips.

“They seem to have gone very soon,” he said, which was not a brilliant remark any more than her own.

“Immediately after lunch,” said Katherine, severely practical, “that they might get home in good time. You must always make certain allowances when you travel with young children. But,” she added, with a sudden rise of colour, “I should not attempt to enlighten you on that subject.”

“I certainly know what it is,” he said, with a grave face, “to consider the interests of a little child.”

“I know, I know,” cried Katherine with a sudden compunction, “I should not have said that.”

“I wish,” he said, “that you would allow me to speak to you on this subject. No, it is not on this subject. I tried to say what was in my heart before, but either you would not listen, or—I have a good deal to say to you that cannot be said. I don’t know how. If I could but convey it to you without saying it. It is only just to me that you should know. It may be just—to another—that it should not be said.”

“Let nothing be said,” she cried anxiously; “oh, nothing—nothing! Yet only one thing I should like you to tell me. That time we met on the railway—do you remember?”

“Do I remember!”

“Well; I wish to know this only for my own satisfaction. Were you marriedthen?”

She stood still as she put the question in the middle of the walk; but she did not look at him, she looked out to sea.

He answered her only after a pause of some duration, and in a voice which was full of pain. “Are you anxious,” he said, “Katherine, to make me out not only false to you, but false to love and to every sentiment in the world?”

“I beg you will not think,” she cried, “that I blame you for anything. Oh, no, no! You have never been false to me. There was never anything between us. You were as free and independent as any man could be.”

“Let me tell you then as far as I can what happened. I came back by the train that same afternoon when you said you were coming, and you were not there. I hung about hoping to meet you. Then I saw our two old friends in the Terrace—and they told me that there were other plans—that the doctor was very kind to your father for your sake, and that you were likely——”

Katherine waved her hand with great vivacity; she stamped her foot slightly on the ground. What had this to do with it? It was not her conduct that was in dispute, but his. Her meaning was so clear in her face without words that he stopped as she desired.

“I went back to India very much cast down. I waswithout hope. I was at a lonely station and very dreary. I tried to say the other day how strongly I believed in my heart that it was better to hold for the best, even if you could never attain it, than to try to get a kind of makeshift happiness with a second best.”

“Mr. Stanford,” cried Katherine, with her head thrown back and her eyes glowing, “from anything I can discern you are about to speak of a lady of whom I know nothing; who is dead—which sums up everything; and whom no one should dare to name, you above all, but with the most devout respect.”

He looked at her surprised, and then bowed his head. “You are right, Miss Katherine,” he said; “my poor little wife, it would ill become me to speak of her with any other feeling. I told you that I had much to tell you which could not be said——”

“Let it remain so then,” she cried with a tremble of excitement; “why should it be discussed between you and me? It is no concern of mine.”

“It’s a great, a very great concern of mine. Katherine, I must speak; this is the first time in which I have ever been able to speak to you, to tell you what has been in my heart—oh, not to-day nor yesterday—for ten long years.” She interrupted him again with the impatient gesture, the same slight stamp on the ground. “Am I to have no hearing,” he cried, “not even to be allowed to tell you, the first and only time that I have had the chance?”

Katherine cleared her throat a great many times before she spoke. “I will tell you how it looks from my point of view,” she said. “I used to come out here many a time after you went away first, when we were told that papa had sent you away. I was grateful to you. I thought it was very, very fine of you to prefer me to Stella; afterwards I began to think of you a little for yourself. The time we met made you a great deal more real to me. It was imagination, but I thought of you often and often when I came out here and walked about and looked at the view. The view almost meant you—it wasvery vague, but it made me happy, and I came out nearly every night. That is nearly ten years since, too; it was nothing, and yet it was the chief I had to keep my life going upon. Finally you come back, and the first thing you have to say to me is to explain that, though you like me still and all that, you have been married, you have had a child, and another life between whiles. Oh, no, no, Mr. Stanford, that cannot be.”

“Katherine! must I not say a word in my own defence?”

“There is no defence,” she cried, “and no wrong. I am only not that kind of woman. I am very sorry for you and the poor little child. But you have that, it is a great deal. And I have nothing not even the view. I am bidding farewell to the view and to all those recollections. It is good-bye,” she said, waving her hand out to the sea, “to my youth as well as to the cliff, and to all my visions as well as to you. Good-bye, Mr. Stanford, good-bye. I think it is beginning to rain, and to-morrow I am going away.”

Was this the conclusion? Was it not a conclusion at all? Next day Katherine certainly did go away. She went to a little house at some distance from Sliplin—a little house in the country, half-choked in fallen leaves, where she had thought she liked the rooms and the prospect, which was no longer that of the bay and the headland, but of what we call a home landscape—green fields and tranquil woods, a village church within sight, and some red-roofed cottages. Katherine’s rooms were on the upper floor, therefore not quite on a level with the fallen leaves. It was a mostdigneretirement for a lady, quite the place for Katherine, many people thought; not like rooms in a town, but with the privacy of her own garden and nobody to interfere with her. There was a little pony carriage in which she could drive about, with a rough pony that went capitally, quite as well as Mr. Tredgold’s horses—growing old under the charge of the old coachman, who never was in a hurry—would ever go. Lady Jane, who approved so highly, was anxious to take a great deal of notice of Katherine. She sent the landau to fetch her when, in the first week of her retirement, Katherine went out to Steephill to lunch. ButKatherine preferred the pony chaise. She said her rooms were delightful, and the pony the greatest diversion. The only grievance she had, she declared, was that there was nothing to find fault with. “Now, to be a disinherited person and to have no grievance,” she said, “is very hard. I don’t know what is to become of me.” Lady Jane took this in some unaccountable way as a satirical speech, and felt aggrieved. But I cannot say why.

It is a great art to know when to stop when you are telling a story—the question of a happy or a not happy ending rests so much on that. It is supposed to be the superior way nowadays that a story should end badly—first, as being less complete (I suppose), and, second, as being more in accord with truth. The latter I doubt. If there was ever any ending in human life except the final one of all (which we hope is exactly the reverse of an ending), one would be tempted rather to say that there are not half so manytours de forcein fiction as there are in actual life, and that the very commonest thing is the god who gets out of the machine to help the actual people round us to have their own way. But this is not enough for the highest class of fiction, and I am aware that a hankering after a good end is a vulgar thing. Now, the good ending of a novel means generally that the hero and heroine should be married and sent off with blessings upon their wedding tour. What am I to say? I can but leave this question to time and the insight of the reader. If it is a fine thing for a young lady to be married, it must be a finer thing still that she should have, as people say, two strings to her bow. There are two men within her reach who would gladly marry Katherine, ready to take up the handkerchief should she drop it in the most maidenly and modest way. She had no need to go out into the world to look for them. There they are—two honest, faithful men. If Katherine marries the doctor, James Stanford will disappear (he has a year’s furlough), and no doubt in India will marry yet another wife and be more or less happy. If she should marry Stanford, Dr. Burnet will feel it,but it will not break his heart. And then the two who make up their minds to this step will live happy—more or less—ever after. What more is there to be said?

I think that few people quite understand, and no one that I know of, except a little girl here and there, will quite sympathise with the effect produced upon Katherine by her discovery of James Stanford’s marriage. They think her jealous, they think her ridiculous, they say a great many severe things about common-sense. A man in James Stanford’s position, doing so well, likely to be a member of Council before he dies, with a pension of thousands for his widow—that such a man should be disdained because he had married, though the poor little wife was so very discreet and died so soon, what could be more absurd? “If there had been a family ofgirls,” Stella said, “you could understand it, for a first wife’s girls are often a nuisance to a woman. But one boy, who will be sent out into the world directly and do for himself and trouble nobody——” Stella, however, always ends by saying that she never did understand Katherine’s ways and never should, did she live a hundred years.

This is what Stella, for her part, is extremely well inclined to do. Somers has been filled with all the modern comforts, and it is universally allowed to be a beautiful old house, fit for a queen. Perhaps its present mistress does not altogether appreciate its real beauties, but she loves the size of it, and the number of guests it can take in, and the capacity of the hall for dances and entertainments of all kinds. She has, too, a little house in town—small, but in the heart of everything—which Stella instinctively and by nature is, wherever she goes. All that is facilitated by the possession of sixty thousand a year, yet not attained; for there are, as everybody knows, many people with a great deal more money who beat at these charmed portals of society and for whom there is no answer, till perhaps some needy lady of the high world takes them up. But Stella wanted no needy lady of quality. She scoffed at the intervention of the Dowager Lady Somers, who would, if she could, have patronised old Tredgold’s daughter; but LadySomers’ set were generally old cats to Stella, and she owed her advancement solely to herself. She is success personified—in her house, in her dress, in society, with her husband and all her friends. Little whining Job was perhaps the only individual of all her surroundings who retained a feeling of hostility as time went on against young Lady Somers. Her sister has forgiven her freely, if there was anything to forgive, and Sir Charles is quite aware that he has nothing to forgive, and reposes serenely upon that thought, indifferent to flirtations, that are light as air and mean nothing. Lady Somers is a woman upon whose stainless name not a breath of malice has ever been blown, but Job does not care for his mother. It is a pity, though it does not disturb her much, and it is not easy to tell the reason—perhaps because she branded him in his infancy with the name which sticks to him still. Such a name does no harm in these days of nicknames, but it has, I believe, always rankled in the boy’s heart.

On the other hand, there is a great friendship still between Job and his father, and he does not dislike his aunt. But this is looking further afield than our story calls upon us to look. It is impossible that Katherine can remain very long in a half rural, half suburban cottage in the environs of Sliplin, with no diversion but the little pony carriage and the visits of the Midge and occasionally of Lady Jane. The piece of land which Mr. Sturgeon sold for her brought in a pleasant addition to her income, and she would have liked to have gone abroad and to have done many things; but what can be done, after all, by a lady and her maid, even upon five hundred pounds a year?

THE END

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