Chapter Four.

Chapter Four.“I did but chide in jest: the best loves use itSometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:When we invite our best friends to a feast,’Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before ’em;There’s something sharp and salt, both to whet appetiteAnd make ’em taste their wine well.”Middleton.From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities. When such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to different occasions. A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver. Its natural appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy, heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.On the evening of Mr Bennett’s party, the Underham fly might have been seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the church. The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters of an hour’s drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years’ growth; upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms. Some charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful,—the repose of the last daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children’s laughter in the village, the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely. Even the wrinkled face of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job expressed it, “to turn agin her mate because it warn’t pudden.” Job himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and intensely conservative in his opinions. He had begun life as a Thorpe baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place. One of his peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe. The country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to those of Thorpe. “He’ve been up thaes foorty years, and he ain’t likely to be wrong now,” was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the Milman Arms fly.At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle in the tower. It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however, regarded it with due respect.“True to a minit,” Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction. “Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss Marion that, without she’s pretty sharp, we sha’n’t get to Under’m by half past six, nor nothing like it.”“She’s on the stairs now,” said Faith, reconnoitring, “and if there isn’t Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest! I’m sure it is a wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp. It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah.”“And that doesn’t come to everybody as it do to me,—with their name,” said Job. “She’s a woman who isn’t tried with a hitch in her tongue, but she’s a neat figure for a cook.”“Well, I’m sure!” said Faith, pouting a little. “I never could see nothing in Sarah’s figure,—but you’d better get down and open the door, Mr White.”With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in order to pick up Mr Mannering. The delay in starting had been caused at least as much by the Vicar’s desire to hear his opinion upon a certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by Marion’s lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely, until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for it to stop. Mr Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer’s respect for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a courteous attention to Mrs Miles’s household difficulties would permit. Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs Miles’s care, until the Vicar opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the person for whom they had all been waiting.They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs Miles coming softly down to see them off, and pulling out Marion’s skirts with a little motherly anxiety. They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone bravely on Marion’s pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows. Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and barking wildly. Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and, scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at Underham. The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss. But every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the fields, revealed a sweet homelike view,—with no bold glory of form or colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit mellowed through the kindly summer nights. By and by the lanes widened, they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham. Mr Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of pain, of wonderment. After all, it is but a world of new editions. Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should meet again, touch each other’s hands, look into each other’s eyes. But Marion had not learnt this yet.The Bennetts’ house stood directly against the road, and the wall along which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden; the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon the warm brick. Mr Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs Bennett’s, treating her in every respect as though she were their own child. Miss Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and Mr Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice, was holding forth to Mr Bennett upon a local election.“I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,” he was saying, “but you’ll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a pair of fools.”“Still, one doesn’t altogether like to go against North,—he as good as belongs to Underham.”“Don’t see the value of that,” said the Squire, with a little roughness; and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down. Anthony sat between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts’ niece, Marmaduke had Marion, and Winifred’s neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman, the member. Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an added charm of novelty hung about him. Even Mrs Featherly, next to whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking, began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony’s pleasantness.“You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr Anthony, of one kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it,” she said graciously.“He earned his holiday,” said Mr Bennett, nodding his head. “After such great things at Cambridge, a man can’t do better than take a run and let his brain have a little rest. I’m never for overwork.”“Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry,” Miss Lovell put in on the other side. She was a pretty girl, fair, with a long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little imploring emphasis in it. “And not in Latin this time, or you really must send us a translation.”There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while. He was conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of inquiring at what they were laughing.“Mr Miles is telling us such amusing things,” said Miss Lovell, with unmistakable admiration in her tone.“Amusing things!” repeated the Squire; “I never hear anything worth listening to of any sort. Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in these days, but there’s no making head nor tail of it when all’s said. It’s speechifying and argufying, and nothing done. That’s what made half the mischief in the Crimea. We sha’n’t get anything again like the old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe there’d be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes they were fools enough to blunder into.”In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham was bold enough to question his authority as a military man. Mrs Bennett only said placidly,—“Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?”“It’s a good deal more inconvenient, ma’am, to have a heap of lies talked by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Letters were letters in those days, and you didn’t get pestered by every tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery. When they came they had something in them. My mother, now. I’ve heard my father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was twelve o’clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was, rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack. My father was crippled at the time, and there wasn’t one she’d let go in her stead. Poor old mother!” said the Squire, with an involuntary softening.“I remember your mother, Squire,” said old Mr Featherly.“Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed,” said Mr Chester, strongly again.“Well, she was, she was. People called her a little high, but no one found her so when they were in trouble. And a fine woman, too, as upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country. Miss Winifred reminds me of her in many ways.”The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile. But he shook his head at the old clergyman’s last remark.“Winifred’s not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when she died.”“She carries her head in the same fashion, though,” persisted Mr Featherly. “And there’s something that reminds me.”It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head with a little touch of stateliness. She had heard a good many of the flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their effect upon him. Something in his nature courted the pleasant popularity and the spoiling. Is it women only who care for such pretty things? He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was not without its influence. Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable that, although a woman who loves—even unconsciously—sets herself, often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly understand him. What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said to have been needful. If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or become bitter and morose. Perhaps there are two sides even to faults, and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed. Anthony, on his part, was not long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause. It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went out of the dining-room.Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.“I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles,” she said, with an innocent air of admiration. “Of course you can see all his poetry whenever you like. It must be so delightful.”“Only I never do,” said Winifred, standing upright. “I don’t care for poetry unless it is the very best.”Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent forth her shaft. She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony, to see how sharply he was hit. If he had looked at her he might have known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make amends. But he would not look. He saw nothing of the involuntary grace of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face. He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for the second time that evening. Ada Lovell, looking up at him with admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and, perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for the remainder of the time. Winifred made no more advances. She stood leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr Milman joined her. Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one end. People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the bats flitted softly. Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and making every one laugh. The Squire called his daughter at last. He disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,—“Good-night, Anthony.”“Good-night.”There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a disproportionate sense of heaviness. Winifred knew that she should see Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence, but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor forget the sound of his cold good-night.

“I did but chide in jest: the best loves use itSometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:When we invite our best friends to a feast,’Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before ’em;There’s something sharp and salt, both to whet appetiteAnd make ’em taste their wine well.”Middleton.

“I did but chide in jest: the best loves use itSometimes; it sets an edge upon affection:When we invite our best friends to a feast,’Tis not all sweetmeat that we set before ’em;There’s something sharp and salt, both to whet appetiteAnd make ’em taste their wine well.”Middleton.

From what has been said of the resources of Thorpe Regis, it will be easily understood that it did not possess any public vehicle capable of conveying its inhabitants to dinner-parties or other solemnities. When such a conveyance became an absolute necessity, there was sent from Underham a fly which had a remarkable capacity for adapting itself to different occasions. A pair of white gloves for the driver and a grey horse presented at once the festive appearance considered desirable for a wedding, while the lugubrious respectability demanded by an English funeral was attained by the substitution of black for white, and by a flowing hat-band which almost enveloped the little driver. Its natural appearance, divested of any special grandeur, was that of a roomy, heavily built, and some what battered vehicle, which upon pressure would hold one or two beyond the conventional four, and carry the Thorpe world to the evening gayeties of the neighbourhood with no greater amount of shaking and bumping than habit had led them to consider an almost indispensable preparation to a dinner with their friends.

On the evening of Mr Bennett’s party, the Underham fly might have been seen drawn up in front of the Vicarage porch, a snug little excrescence on the south side of the house, and scarcely a dozen yards from the church. The dinner-hour was half past six, and it was a three quarters of an hour’s drive to Underham, so that the sun was still slanting brightly upon the old house, green with creepers of long years’ growth; upon the narrow border of sweet, old-fashioned flowers that ran along the front, edged with box, and separated from the grass-plot by a little gravel walk; upon the fine young cedar half-way between the house and the road, the tall tritonias, and the cluster rose that had clambered until it festooned two ilex-trees with its pure white blossoms. Some charm of summer made the homeliness beautiful,—the repose of the last daylight hours, the cheerfulness of children’s laughter in the village, the midges dancing in the quiet air, the shadows on the grass where pink-tipped daisies folded themselves serenely. Even the wrinkled face of Job White, the one-eyed driver, had caught something of glow from the sunshine, as he sat and conversed affably from his box with Faith, the parlour-maid at the Vicarage, a rosy-faced girl, not disposed, as Job expressed it, “to turn agin her mate because it warn’t pudden.” Job himself was one of the characters of the neighbourhood, a good-humoured patron of such of the gentry round as he considered respectable, and intensely conservative in his opinions. He had begun life as a Thorpe baby, and, although professional exigencies afterwards led to his settling at Underham, he did not attempt to disguise his contempt for the new-fangled notions prevalent in that place. One of his peculiarities led him to decline accepting as correct all time which could not be proved to agree with the church clock at Thorpe. The country alteration to what was called railway time which took place some twenty or five-and-twenty years ago he could not speak of except in terms of contemptuous bitterness; and, had it been practicable, he would have insisted upon remaining twenty minutes behind the rest of the world to the end of his days; but as his calling rendered this an impossibility, he contented himself with utterly ignoring the station clock, and obliging all those he drove to accommodate their hours to those of Thorpe. “He’ve been up thaes foorty years, and he ain’t likely to be wrong now,” was his invariable answer to remonstrances; and perhaps there could be no stronger testimony to the old west-world prejudices that, in spite of changes, yet clung about Underham, than the fact that with these opinions for his guide Job White still drove the Milman Arms fly.

At the moment when Faith, shading her eyes from the sun, was looking brightly up with instinctive coquetry, Job was settling in his waistcoat fob the globular silver watch which he had duly compared with his oracle in the tower. It was so bulky that it required a peculiar twist of his body to get it into the pocket at all, and wheft that difficulty was surmounted it formed an odd sort of protuberance, apt to impress beholders with a sympathetic sense of discomfort Faith, however, regarded it with due respect.

“True to a minit,” Job said in a tone of contented self-satisfaction. “Now, Faith, my dear, suppose you wos just to step in and tell Miss Marion that, without she’s pretty sharp, we sha’n’t get to Under’m by half past six, nor nothing like it.”

“She’s on the stairs now,” said Faith, reconnoitring, “and if there isn’t Sarah come out of the kitchen to see her drest! I’m sure it is a wonder if she can stand there for a minute and not say something sharp. It wants the patience of a saint to live with Sarah.”

“And that doesn’t come to everybody as it do to me,—with their name,” said Job. “She’s a woman who isn’t tried with a hitch in her tongue, but she’s a neat figure for a cook.”

“Well, I’m sure!” said Faith, pouting a little. “I never could see nothing in Sarah’s figure,—but you’d better get down and open the door, Mr White.”

With so great a scarcity of conveyances, combinations were matters of necessity in Thorpe, and the fly had already driven to the Red House in order to pick up Mr Mannering. The delay in starting had been caused at least as much by the Vicar’s desire to hear his opinion upon a certain pamphlet which, when sought for, turned out to be missing, as by Marion’s lingering doubts between the respective merits of two white muslins; but the truth was that punctuality did not exist at the Vicarage, and the church bell on Sundays stretched itself indefinitely, until the Vicar himself looked out from the vestry door and nodded for it to stop. Mr Mannering, having, on the contrary, a lawyer’s respect for time, had for the last ten minutes been sitting upon thorns, taking out his watch, and regarding the door with as much uneasiness as a courteous attention to Mrs Miles’s household difficulties would permit. Anthony had walked into Underham to meet Marmaduke Lee, and Mr Mannering fell uninterruptedly to Mrs Miles’s care, until the Vicar opened the door and informed him that they were ready, with the really serious conviction common to unpunctual people that his visitor was the person for whom they had all been waiting.

They were in the hall and out in the little porch at last: the Vicar with his broad shoulders and plain face, Mrs Miles coming softly down to see them off, and pulling out Marion’s skirts with a little motherly anxiety. They were all talking and laughing, and the sun still shone bravely on Marion’s pretty gown and the roses she had twisted into her dark hair, and the jessamine which clambered to the topmost windows. Sniff, the Skye terrier, was dancing round the old grey horse, and barking wildly. Outside, in the little wet lane, brown sweet-breathed cows were plodding slowly back to their farm, and stopping now and then to contemplate the green lawn of the Vicarage, until Sniff, catching sight of an intruding head, became frantic with a new excitement, and, scrambling to the top of the hedge, was last seen as the fly turned out of the gate, a ball of flying hair in pursuit of a retreating enemy.

It was through a curious tangle of lanes that Job jolted his load, a little more unmercifully than usual, lest the time which had been lost should be laid to the account of the Thorpe clock by unbelievers at Underham. The hedge-rows were so high that the sun at this hour of the day shone only upon the tops of the blackthorn and nut bushes which crowned them, shone with a keen yellow light contrasting strongly with the dim shadows falling underneath upon the long grass and moss. But every now and then a break in the hedge, or a gate leading into the fields, revealed a sweet homelike view,—with no bold glory of form or colour, but tender with subtle harmonies of tints melting one into the other, a haze of blue, white smoke curling upwards, straw-thatched barns, with quiet apple orchards lying round them, where the grass grew long and cool about the stalks of the old trees, and the young fruit mellowed through the kindly summer nights. By and by the lanes widened, they passed an old mill, half hidden by ash-trees, drove between flat meadows, crossed a bridge, and reached the outskirts of Underham. Mr Mannering and the Vicar had fallen into a discussion upon a new edition of Sophocles, and Marion looked out of the window with a happy glow upon her face, not understanding how the two men should bury themselves in those old-world interests, when life was rushing on, full of charm, of pain, of wonderment. After all, it is but a world of new editions. Sophocles was no further removed from them than the hundred hopes and fears with which she and Marmaduke beguiled the time until they should meet again, touch each other’s hands, look into each other’s eyes. But Marion had not learnt this yet.

The Bennetts’ house stood directly against the road, and the wall along which for some distance the footpath ran was the wall of their garden; the Underham boys holding fabulous views of the fruit that ripened on its innermost side, where green geometrical lines were marked out upon the warm brick. Mr Bennett was a lawyer, and having no children, he and his wife had adopted the daughter of a sister of Mrs Bennett’s, treating her in every respect as though she were their own child. Miss Lovell was smiling up at Anthony when the Vicarage party arrived, and Mr Chester, who was always a little loud and peremptory in his voice, was holding forth to Mr Bennett upon a local election.

“I should be the last person in the world to wish to influence anybody,” he was saying, “but you’ll not deny, I suppose, that the other men are a pair of fools.”

“Still, one doesn’t altogether like to go against North,—he as good as belongs to Underham.”

“Don’t see the value of that,” said the Squire, with a little roughness; and then dinner was announced, and they all trooped down. Anthony sat between an elderly lady and Miss Lovell, the Bennetts’ niece, Marmaduke had Marion, and Winifred’s neighbour was the son of Sir James Milman, the member. Anthony was always popular in society, so that to secure him was almost a pledge to the host and hostess that things would go brightly; moreover, he had but just returned from his travels, and an added charm of novelty hung about him. Even Mrs Featherly, next to whom he was sitting, the wife of the rector of Underham, and one of those excellent women whom people all blamed themselves for disliking, began to look as if the fault-finding on which she rested as the moral backbone of her character was yielding to Anthony’s pleasantness.

“You have seen a great deal since you left home, Mr Anthony, of one kind and another, and I hope you will make good use of it,” she said graciously.

“He earned his holiday,” said Mr Bennett, nodding his head. “After such great things at Cambridge, a man can’t do better than take a run and let his brain have a little rest. I’m never for overwork.”

“Only I do hope you have written some more beautiful poetry,” Miss Lovell put in on the other side. She was a pretty girl, fair, with a long soft curl falling on her shoulder, and a voice which had a little imploring emphasis in it. “And not in Latin this time, or you really must send us a translation.”

There was a good deal said in the same strain, to which Anthony made laughing disclaimers, liking the incense all the while. He was conscious of exaggerations, but it is not difficult to forgive exaggerations which lead along so pleasant a path, and his was a nature to grow warmly responsive under kindly treatment, so that his conversation became brighter and more entertaining, until even Mrs Bennett, who was contentedly eating strawberries, made the effort of inquiring at what they were laughing.

“Mr Miles is telling us such amusing things,” said Miss Lovell, with unmistakable admiration in her tone.

“Amusing things!” repeated the Squire; “I never hear anything worth listening to of any sort. Bless you, they talk nineteen to the dozen in these days, but there’s no making head nor tail of it when all’s said. It’s speechifying and argufying, and nothing done. That’s what made half the mischief in the Crimea. We sha’n’t get anything again like the old times, when there were no railways, nor confounded telegraphs pulling up the generals for every step they took, or making them believe there’d be a pack of men at their heels to pull them out of any holes they were fools enough to blunder into.”

In his youth the Squire had been in the Dragoons, and no one at Underham was bold enough to question his authority as a military man. Mrs Bennett only said placidly,—

“Dear me, was it not a little inconvenient?”

“It’s a good deal more inconvenient, ma’am, to have a heap of lies talked by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. Letters were letters in those days, and you didn’t get pestered by every tradesman who wants to puff off his twopenny halfpenny foolery. When they came they had something in them. My mother, now. I’ve heard my father say that when news from Spain came in, and the old Highflyer was so hung about and set at, all the way down from London, that it was twelve o’clock at night before she got into Thorpe, as soon as my mother heard the wheels far off on the road, no matter what the weather was, rain or shine, moon or no moon, she would go out into the hall and put on her hood and cloak, and away she would trudge across the fields to the Red Lion to see if there might be a letter from poor Jack. My father was crippled at the time, and there wasn’t one she’d let go in her stead. Poor old mother!” said the Squire, with an involuntary softening.

“I remember your mother, Squire,” said old Mr Featherly.

“Then you remember as good a woman as ever breathed,” said Mr Chester, strongly again.

“Well, she was, she was. People called her a little high, but no one found her so when they were in trouble. And a fine woman, too, as upright as a dart, going straight to her point, whatever it was, with as pretty an ankle and as clean a heel as any one in the country. Miss Winifred reminds me of her in many ways.”

The Squire had pushed his chair a little back, and was looking at the glass of port he was fingering on the table with a pleased smile. But he shook his head at the old clergyman’s last remark.

“Winifred’s not so tall by half an inch or more as my mother was when she died.”

“She carries her head in the same fashion, though,” persisted Mr Featherly. “And there’s something that reminds me.”

It was certainly true that Winifred was at this moment holding her head with a little touch of stateliness. She had heard a good many of the flattering words which had been poured upon Anthony, and perhaps valued them at even less than they were worth, and it vexed her to see their effect upon him. Something in his nature courted the pleasant popularity and the spoiling. Is it women only who care for such pretty things? He might have told you that he despised them, but the truth was that they made a sunshine in which he liked to bask, a delight which was not without its influence. Winifred, who saw the weakness, was not merciful: she was a woman, with, perhaps, a grain of jealousy sharpening her perceptions, and rendering them sufficiently keen to probe the feminine flatteries which fell so sweetly upon him, and it is probable that, although a woman who loves—even unconsciously—sets herself, often unconsciously too, to study the character of the man she loves with a closeness of purpose, and an almost unerring instinct, swift to unravel its inmost workings, Winifred did not at this time rightly understand him. What she condemned as vanity was rather an almost womanish sensitiveness, to which the sunshine of applause might be said to have been needful. If it was withdrawn, he might either shrink or become bitter and morose. Perhaps there are two sides even to faults, and the people who love us best are sometimes our most severe judges: no one there thought hardly of Anthony, except Winifred, who would have had none of these little flaws, and sat, carrying her shapely head a little scornfully, as Mr Featherly had noticed. Anthony, on his part, was not long in discovering her displeasure, although unconscious of the cause. It provoked him, and he would not look in her face when the ladies went out of the dining-room.

Marion had drawn her into the balcony to pour out some of her hopes and fears about Marmaduke, and the two were talking eagerly when Ada Lovell came out, followed by such of the gentlemen as had come up stairs.

“I have been envying your good fortune to Mr Miles,” she said, with an innocent air of admiration. “Of course you can see all his poetry whenever you like. It must be so delightful.”

“Only I never do,” said Winifred, standing upright. “I don’t care for poetry unless it is the very best.”

Woman like, she felt a pang in her own heart the instant she had sent forth her shaft. She glanced quickly and almost imploringly at Anthony, to see how sharply he was hit. If he had looked at her he might have known that she had flung down her weapons, and was waiting to make amends. But he would not look. He saw nothing of the involuntary grace of her attitude, as she stood in the glow of the sweet evening light, a little shamefaced and sorry, with a tender rosy softness in her face. He only felt that she had tried to wound him, and was angry with her for the second time that evening. Ada Lovell, looking up at him with admiring awe, had no such pricks with which to make him wince, and, perhaps, it was to be expected that he should devote himself to her for the remainder of the time. Winifred made no more advances. She stood leaning against the railing, looking gravely down upon the tall white lilies that by degrees grew and glimmered out of the dusk, until Mr Milman joined her. Marion and Marmaduke talked in a low voice at one end. People came out now and then, declared the dew was falling, and made a little compromise by sitting round the window, past which the bats flitted softly. Mr Mannering was telling clever stories, and making every one laugh. The Squire called his daughter at last. He disliked being kept waiting, and she went hurriedly, but as she passed Anthony she made a little pause to say gently,—

“Good-night, Anthony.”

“Good-night.”

There are some things which rest in our minds with quite a disproportionate sense of heaviness. Winifred knew that she should see Anthony the next day, by which time he would have forgotten her offence, but she seemed to have lost some of the confidence which ordinarily grew out of such a knowledge, for she could neither forgive herself nor forget the sound of his cold good-night.

Chapter Five.”‘Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?’‘It is a sunshine mixt with rain.’”Sir Walter Raleigh.Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town. It might have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe. She took a small house not far from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few women’s lives. She pinched herself to send him to a public school, and would gladly have supported him at college, but even had this been practicable for such straitened means, there were circumstances which prevented more than a secret sighing on her part. Marmaduke had, on his mother’s side, a great-uncle who was the one rich man in a poor family, and who if not actually childless was so by his own assertion to all intents and purposes, his daughter having mortally offended him by a marriage against his will. She was the Margaret Hare of whom we have heard Mr Mannering speak, for it was not until after her marriage that her father, upon an access of fortune, changed his name to “Tregennas,” and a little later, perhaps in a fit of desolation, took for his second wife and made miserable until her death an aunt of Mr Miles, the Vicar of Thorpe. The connection, although scarcely deserving of the name, was sufficient to form an additional link between the families, and Marmaduke read with the Vicar, and won Marion’s love while they were little more than girl or boy.To Mr Tregennas—who, it must be allowed, took a certain interest in his great-nephew, if interest is proved by occasional gifts of sovereigns and somewhat arbitrary advice on the subject of his education—Marmaduke meanwhile looked as the maker of his fortunes. He was careful from the first to withhold Miss Philippa from contradicting him, as, to tell the truth, she was not disinclined to do. Odd little shoots of jealousy crop up even in the most loving. Add to this that Mr Tregennas strongly opposed her favourite college scheme, and it will not be surprising that more than once Miss Philippa would very willingly, as she expressed it, have put her foot to the ground, if only Marmaduke had not knocked that very ground from under her, by adopting his uncle’s views. And he was possessed of a certain languid self-will with which he invariably carried his point, even at the time when he appeared to yield, so that people were sometimes puzzled to reconcile cause and effect. Nevertheless, it was no doubt a severe disappointment when Mr Tregennas, instead of assisting him to enter a profession, advised his seeking employment in one of the great manufacturing firms of the north, and indeed actually applied to the heads before he had received an answer to his suggestion. Whether his will was the strongest, or his nephew’s philosophy overcame dislike, his plan was carried out, and Marmaduke had been for two years engaged in the most distasteful occupation that could have been provided for him. It was, perhaps, this very sense of ill-usage which rooted the more firmly his belief that he was to be his uncle’s heir. A grievance quickly excites the idea of compensation, and Marmaduke welded the two together so persistently that the one stood on nearly the same level as the other. The force, however, which prevented his throwing up his work had never proved sufficient to conquer his repugnance towards it, and the fact of feeling himself a victim, while it seemed to give him a right to feed upon future hopes, made it also a duty to seek alleviations in the present; so that a trifling vexation, or other change of mood, not infrequently brought about a flying visit to Thorpe and a drain upon Miss Lee’s slender resources.He had told Marion at the dinner-party that he must see her alone the next day, and, accordingly, when he walked to the Vicarage, at a time when Mr Miles and John were likely to be absent, Marion was waiting eagerly for him. Mrs Miles, who was in the room, was made more uneasy by his increasing thinness than by her daughter’s determination to go out with him, for although no open engagement existed between the two, it was one of those events which might be expected to fell into shape at some future time, and which, if it were connected with Marion’s will, it was hopeless for her mother to resist, even had she been disinclined towards it. But Marmaduke had a gentle ease of manner pleasant to those with whom he was thrown into contact, and Mrs Miles really loved and pitied him, and was grieved at his looks.“Does your Aunt Philippa give you porter jelly, Marmaduke?” she asked anxiously. “I wish she would. I am sure it is the very best thing. Sarah shall heat some beef-tea for you in a moment, if you will only take it.”“Nothing will do me good while I have to work in that hole,” said Marmaduke, with a dreary intonation in his voice. “Life is simply existence. And to think that I have had two years of it already!”Marion, who had looked at him as he spoke, did not say a word until they were out of the house, and in the deep lane, fresh with a cool beauty of water and shining cresses. Then, as they walked on, Sniff paddling beside them, she asked quietly,—“Is anything the matter?”There was noticeable in her manner to him—at all times—a difference from her usual fashion of speaking. The abruptness, something even of the brightness, was gone, and in its place seemed to have grown a soft care, a tenderness almost like protection. And at this moment their natures might have been transposed, for Marmaduke turned upon her with an impetuosity unlike himself.“Anything! I tell you, Marion, that what I go through is unendurable. You might know better than to ask such a question as that.”“But why—what is it?” she persisted, with a vague trouble lest something more than she had heard was to be unfolded to her. Her loyalty to Marmaduke made her always ready to feed his self-pity, but she was afraid that he had taken some rash step.“What good can a man do with work that he loathes?”“You must remember to what the work will lead,” she said, relieved.“When?—how? It is absolute folly to dream that matters going on as they are going now can ever lead to anything satisfactory. How much do you suppose that I can squeeze out of a paltry hundred and fifty a year? Even Anthony acknowledges it to be absurd, and Anthony is Utopian enough to believe that everything grows out of nothing. That may do very well for him, who will never need to prove it,” added Marmaduke, bitterly.They were both leaning against a stile, and looking towards the cloudy distance of the moors. Marion slipped her hand softly into his.“Surely we all heard when you went there that it would bring better things in a few years?”“You talk of years as if they were days,” he said in the same tone. “Nobody denies it. When I have drudged at that disgustingly low business for half a dozen years, I shall probably be fifty pounds a year better off than I am now, and by the time we are both too old to take pleasure in life we shall be able to marry, and this seems to content you perfectly.”Marion caught away her hand with a sudden movement. It made him turn to look at her, and the hurt anger in her eyes brought back his usual gentleness of manner at once. He was desirous to bind all her feelings on his side, and he knew her well enough to be aware that his shortest means of doing this was to revert to the wretchedness of his position.“Forgive me, dearest,” he said; “you don’t know what a poor wretch a man becomes when he grinds along in one eternal round of small miseries. It is such a horrible separation from you all. And what is the good of being old Tregennas’s heir, if he can’t put his hand into his pocket and let me live like a gentleman?”“He promised that, did he not, Marmaduke?”“It depends upon what you call promising. He is not the man to say out honestly, ‘Marmaduke Lee, you’re my heir, and I’ll give you a fit allowance till you come into the property.’ If he had, I should not be as I am. But he said quite enough. Of course I am his heir. There isn’t a Jew in the country but would lend me a few thousands on the chance. Of course I am his heir. I wish you would make your father understand, and then he might allow us to consider ourselves engaged; at present it’s like dropping a poor wretch into a pit, and blocking up his one glimpse of blue sky. I tell you, Marion, again, I cannot endure this state of things any longer. I’ve not got it in me to toil on in that dirty hole without so much as an atom of hope to cheer one.”They were both silent for an instant, and then Marion cried out passionately, “Toil! I would toil day and night for the joy of earning a sixpence which I could lay aside and say, ‘This is ours.’” There was such a swift leaping out of the love of her heart in word and eyes, that it seemed fire which must needs kindle whatever it touched, if only for a moment. But no answering glow passed across his pale face. He looked away again as if what she said had not any relation to his thoughts, and she presently continued more timidly. “Surely it would be the height of imprudence to give up your work? And you know that if you did so my father would be less than ever likely to consent to our engagement, than now when you are at least on the road to independence.”“I can’t go on as I am,” he said, a little doggedly. “Mr Miles must give me something to hold by, or I shall throw up the whole concern. I have nearly done so a dozen times already.”“Is there no way of influencing Mr Tregennas?” asked Marion, after a minute’s troubled thought.“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. As I said before, it isn’t fair that he should leave me in such a position. It’s not as if I should have to work for my bread all the days of my life, like some poor devils. By and by I shall step into as pretty a place as you’ll find anywhere, and why I should have to do compensation now by sitting on a high stool and addling my brain over ledgers is more than I can see. If he’d only say something definite one would know what one had to go upon. But—”“But what?”“O, you must understand, Marion, that I can’t very well go to him and say this sort of thing!”“Why not?”“Why not? Well, women are queer about such matters, but I should think you might guess it’s not the way to make yourself agreeable to an old fellow who has you in his power.”“It is only justice,” said Marion, whose cheek had flushed under the presence of an absorbing pity for Marmaduke which swept her away like a flood. “I wish I could tell him what I think.”“You can do something better,” said Marmaduke, seeing she had reached the point to which he had been leading.“What? Only tell me.”“Get your father to interfere.”She shook her head, moving her hands nervously. “You know he will not. He is so scrupulous about such matters. Over and over again I have heard him say he would never ask a favour of his uncle.”“A favour! But I am not demanding an allowance of a thousand a year. All I want to know is how I stand. And if Mr Miles sees in black and white that I am his heir, he will no longer object to an engagement. I tell you plainly, I can’t work unless I see some end before me. Besides, one must go step by step, and if he would acknowledge my position straightforwardly, by and by other things would follow. No one is so well entitled to ask as your father. Marion, you don’t want to keep me in this misery?”She was at no time insensible to these appeals, and perhaps less than ever on such a morning as this, when things about her were shining, dancing, singing in a burst of happy life, could she endure any weight of gloom for the man she loved best in the world. To some of us every echo of a happiness which does not at the same time fill our own souls with its music seems only discord. We cry out against it with voices that clash and jar and sadden themselves with the dissonance, when if we would be but content to listen in patience, some tender vibrations of an eternal harmony should reach us from afar, and satisfy us with their beauty. To Marion it was a positive wrong that the skylark high in the air was singing joyously; that the fresh breeze stirred into brightness the little stream which ran along the meadows; that the sound of the scythe and the chatter of the hay-making folk rose now and then with cheerful distinctness above lesser summer sounds; that Sniff was yelping with delight after the birds he was vainly chasing. Marion told him sharply to be quiet, but he only stopped for a moment, and looked at her with his head on one side at an angle of consideration, before he was off again, his little red tongue hanging out, his brown eyes on fire with excitement. Marmaduke, who was leaning moodily against the gate, waiting for Marion to speak, said at last,—“Anthony is a lucky dog, with the world before him, and no one to please but himself. But I don’t know that such sharp contrasts are the most encouraging reflections in the world.”The languor and depression of his voice pierced the girl’s heart like a thorn. She exclaimed impetuously,—“Something must be done,—my father shall write,—nothing can be so bad as that you should suffer in this way.”She put out her hand again, and he took it in his, and began to thank her in the gently caressing tones which fell easily from his lips. Her resolution, indeed, carried a greater relief to him than seemed to be contained in it. It was not only that he wanted to escape from the irksomeness of his duly toil, and believed the acknowledgment of his position the first step towards it, but he was also fretted by a wearing anxiety lest the position might never be his, and the very assumption of a certain claim on his part by Mr Miles might have a good effect, and remove a vague uneasiness, for which he could not account, of Anthony as a possible rival. Poor Marion thought it to be love for her which urged him; but although he did love her after a fashion, she was only one of the pleasant things he wanted to sweep into his net. He was full of satisfaction at the promise she had given.“Who are these—by the watercourse?” he said. “One of them looks like Anthony.”“And the other is Mr Chester,” said Marion, abstractedly. “Come.”“Yes, it is the Squire. I can see his red face, and that little flourish of his stick which he gives when he is angry. They see us by this time, and we may as well hear the battle-royal, if there is one. Listen.”Mr Chester’s loud voice came up well before him.“I tell you, sir, I tell you your father will live to see you a carping radical yet. When a young fellow gets this sort of notions into his head, we all know what’ll be the end of it. Everything respectable goes out by the heels, and he makes a fool of himself over balloting and universal suffrage, and a heap of rascally French republicanisms. How d’ye do, Marion, how d’ye do? Glad to see you, Marmaduke. Hope you’re not infected with any of this modern rubbish?”“No, sir, I’m a Conservative. A Liberal-Conservative,” added the young man under his breath, not expecting to be heard. But the Squire’s quick ears caught the word.“Don’t be half anything. There’s nothing I think so poorly of as a man that can’t make up his mind. He says this on one side and that on another, till he knows no more than a teetotum where his spinning will lead him. I should have twice the opinion of Anthony if he could say straight out what he means, instead of calling himself one thing and talking himself into another.” There was a good deal of truth in the Squire’s accusation, and the clash was not one for which he had any sympathy. Anthony himself was too young not to be sore upon the charge of inconsistency. He said hotly,—“Really, sir, I don’t know what hedges and draining have to do with the ballot. I have not been the one to say anything about it.”“I’m only showing what these ideas lead to,” said Mr Chester, enjoying his adversary’s irritation. “I’m content to take my land as it came to me. That’s good theology, ain’t it, Marion? By the way, I forgot to tell you that young Frank Orde comes to-morrow. Come up to dinner, all of you, will you? I dare say he’s as bad as the rest, but you’ll not make me believe my father hadn’t as good common-sense as the young fellows that find fault with his farming.”Sometimes, by talking loudly enough, a man becomes impressed with so confident a sense of triumph, that the sound of his own voice is like the salvo of guns over a victory. It was so now with the Squire, who remained in high good-humour during the rest of the walk, and gave Anthony to understand that he looked upon him as crushed and annihilated by an overwhelming weight of argument.

”‘Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?’‘It is a sunshine mixt with rain.’”Sir Walter Raleigh.

”‘Yet what is love, good shepherd, sayn?’‘It is a sunshine mixt with rain.’”Sir Walter Raleigh.

Places like Underham offer peculiar attractions to maiden ladies, who find in them equal protection from the solitude of the country and relief from the somewhat dreary desolateness of a great town. It might have been an old friendship for Mrs Miles which first brought Miss Philippa Lee into the neighbourhood, but she firmly resisted all attempts to decoy her nearer to Thorpe. She took a small house not far from the Featherlys, and there devoted herself to the care of her orphan nephew with that pathetic self-renunciation which we see in not a few women’s lives. She pinched herself to send him to a public school, and would gladly have supported him at college, but even had this been practicable for such straitened means, there were circumstances which prevented more than a secret sighing on her part. Marmaduke had, on his mother’s side, a great-uncle who was the one rich man in a poor family, and who if not actually childless was so by his own assertion to all intents and purposes, his daughter having mortally offended him by a marriage against his will. She was the Margaret Hare of whom we have heard Mr Mannering speak, for it was not until after her marriage that her father, upon an access of fortune, changed his name to “Tregennas,” and a little later, perhaps in a fit of desolation, took for his second wife and made miserable until her death an aunt of Mr Miles, the Vicar of Thorpe. The connection, although scarcely deserving of the name, was sufficient to form an additional link between the families, and Marmaduke read with the Vicar, and won Marion’s love while they were little more than girl or boy.

To Mr Tregennas—who, it must be allowed, took a certain interest in his great-nephew, if interest is proved by occasional gifts of sovereigns and somewhat arbitrary advice on the subject of his education—Marmaduke meanwhile looked as the maker of his fortunes. He was careful from the first to withhold Miss Philippa from contradicting him, as, to tell the truth, she was not disinclined to do. Odd little shoots of jealousy crop up even in the most loving. Add to this that Mr Tregennas strongly opposed her favourite college scheme, and it will not be surprising that more than once Miss Philippa would very willingly, as she expressed it, have put her foot to the ground, if only Marmaduke had not knocked that very ground from under her, by adopting his uncle’s views. And he was possessed of a certain languid self-will with which he invariably carried his point, even at the time when he appeared to yield, so that people were sometimes puzzled to reconcile cause and effect. Nevertheless, it was no doubt a severe disappointment when Mr Tregennas, instead of assisting him to enter a profession, advised his seeking employment in one of the great manufacturing firms of the north, and indeed actually applied to the heads before he had received an answer to his suggestion. Whether his will was the strongest, or his nephew’s philosophy overcame dislike, his plan was carried out, and Marmaduke had been for two years engaged in the most distasteful occupation that could have been provided for him. It was, perhaps, this very sense of ill-usage which rooted the more firmly his belief that he was to be his uncle’s heir. A grievance quickly excites the idea of compensation, and Marmaduke welded the two together so persistently that the one stood on nearly the same level as the other. The force, however, which prevented his throwing up his work had never proved sufficient to conquer his repugnance towards it, and the fact of feeling himself a victim, while it seemed to give him a right to feed upon future hopes, made it also a duty to seek alleviations in the present; so that a trifling vexation, or other change of mood, not infrequently brought about a flying visit to Thorpe and a drain upon Miss Lee’s slender resources.

He had told Marion at the dinner-party that he must see her alone the next day, and, accordingly, when he walked to the Vicarage, at a time when Mr Miles and John were likely to be absent, Marion was waiting eagerly for him. Mrs Miles, who was in the room, was made more uneasy by his increasing thinness than by her daughter’s determination to go out with him, for although no open engagement existed between the two, it was one of those events which might be expected to fell into shape at some future time, and which, if it were connected with Marion’s will, it was hopeless for her mother to resist, even had she been disinclined towards it. But Marmaduke had a gentle ease of manner pleasant to those with whom he was thrown into contact, and Mrs Miles really loved and pitied him, and was grieved at his looks.

“Does your Aunt Philippa give you porter jelly, Marmaduke?” she asked anxiously. “I wish she would. I am sure it is the very best thing. Sarah shall heat some beef-tea for you in a moment, if you will only take it.”

“Nothing will do me good while I have to work in that hole,” said Marmaduke, with a dreary intonation in his voice. “Life is simply existence. And to think that I have had two years of it already!”

Marion, who had looked at him as he spoke, did not say a word until they were out of the house, and in the deep lane, fresh with a cool beauty of water and shining cresses. Then, as they walked on, Sniff paddling beside them, she asked quietly,—“Is anything the matter?”

There was noticeable in her manner to him—at all times—a difference from her usual fashion of speaking. The abruptness, something even of the brightness, was gone, and in its place seemed to have grown a soft care, a tenderness almost like protection. And at this moment their natures might have been transposed, for Marmaduke turned upon her with an impetuosity unlike himself.

“Anything! I tell you, Marion, that what I go through is unendurable. You might know better than to ask such a question as that.”

“But why—what is it?” she persisted, with a vague trouble lest something more than she had heard was to be unfolded to her. Her loyalty to Marmaduke made her always ready to feed his self-pity, but she was afraid that he had taken some rash step.

“What good can a man do with work that he loathes?”

“You must remember to what the work will lead,” she said, relieved.

“When?—how? It is absolute folly to dream that matters going on as they are going now can ever lead to anything satisfactory. How much do you suppose that I can squeeze out of a paltry hundred and fifty a year? Even Anthony acknowledges it to be absurd, and Anthony is Utopian enough to believe that everything grows out of nothing. That may do very well for him, who will never need to prove it,” added Marmaduke, bitterly.

They were both leaning against a stile, and looking towards the cloudy distance of the moors. Marion slipped her hand softly into his.

“Surely we all heard when you went there that it would bring better things in a few years?”

“You talk of years as if they were days,” he said in the same tone. “Nobody denies it. When I have drudged at that disgustingly low business for half a dozen years, I shall probably be fifty pounds a year better off than I am now, and by the time we are both too old to take pleasure in life we shall be able to marry, and this seems to content you perfectly.”

Marion caught away her hand with a sudden movement. It made him turn to look at her, and the hurt anger in her eyes brought back his usual gentleness of manner at once. He was desirous to bind all her feelings on his side, and he knew her well enough to be aware that his shortest means of doing this was to revert to the wretchedness of his position.

“Forgive me, dearest,” he said; “you don’t know what a poor wretch a man becomes when he grinds along in one eternal round of small miseries. It is such a horrible separation from you all. And what is the good of being old Tregennas’s heir, if he can’t put his hand into his pocket and let me live like a gentleman?”

“He promised that, did he not, Marmaduke?”

“It depends upon what you call promising. He is not the man to say out honestly, ‘Marmaduke Lee, you’re my heir, and I’ll give you a fit allowance till you come into the property.’ If he had, I should not be as I am. But he said quite enough. Of course I am his heir. There isn’t a Jew in the country but would lend me a few thousands on the chance. Of course I am his heir. I wish you would make your father understand, and then he might allow us to consider ourselves engaged; at present it’s like dropping a poor wretch into a pit, and blocking up his one glimpse of blue sky. I tell you, Marion, again, I cannot endure this state of things any longer. I’ve not got it in me to toil on in that dirty hole without so much as an atom of hope to cheer one.”

They were both silent for an instant, and then Marion cried out passionately, “Toil! I would toil day and night for the joy of earning a sixpence which I could lay aside and say, ‘This is ours.’” There was such a swift leaping out of the love of her heart in word and eyes, that it seemed fire which must needs kindle whatever it touched, if only for a moment. But no answering glow passed across his pale face. He looked away again as if what she said had not any relation to his thoughts, and she presently continued more timidly. “Surely it would be the height of imprudence to give up your work? And you know that if you did so my father would be less than ever likely to consent to our engagement, than now when you are at least on the road to independence.”

“I can’t go on as I am,” he said, a little doggedly. “Mr Miles must give me something to hold by, or I shall throw up the whole concern. I have nearly done so a dozen times already.”

“Is there no way of influencing Mr Tregennas?” asked Marion, after a minute’s troubled thought.

“That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. As I said before, it isn’t fair that he should leave me in such a position. It’s not as if I should have to work for my bread all the days of my life, like some poor devils. By and by I shall step into as pretty a place as you’ll find anywhere, and why I should have to do compensation now by sitting on a high stool and addling my brain over ledgers is more than I can see. If he’d only say something definite one would know what one had to go upon. But—”

“But what?”

“O, you must understand, Marion, that I can’t very well go to him and say this sort of thing!”

“Why not?”

“Why not? Well, women are queer about such matters, but I should think you might guess it’s not the way to make yourself agreeable to an old fellow who has you in his power.”

“It is only justice,” said Marion, whose cheek had flushed under the presence of an absorbing pity for Marmaduke which swept her away like a flood. “I wish I could tell him what I think.”

“You can do something better,” said Marmaduke, seeing she had reached the point to which he had been leading.

“What? Only tell me.”

“Get your father to interfere.”

She shook her head, moving her hands nervously. “You know he will not. He is so scrupulous about such matters. Over and over again I have heard him say he would never ask a favour of his uncle.”

“A favour! But I am not demanding an allowance of a thousand a year. All I want to know is how I stand. And if Mr Miles sees in black and white that I am his heir, he will no longer object to an engagement. I tell you plainly, I can’t work unless I see some end before me. Besides, one must go step by step, and if he would acknowledge my position straightforwardly, by and by other things would follow. No one is so well entitled to ask as your father. Marion, you don’t want to keep me in this misery?”

She was at no time insensible to these appeals, and perhaps less than ever on such a morning as this, when things about her were shining, dancing, singing in a burst of happy life, could she endure any weight of gloom for the man she loved best in the world. To some of us every echo of a happiness which does not at the same time fill our own souls with its music seems only discord. We cry out against it with voices that clash and jar and sadden themselves with the dissonance, when if we would be but content to listen in patience, some tender vibrations of an eternal harmony should reach us from afar, and satisfy us with their beauty. To Marion it was a positive wrong that the skylark high in the air was singing joyously; that the fresh breeze stirred into brightness the little stream which ran along the meadows; that the sound of the scythe and the chatter of the hay-making folk rose now and then with cheerful distinctness above lesser summer sounds; that Sniff was yelping with delight after the birds he was vainly chasing. Marion told him sharply to be quiet, but he only stopped for a moment, and looked at her with his head on one side at an angle of consideration, before he was off again, his little red tongue hanging out, his brown eyes on fire with excitement. Marmaduke, who was leaning moodily against the gate, waiting for Marion to speak, said at last,—

“Anthony is a lucky dog, with the world before him, and no one to please but himself. But I don’t know that such sharp contrasts are the most encouraging reflections in the world.”

The languor and depression of his voice pierced the girl’s heart like a thorn. She exclaimed impetuously,—

“Something must be done,—my father shall write,—nothing can be so bad as that you should suffer in this way.”

She put out her hand again, and he took it in his, and began to thank her in the gently caressing tones which fell easily from his lips. Her resolution, indeed, carried a greater relief to him than seemed to be contained in it. It was not only that he wanted to escape from the irksomeness of his duly toil, and believed the acknowledgment of his position the first step towards it, but he was also fretted by a wearing anxiety lest the position might never be his, and the very assumption of a certain claim on his part by Mr Miles might have a good effect, and remove a vague uneasiness, for which he could not account, of Anthony as a possible rival. Poor Marion thought it to be love for her which urged him; but although he did love her after a fashion, she was only one of the pleasant things he wanted to sweep into his net. He was full of satisfaction at the promise she had given.

“Who are these—by the watercourse?” he said. “One of them looks like Anthony.”

“And the other is Mr Chester,” said Marion, abstractedly. “Come.”

“Yes, it is the Squire. I can see his red face, and that little flourish of his stick which he gives when he is angry. They see us by this time, and we may as well hear the battle-royal, if there is one. Listen.”

Mr Chester’s loud voice came up well before him.

“I tell you, sir, I tell you your father will live to see you a carping radical yet. When a young fellow gets this sort of notions into his head, we all know what’ll be the end of it. Everything respectable goes out by the heels, and he makes a fool of himself over balloting and universal suffrage, and a heap of rascally French republicanisms. How d’ye do, Marion, how d’ye do? Glad to see you, Marmaduke. Hope you’re not infected with any of this modern rubbish?”

“No, sir, I’m a Conservative. A Liberal-Conservative,” added the young man under his breath, not expecting to be heard. But the Squire’s quick ears caught the word.

“Don’t be half anything. There’s nothing I think so poorly of as a man that can’t make up his mind. He says this on one side and that on another, till he knows no more than a teetotum where his spinning will lead him. I should have twice the opinion of Anthony if he could say straight out what he means, instead of calling himself one thing and talking himself into another.” There was a good deal of truth in the Squire’s accusation, and the clash was not one for which he had any sympathy. Anthony himself was too young not to be sore upon the charge of inconsistency. He said hotly,—

“Really, sir, I don’t know what hedges and draining have to do with the ballot. I have not been the one to say anything about it.”

“I’m only showing what these ideas lead to,” said Mr Chester, enjoying his adversary’s irritation. “I’m content to take my land as it came to me. That’s good theology, ain’t it, Marion? By the way, I forgot to tell you that young Frank Orde comes to-morrow. Come up to dinner, all of you, will you? I dare say he’s as bad as the rest, but you’ll not make me believe my father hadn’t as good common-sense as the young fellows that find fault with his farming.”

Sometimes, by talking loudly enough, a man becomes impressed with so confident a sense of triumph, that the sound of his own voice is like the salvo of guns over a victory. It was so now with the Squire, who remained in high good-humour during the rest of the walk, and gave Anthony to understand that he looked upon him as crushed and annihilated by an overwhelming weight of argument.

Chapter Six.Marion was not the person to delay the doing of anything which she had made up her mind should be done, nor had she the faculty instinctive in many women, of approaching a critical subject with that deliberate and delicate touch of preparation which smooths the way for a more open attack. Whatever was uppermost in her mind was apt to take possession of her with so great an intensity that she had no longer the mastery of herself required for this method of handling. She did not trouble herself to join in the family conversation at luncheon, and when her father went into his study,—a small room choked with a heterogeneous collection of books and pamphlets, heaped here and thrown there in utter carelessness to dust and disorder,—Marion followed him and said abruptly,—“Papa, something must be done to improve Marmaduke’s position. Will you write to Mr Tregennas, and point this out?”“Write to Mr Tregennas!” said Mr Miles sharply, turning round from the papers on his table.“What do you mean? Is Marmaduke dismissed? No? Then there cannot be anything much amiss.” He said this with a relieved air, going back to his papers. “Marion, I wish you’d just see whether that last hospital report is up stairs. Mannering tells me I’ve been down on the committee for a twelvemonth, but I cannot credit it.”“Marmaduke has been at that hateful place for two years,” said Marion, unheeding. “It is quite unfit for him, and some one ought to point it out to his uncle.”“What is the matter with the place?” Mr Miles asked, still searching. “Really, your mother must speak to the maids; I cannot allow them to disturb everything under pretence of tidying. I am confident I left that report on this table.”Marion was trembling with impatience. “Papa,” she said, “you might think a little more about poor Marmaduke’s happiness.”“Happiness? Humph! He is too young to be talking about happiness. Let him take what comes to him, and be thankful for it—” The Vicar turned suddenly round with a quick, clumsy movement, “He has not been talking nonsense to you, has he?”The girl was standing with her back to the door, so that a clear light fell upon her. As her father spoke, a soft beautiful change came over her face, tender brightness shone in the dark eyes, the curve of the mouth was touched with tremulous joy, a faint glow on her cheek gave an indescribable look of youth, and her head bent gently with the perfection of womanly grace.Mr Miles, who had spoken sharply, could not but be moved by this strange magic,—this mute answer,—so unlike Marion that it affected him the more. He did not know what to say; he wished he had not ceased speaking, had not looked at her, and so become aware of what—in its contrast to her usual expression—was almost a revelation. Hitherto, although he had vaguely listened to what they told him, it had been but a feeble attention he paid, considering that the children must necessarily pass through certain stages of existence, the boys going to school, running wild over cricket, coming home to snowballing, having the whooping-cough, every now and then requiring a thrashing, teasing Marion, quarrelling with her, and at last by the same law, as he imagined, falling in love with her. When Miss Philippa solemnly told him that Marmaduke had confided to her his affection, and Mrs Miles complained that Marion had lost her appetite, the Vicar half laughed at himself for so far treating it seriously as to tell Marmaduke that he was in no position to talk to his daughter of love, and, contenting himself with this prudent command, dismissed the matter from his thoughts. He had, indeed, a mind which did not occupy itself freely with many subjects at once. Those which ceased to interest him he would lay on the shelf, and forget altogether, until they would sometimes start from their unwatched seclusion in a form so grown, so changed, so great with life, that the shock gave him a sudden blow. Such a blow came now. For, looking at her so standing, with the sweet flush of girlish triumph vanquishing for the moment all care and fret, and softening the harsher lines in her face with its happy touch, the father’s awakening brought sharp remorse for his former blindness. It was not possible for him to reproach her when he felt as though reproach might so justly fall upon himself, and if she had been thinking of him at that moment she might have noticed a wistfulness in his eyes, a faltering change in his voice, as strange perhaps as that other revelation.“How long has this been?” he said at last, not that he would have chosen the words, but that they seemed to force themselves out.“How long have we cared for each other, do you mean?” she answered directly. “I think—always.”He shook his head at this. That which was so new to himself in his own child must, he believed, be new-born.“Children like you do not know your own minds,” he said, but faintly, and with a want of confidence which Marion was shrewd enough to note.“Papa,” she said, going closer to him, “we are not children. We are not asking for anything foolish. I would give up all in the world for Marmaduke. I would bear anything for him. I should feel it my richest joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was. But of course I understand that could not be. It would not do for him to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable means support himself.” As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face, turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little backwards against the writing-table.“We know all that,” she went on. “I have not said a word against it. But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is, chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed. Why should we not be engaged?”Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a moment, said,—“You are thinking only of him.”“And of whom should I think?” she asked, vehemently.“Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error,” said Mr Miles, speaking with a strange humility. “One has no right to live with one’s eyes shut. But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more wrong. Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which he clings of Mr Tregennas—”“It ought not to be shadowy. It is disgraceful that he should not say more. Papa, you must write and press this upon him.”“I!”“Yes, indeed! There is no one else.”“This is simply absurd, Marion,” said Mr Miles with some anger.But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to ungenerosity.“You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke—”“Not to him, Marion.”“He and I are one in such a matter, papa.”Ah, there was the strangeness of it! His child’s life had seemed to him no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was almost opposed to them all. It was a thing so strange that the father, looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own blindness greater blame than it deserved.“Well,” he said, sighing, “it is possible, as you say, that I have not acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one.”“And you will write?”“To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!”“O, he has said it already. Tell him that he must be kinder to him, poor fellow!—that he is thrown away in his present position—”“I cannot say that,” said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the childishness of the proposition. And as the idea struck him, he looked keenly at her again. “Child, is this really what you suppose it? Do you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife? You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you have seen nothing of the world. I ought to take you about and show you other places,” he added in grave bewilderment.Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.“It is too late now, papa.”Too late! And he had been thinking of her life as a smooth, untrodden meadow!Outside, in a spot of cool shade under the cedar, Mrs Miles was sitting and working placidly at some little white squares, which never seemed to grow nearer their completion. The Vicar, after looking at her for a moment from his window, went out into the hall, through the porch, and across the grass-plot to her side. It was very rarely that he carried any problems to his wife; but it now appeared to him that there were certain complications, such as the white intricacies lying upon her lap, which it might be given only to a feminine understanding to disentangle. He sat down gravely by her side, looking with abstraction at the sunshine falling pleasantly on the house and the fine old tower beyond, and listening, perhaps, to the hum of the bees, or the rough rhythm which came from a saw-pit in the lane. Mrs Miles only looked up and smiled, and went on with her knitting, believing the Vicar to be absorbed in the Sunday sermons which she held to be the great events of Thorpe life. These, although never weak, ran a risk of being considered by a critic as rather dry and lengthy, but loyal wifehood excited a most earnest admiration in Mrs Miles. She knitted softly, therefore, lest the click of her needles should interfere with the roll of his ideas, and in the hush of the sweet summer afternoon a pleasant drowsiness was creeping over her, when her husband startled her by asking abruptly,—“Wife, how old is Marion?”“Marion, my dear?” said Mrs Miles, with a perplexed conviction that the Vicar must have meant some other person more nearly connected with his sermon,—“Marion was twenty last month. Don’t you remember we had a junket on her birthday, and it was the first time Sarah quite succeeded in it?”“Twenty!” repeated Mr Miles with a little groan. “I believed her to have been sixteen.”“My dear! And dining out as she does, and so admired.”“Well, well,” said the Vicar in a moment or two, “it is no fault of yours or hers. But tell me whether you understood that Marmaduke was serious in his attachment to her?”“Why not?” asked Mrs Miles, a little motherly indignation making itself heard in her voice.“Why not?” repeated her husband, standing up and looking down on her, impatiently. “They are both children.”“I never could think of Marion as a child at all,” said the mother, with a little sigh. “She has always been so much older than her years. And as for Marmaduke, poor fellow, I am sure he can’t have proper food at his lodgings. I have told Sarah to make some jelly for him to take away with him. Of course it is natural that the separation should be a trial to him, but I dare say it will all come right by and by.”“But—good heavens, what a marriage for Marion!” cried the Vicar, beginning to walk hastily up and down under, the cedar, and crushing the daisies that peeped up through the not too carefully trimmed grass.“My dear,” said Mrs Miles, knitting calmly, “Marion is a girl who would be miserable unless she had her own way. With all his strong will, Anthony would be more likely to listen to reason.”“Anthony!” exclaimed her husband, stopping before her. “There is nothing of the sort going on with Anthony?”“It has not come to the same point, of course, but it is easy to see that he has a fancy for Winifred. I am sure I should be very glad if you could persuade him to make up his mind as to what he will be, and get him out of the place.”“I don’t see why,” said the Vicar, amazed at his wife’s penetration. “I have never thought of what you have just put before me, but it appears to me that Anthony would be fortunate to secure so good a girl as Winifred Chester.”“Fortunate, Mr Miles!” said his wife, laying down her work, and speaking with unusual irritation. “Why, Anthony, with his good looks, his cleverness, and his fortune, might marry any girl in the county. I have never seen any one good enough for him, that is the worst of it; and as for Winifred, what you can see in her that you should call him fortunate, I am sure I cannot conceive. She will be a very lucky girl that gets our Anthony.”The Vicar said, “Pooh, pooh!” but he had a humiliating sense of being baffled by his women. He went away, without further words, across the lawn and past the mignonettes and sweet-peas into his study. There he pulled down the blind to shut out the sun, in a fit of absence tore up a carefully arranged table of parish accounts which he had just prepared for Mr Mannering to audit, flung it into the waste-paper basket, and sat down to write a letter to old Mr Tregennas.

Marion was not the person to delay the doing of anything which she had made up her mind should be done, nor had she the faculty instinctive in many women, of approaching a critical subject with that deliberate and delicate touch of preparation which smooths the way for a more open attack. Whatever was uppermost in her mind was apt to take possession of her with so great an intensity that she had no longer the mastery of herself required for this method of handling. She did not trouble herself to join in the family conversation at luncheon, and when her father went into his study,—a small room choked with a heterogeneous collection of books and pamphlets, heaped here and thrown there in utter carelessness to dust and disorder,—Marion followed him and said abruptly,—

“Papa, something must be done to improve Marmaduke’s position. Will you write to Mr Tregennas, and point this out?”

“Write to Mr Tregennas!” said Mr Miles sharply, turning round from the papers on his table.

“What do you mean? Is Marmaduke dismissed? No? Then there cannot be anything much amiss.” He said this with a relieved air, going back to his papers. “Marion, I wish you’d just see whether that last hospital report is up stairs. Mannering tells me I’ve been down on the committee for a twelvemonth, but I cannot credit it.”

“Marmaduke has been at that hateful place for two years,” said Marion, unheeding. “It is quite unfit for him, and some one ought to point it out to his uncle.”

“What is the matter with the place?” Mr Miles asked, still searching. “Really, your mother must speak to the maids; I cannot allow them to disturb everything under pretence of tidying. I am confident I left that report on this table.”

Marion was trembling with impatience. “Papa,” she said, “you might think a little more about poor Marmaduke’s happiness.”

“Happiness? Humph! He is too young to be talking about happiness. Let him take what comes to him, and be thankful for it—” The Vicar turned suddenly round with a quick, clumsy movement, “He has not been talking nonsense to you, has he?”

The girl was standing with her back to the door, so that a clear light fell upon her. As her father spoke, a soft beautiful change came over her face, tender brightness shone in the dark eyes, the curve of the mouth was touched with tremulous joy, a faint glow on her cheek gave an indescribable look of youth, and her head bent gently with the perfection of womanly grace.

Mr Miles, who had spoken sharply, could not but be moved by this strange magic,—this mute answer,—so unlike Marion that it affected him the more. He did not know what to say; he wished he had not ceased speaking, had not looked at her, and so become aware of what—in its contrast to her usual expression—was almost a revelation. Hitherto, although he had vaguely listened to what they told him, it had been but a feeble attention he paid, considering that the children must necessarily pass through certain stages of existence, the boys going to school, running wild over cricket, coming home to snowballing, having the whooping-cough, every now and then requiring a thrashing, teasing Marion, quarrelling with her, and at last by the same law, as he imagined, falling in love with her. When Miss Philippa solemnly told him that Marmaduke had confided to her his affection, and Mrs Miles complained that Marion had lost her appetite, the Vicar half laughed at himself for so far treating it seriously as to tell Marmaduke that he was in no position to talk to his daughter of love, and, contenting himself with this prudent command, dismissed the matter from his thoughts. He had, indeed, a mind which did not occupy itself freely with many subjects at once. Those which ceased to interest him he would lay on the shelf, and forget altogether, until they would sometimes start from their unwatched seclusion in a form so grown, so changed, so great with life, that the shock gave him a sudden blow. Such a blow came now. For, looking at her so standing, with the sweet flush of girlish triumph vanquishing for the moment all care and fret, and softening the harsher lines in her face with its happy touch, the father’s awakening brought sharp remorse for his former blindness. It was not possible for him to reproach her when he felt as though reproach might so justly fall upon himself, and if she had been thinking of him at that moment she might have noticed a wistfulness in his eyes, a faltering change in his voice, as strange perhaps as that other revelation.

“How long has this been?” he said at last, not that he would have chosen the words, but that they seemed to force themselves out.

“How long have we cared for each other, do you mean?” she answered directly. “I think—always.”

He shook his head at this. That which was so new to himself in his own child must, he believed, be new-born.

“Children like you do not know your own minds,” he said, but faintly, and with a want of confidence which Marion was shrewd enough to note.

“Papa,” she said, going closer to him, “we are not children. We are not asking for anything foolish. I would give up all in the world for Marmaduke. I would bear anything for him. I should feel it my richest joy to be with him, at his side, however poor and struggling he was. But of course I understand that could not be. It would not do for him to be hampered with a wife while he can scarcely make his miserable means support himself.” As she spoke with a growing impetuosity, her father, who had been holding her hand in his, and looking into her face, turned slightly away, still holding her hand, and leaned a little backwards against the writing-table.

“We know all that,” she went on. “I have not said a word against it. But now that I have seen him, and understand how miserable he is, chained to work utterly distasteful to him, and without even the most meagre of hopes, I cannot bear it any longer, I cannot, indeed. Why should we not be engaged?”

Hearing that she paused for a reply, Mr Miles, after pausing also for a moment, said,—

“You are thinking only of him.”

“And of whom should I think?” she asked, vehemently.

“Perhaps I have been in error: I think I have been in error,” said Mr Miles, speaking with a strange humility. “One has no right to live with one’s eyes shut. But, Marion, if this be so, I cannot make wrong more wrong. Marmaduke has no prospect of being able to marry for a considerable number of years, unless, indeed, this shadowy hope to which he clings of Mr Tregennas—”

“It ought not to be shadowy. It is disgraceful that he should not say more. Papa, you must write and press this upon him.”

“I!”

“Yes, indeed! There is no one else.”

“This is simply absurd, Marion,” said Mr Miles with some anger.

But he had given her an advantage, which she was resolved to use even to ungenerosity.

“You said you had been unjust to Marmaduke—”

“Not to him, Marion.”

“He and I are one in such a matter, papa.”

Ah, there was the strangeness of it! His child’s life had seemed to him no more than an undeveloped bud, some day to expand, but as yet folded securely within its sheath, and suddenly it had shot apart from, was almost opposed to them all. It was a thing so strange that the father, looking at the woman, thought only of the child, and took to his own blindness greater blame than it deserved.

“Well,” he said, sighing, “it is possible, as you say, that I have not acted in the best way for Marmaduke, or indeed for any one.”

“And you will write?”

“To tell the man he is to make Marmaduke his heir!”

“O, he has said it already. Tell him that he must be kinder to him, poor fellow!—that he is thrown away in his present position—”

“I cannot say that,” said the Vicar, with a wavering smile at the childishness of the proposition. And as the idea struck him, he looked keenly at her again. “Child, is this really what you suppose it? Do you care so much for Marmaduke that you are prepared to be his wife? You have been thrown together, you have no experience to guide you, you have seen nothing of the world. I ought to take you about and show you other places,” he added in grave bewilderment.

Marion, who had been going to the door, turned round and laughed.

“It is too late now, papa.”

Too late! And he had been thinking of her life as a smooth, untrodden meadow!

Outside, in a spot of cool shade under the cedar, Mrs Miles was sitting and working placidly at some little white squares, which never seemed to grow nearer their completion. The Vicar, after looking at her for a moment from his window, went out into the hall, through the porch, and across the grass-plot to her side. It was very rarely that he carried any problems to his wife; but it now appeared to him that there were certain complications, such as the white intricacies lying upon her lap, which it might be given only to a feminine understanding to disentangle. He sat down gravely by her side, looking with abstraction at the sunshine falling pleasantly on the house and the fine old tower beyond, and listening, perhaps, to the hum of the bees, or the rough rhythm which came from a saw-pit in the lane. Mrs Miles only looked up and smiled, and went on with her knitting, believing the Vicar to be absorbed in the Sunday sermons which she held to be the great events of Thorpe life. These, although never weak, ran a risk of being considered by a critic as rather dry and lengthy, but loyal wifehood excited a most earnest admiration in Mrs Miles. She knitted softly, therefore, lest the click of her needles should interfere with the roll of his ideas, and in the hush of the sweet summer afternoon a pleasant drowsiness was creeping over her, when her husband startled her by asking abruptly,—

“Wife, how old is Marion?”

“Marion, my dear?” said Mrs Miles, with a perplexed conviction that the Vicar must have meant some other person more nearly connected with his sermon,—“Marion was twenty last month. Don’t you remember we had a junket on her birthday, and it was the first time Sarah quite succeeded in it?”

“Twenty!” repeated Mr Miles with a little groan. “I believed her to have been sixteen.”

“My dear! And dining out as she does, and so admired.”

“Well, well,” said the Vicar in a moment or two, “it is no fault of yours or hers. But tell me whether you understood that Marmaduke was serious in his attachment to her?”

“Why not?” asked Mrs Miles, a little motherly indignation making itself heard in her voice.

“Why not?” repeated her husband, standing up and looking down on her, impatiently. “They are both children.”

“I never could think of Marion as a child at all,” said the mother, with a little sigh. “She has always been so much older than her years. And as for Marmaduke, poor fellow, I am sure he can’t have proper food at his lodgings. I have told Sarah to make some jelly for him to take away with him. Of course it is natural that the separation should be a trial to him, but I dare say it will all come right by and by.”

“But—good heavens, what a marriage for Marion!” cried the Vicar, beginning to walk hastily up and down under, the cedar, and crushing the daisies that peeped up through the not too carefully trimmed grass.

“My dear,” said Mrs Miles, knitting calmly, “Marion is a girl who would be miserable unless she had her own way. With all his strong will, Anthony would be more likely to listen to reason.”

“Anthony!” exclaimed her husband, stopping before her. “There is nothing of the sort going on with Anthony?”

“It has not come to the same point, of course, but it is easy to see that he has a fancy for Winifred. I am sure I should be very glad if you could persuade him to make up his mind as to what he will be, and get him out of the place.”

“I don’t see why,” said the Vicar, amazed at his wife’s penetration. “I have never thought of what you have just put before me, but it appears to me that Anthony would be fortunate to secure so good a girl as Winifred Chester.”

“Fortunate, Mr Miles!” said his wife, laying down her work, and speaking with unusual irritation. “Why, Anthony, with his good looks, his cleverness, and his fortune, might marry any girl in the county. I have never seen any one good enough for him, that is the worst of it; and as for Winifred, what you can see in her that you should call him fortunate, I am sure I cannot conceive. She will be a very lucky girl that gets our Anthony.”

The Vicar said, “Pooh, pooh!” but he had a humiliating sense of being baffled by his women. He went away, without further words, across the lawn and past the mignonettes and sweet-peas into his study. There he pulled down the blind to shut out the sun, in a fit of absence tore up a carefully arranged table of parish accounts which he had just prepared for Mr Mannering to audit, flung it into the waste-paper basket, and sat down to write a letter to old Mr Tregennas.

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