Chapter Ten.

Chapter Ten.Dreams and no Dreams.Miss Norreys’s mind, though a remarkably well-balanced one, was yet far from phlegmatic or unimpressionable. So far, indeed, from such did she know her inner self to be, that she had learned by experience to beware of her own natural impulsiveness, to have profound belief in “second thoughts.”But she was full of quick sympathy, and ever ready to feel keen interest in her surroundings. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that on the night following the day we have been describing, she went up to her own room greatly engrossed by all she had heard, anxiously eager to prove herself a friend worthy of the name to the various members of the Maryon family who had appealed to her for assistance or advice. It was a beautiful night. Before Hertha got into bed she drew back the curtains of one of the two windows—her room was a corner one—as was her custom. For she loved the early morning light, and it never disturbed her slumbers before her usual hour for waking.A flood of moonlight lay on the terrace beneath. The night was perfectly, peculiarly still, and not a leaf seemed to flutter. There was something curiously dream-like about the whole scene—for the room in which Hertha stood, and on which she threw a glance as she turned again, was, like most of those in the old house, quaint and picturesque in its very simplicity. White-panelled and wainscoted, with little wreaths of carved flowers above the lintel of the door and over the two old mirrors sunk in the walls; the bed in a sort of alcove; the ancient fireplace, surmounted by a very high and narrow carved and moulded mantel-piece, of the same dull,matt, white-painted wood, which was the chief characteristic of the house, the whole effect was like nothing that Miss Norreys remembered ever to have seen.“It is very un-English, very un-nineteenth-century, very unlike all the attempted reproductions of the past we have so many of,” thought. Hertha. “It is so exactly what it may have been, and probably was, three or four hundred years ago. One can realise how the family life has gone on unbrokenly, with all the changing actors in it, generation after generation.”And again she glanced out. For the first time it struck her that this window overlooked the lower terrace walk which Celia preferred to avoid. With a sudden increase of interest, Hertha pushed up the sash, and leaned out. Yes, that was the very place, the walk bare and open at the end near the house, growing dim and shady as it was lost to view in the shrubberies farther on.“If it were worth the trouble,” thought Hertha, “I should like to put on a cloak and go right along to the end and back. I don’t think I should be afraid; the moonlight is so bright, and everything is so still. No flopping branches or sighing wind to make one fanciful. Yes, IthinkI should venture. And how proud I should be to tell them of it in the morning.”But even as she gazed, a slight misgiving seized her.Wasthe night so perfectly still, or was the wind suddenly getting up? Somethingwasmoving at the far end of the walk—the “White Weeper’s” walk. What? The branch of a tree probably; there were aspens down there, Hertha remembered, and a mere nothing would setthemquivering.A slight shiver ran through her—it was growing chilly. With a half-contemptuous smile at herself, she drew down the window, and in a very few moments was safely ensconced in bed, though somewhat shivery still.“I hope I haven’t caught cold through my own folly,” was her last waking thought.For, notwithstanding her preoccupied mind and a certain amount of excitement, of which she was conscious, Hertha fell asleep quickly, and any one seeing her would have said that her slumbers were sound and untroubled.But, in point of fact, she was dreaming vividly—all the events of the last few days seemed to be re-enacted before her, with the addition of various fantastic accompaniments such as dreamers know well. Friends and acquaintances she had not thought of for years suddenly appeared as familiar guests among the members of the family at White Turrets. Her own grandmother, whom as a child Hertha had been very fond of, seemed to be there as an ancient châtelaine of the place, pointing out to her, among the visitors, historical personages whom no living being could have known outside a book.“We are expecting the King—Louis XVI—of course, and Queen Marie Antoinette, this evening. They have long wished to visit White Turrets, and now,” her grandmother was explaining to her, when, with a sudden start, Hertha awoke.She was not sorry, for though the dream had been of curiously fascinating and fantastic interest, she had been conscious—and the consciousness remained with her even after she was awake—of a strange indescribable fear, that dream fear which, I fancy, at some time or other, every one must have experienced: a fear as of fate, all-pervading and irresistible, of perfectly unspeakablestrangeness, as if we had got on to another plane of existence altogether, where nothing was as we had ever known it, where we feel ourselves alone in an isolation such as real life has never, even faintly, figured to us. Through all the familiar scenery of her dream—through the sound of her grandmother’s voice, and the perfect knowledge that she was here, at White Turrets, among the friends she seemed now to know so well—through the laughter and the smiles she knew to be around her, was this terrible ghastly consciousness offear. And it did not at once disappear when she awoke. It seemed still to be clinging to her, haunting the air round about her. Never had Hertha suffered in the same way to such an extent.“What can be the matter with me?” she said to herself. “I feel poisoned with fear. Dear me, if this sort of thing is the kind of sensation one has in a haunted room, Heaven preserve me from such an experience! Butcanthere be any thing uncanny in this room? I have never felt it before. Oh no, it must all be fancy and nonsense. My nerves are upset, I suppose. I have been taking my friends’ troubles too much to heart.”But she could not get to sleep again. Indeed, she felt almost afraid of doing so for fear of a repetition of her dream terrors. They grew fainter after a while, but she became increasingly wakeful. And at last she got out of bed, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, she went towards the window, of which the blind was drawn up.It was the same window where she had sat looking out on the moonlight late the night before. Why did she go back there? Afterwards she could not tell. It seemed as if some invisible power had drawn her thither, and for the moment she had forgotten the slight shiver she had felt at believing she saw something moving in the shrubbery. But no sooner was she seated again at her old post than the remembrance returned to her; she would have liked to move away, but a sort of fascination, partly curiosity, partly a feeling she could not describe, retained her.The moonlight was much less brilliant now. There seemed a slight haze, scarcely amounting to clouds, over the sky. But the night—for dawn was still some way off—was very calm, and there was no wind at all.“There is literallynothingmoving,” thought Hertha. “The stillness almost frightens me. How quite absurdly fanciful I am becoming!” and, as if in a kind of anticipation of something, she knew not what, she held her breath in an intensity of listening. Then came over her the feeling of being no longer under her own control. She could not have moved had she wished to do so. But she did not wish it. With this new sensation her fears had all disappeared.It came—the something she was watching for. Far off, at the extreme end of the walk already described, a faint flutter, between light and shadow—amovement—grew perceptible. A presence of some kind was there. It came on and on, slowly but steadily, and the moon came out again more clearly, its rays reflected on the vaguely defined figure, of which the most Hertha could for some moments have said was that it moved, and that it was white.She sat as if turned to stone, yetshewas no longer afraid. Not even when, by degrees, she became aware that the form was undoubtedly that of a woman—a woman, young, graceful, but in dire distress, for as it advanced, with its slow, cadenced step, till within a few yards of the terrace just below her, she saw it lift its pallid arms in their shadowy white drapery, as if in piteous appeal, then wringing its hands, for one fleeting moment its face was raised to her as if her presence were known and realised, and she saw that it was that of a beautiful woman, weeping, weeping sorely, as if her very heart would break, for woe she was powerless to avert.And a whisper ran through Hertha’s overwrought brain: “It is she—the White Weeper—she is appealing tome.”But there was no sound, only the intense gaze of the exquisite though death-like and mournful face—and while she felt those eyes upon her, Hertha could have felt nothing beside.Then they withdrew. Something made her at last able to close her own, and she half fell back on her chair. And when she looked again there was nothing—nothing whatever but the trees and the garden in the moonlight, utterly still, as if in an enchanted sleep.And Hertha went back to bed, and fell almost at once into sound and perfectly dreamless slumber.She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds’ joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The question—“Was it all a dream?”—never for one moment occurred to her. Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that had been made upon her.Yet thefearwas all gone—in fact, ever since she had thrown off the nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down which had paced those ghostly steps—the pitiful, shadowy form of the White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had the weird family guardian appeared toher?“She may be there every night—always, for aught I know,” thought Miss Norreys, “but why weremyeyes opened to perceive her? Why did she appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do? Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania for ‘a career,’ and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and strongly than I have done—that is the only response I can make to you, poor troubled spirit!”And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window, gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would tell, in the first place at least,no one, except Winifred, of what she had seen.“It shall be a confidence between her and me,” she decided, “and as such it may impress her the more—far more than if I told them all, and she heard every one cross-questioning me about it.” And no sooner had she thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature of the commission entrusted to her to perform.She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any signs of disturbance.But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well, etc, which she parried as best she could.There were two or three letters for her—one, a large, rather thick one, in Mr Montague’s handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it into her pocket unopened.“It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got here,” she said to herself. “I am glad he is back in England, but I think I would rathernotknow what he says till after I have spoken to Winifred.”A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss Norreys’s society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid, made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend’s society. She did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in thought, that she had been to blame. She “put it all down” to this visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.“I must wait till we are back in London again,” she said to herself. “Of course shemustbe civil and pleasant to them all, and they certainly have been very kind and nice. But she is more impressionable than I thought her. Seeing things here as she has done, I am afraid she will never sympathise thoroughly in the monotony and dullness of this narrow home-life. Still, after all, it can’t be helped. I must do without sympathy, I suppose. But—I do wish it had never come into mother’s head to invite Hertha down here.”She was standing by herself in front of one of the windows of a long corridor, on to which opened several of the principal rooms on the first floor, when these reflections crossed her mind. This window overlooked the entrance to the walk so carefully eschewed by Celia—though not so much of it could be seen as from Miss Norreys’s room, situated in an angle of the house.The association of the White Weeper’s reputed preference for this walk was always an irritation to Winifred, as was, in fact, everything real or imaginary which had to do with the old story.She gave herself a little shake when she took in whither her gaze was absently directed.“Ridiculous nonsense!” she half murmured, as she turned to go, and why she should have started violently, as at that moment a hand was laid upon her shoulder, she could not have told. It was not the sign of a guilty conscience, for, in all good faith, Winifred as yet had barely taken in that she had been at all to blame. “Misunderstood,” “narrowly judged,” she had told herself she had been, and she allowed that to others her conduct might haveseemeddisingenuous. But she was essentially honest, and it is sometimes as difficult for naturally candid persons to take in that they have put themselves into a crooked position, as for a crafty and calculating character to believe in straightforwardness in itself or others.Still she started. And she was assuredly not nervous.It was Hertha’s face she looked up into as she turned: Hertha’s eyes, searching—and what more? Was it reproach or anxiety, or a mingling of both, that Winifred read in their clear depths? And in spite of herself the girl looked away, while her colour deepened a little.“Did I startle you?” said Miss Norreys. “I am sorry, but—I wanted to speak to you quietly. I have been looking for you.”“I am only too ready and delighted to have a chance of you,” said Winifred, trying to carry the war into the enemy’s country. “But you know I scarcely see you; mamma and the others monopolise you so.”There was a touch of truth in the reproach, but Hertha did not feel guilty. She had avoidedtête-à-têteconversation with Winifred out of consideration for the girl herself as much as for others.“It is true that I have not sought for opportunities of being alone with you,” she said. “I am now quite ready to explain why, though I think you must have some idea of what I felt.” Winifred did not at once reply. She was again staring out of the window, and again a feeling of irritation came over her. Dideveryside of the house look out on that detestable lower terrace?“I am quite ready for as long a talk as you like,” she said. “I daresay you have felt a little shaken in me, but—I think I can make you understand me.”And she looked up in Hertha’s face so frankly, that again—and she was glad of it—the conviction of Winifred’s honesty of intention and absence of cunning or calculation returned to Miss Norreys almost as at first.“Shall we go out for our talk?” Hertha said. “It is a lovely fresh morning, and I have just a little—headache of a kind. At least, I did not sleep well.”“No, I remember: you did not look like yourself when you came down to breakfast,” said Winifred, with sudden compunction. “And I am keeping you standing about. Are you sure it won’t tire you? After all, we shall have plenty of time for talking in the future, I hope.”Hertha shook her head.“I don’t want to put it off,” she said. “Indeed, I cannot. If there were no other reason, you know how seldom I have a free half-day even at home. And there are other reasons. Can you get your hat? The air will do me good. I will wait for you by the sun-dial,” and she moved away as she spoke.“I will be with you in two minutes,” said Winifred.

Miss Norreys’s mind, though a remarkably well-balanced one, was yet far from phlegmatic or unimpressionable. So far, indeed, from such did she know her inner self to be, that she had learned by experience to beware of her own natural impulsiveness, to have profound belief in “second thoughts.”

But she was full of quick sympathy, and ever ready to feel keen interest in her surroundings. It is scarcely to be wondered at, therefore, that on the night following the day we have been describing, she went up to her own room greatly engrossed by all she had heard, anxiously eager to prove herself a friend worthy of the name to the various members of the Maryon family who had appealed to her for assistance or advice. It was a beautiful night. Before Hertha got into bed she drew back the curtains of one of the two windows—her room was a corner one—as was her custom. For she loved the early morning light, and it never disturbed her slumbers before her usual hour for waking.

A flood of moonlight lay on the terrace beneath. The night was perfectly, peculiarly still, and not a leaf seemed to flutter. There was something curiously dream-like about the whole scene—for the room in which Hertha stood, and on which she threw a glance as she turned again, was, like most of those in the old house, quaint and picturesque in its very simplicity. White-panelled and wainscoted, with little wreaths of carved flowers above the lintel of the door and over the two old mirrors sunk in the walls; the bed in a sort of alcove; the ancient fireplace, surmounted by a very high and narrow carved and moulded mantel-piece, of the same dull,matt, white-painted wood, which was the chief characteristic of the house, the whole effect was like nothing that Miss Norreys remembered ever to have seen.

“It is very un-English, very un-nineteenth-century, very unlike all the attempted reproductions of the past we have so many of,” thought. Hertha. “It is so exactly what it may have been, and probably was, three or four hundred years ago. One can realise how the family life has gone on unbrokenly, with all the changing actors in it, generation after generation.”

And again she glanced out. For the first time it struck her that this window overlooked the lower terrace walk which Celia preferred to avoid. With a sudden increase of interest, Hertha pushed up the sash, and leaned out. Yes, that was the very place, the walk bare and open at the end near the house, growing dim and shady as it was lost to view in the shrubberies farther on.

“If it were worth the trouble,” thought Hertha, “I should like to put on a cloak and go right along to the end and back. I don’t think I should be afraid; the moonlight is so bright, and everything is so still. No flopping branches or sighing wind to make one fanciful. Yes, IthinkI should venture. And how proud I should be to tell them of it in the morning.”

But even as she gazed, a slight misgiving seized her.Wasthe night so perfectly still, or was the wind suddenly getting up? Somethingwasmoving at the far end of the walk—the “White Weeper’s” walk. What? The branch of a tree probably; there were aspens down there, Hertha remembered, and a mere nothing would setthemquivering.

A slight shiver ran through her—it was growing chilly. With a half-contemptuous smile at herself, she drew down the window, and in a very few moments was safely ensconced in bed, though somewhat shivery still.

“I hope I haven’t caught cold through my own folly,” was her last waking thought.

For, notwithstanding her preoccupied mind and a certain amount of excitement, of which she was conscious, Hertha fell asleep quickly, and any one seeing her would have said that her slumbers were sound and untroubled.

But, in point of fact, she was dreaming vividly—all the events of the last few days seemed to be re-enacted before her, with the addition of various fantastic accompaniments such as dreamers know well. Friends and acquaintances she had not thought of for years suddenly appeared as familiar guests among the members of the family at White Turrets. Her own grandmother, whom as a child Hertha had been very fond of, seemed to be there as an ancient châtelaine of the place, pointing out to her, among the visitors, historical personages whom no living being could have known outside a book.

“We are expecting the King—Louis XVI—of course, and Queen Marie Antoinette, this evening. They have long wished to visit White Turrets, and now,” her grandmother was explaining to her, when, with a sudden start, Hertha awoke.

She was not sorry, for though the dream had been of curiously fascinating and fantastic interest, she had been conscious—and the consciousness remained with her even after she was awake—of a strange indescribable fear, that dream fear which, I fancy, at some time or other, every one must have experienced: a fear as of fate, all-pervading and irresistible, of perfectly unspeakablestrangeness, as if we had got on to another plane of existence altogether, where nothing was as we had ever known it, where we feel ourselves alone in an isolation such as real life has never, even faintly, figured to us. Through all the familiar scenery of her dream—through the sound of her grandmother’s voice, and the perfect knowledge that she was here, at White Turrets, among the friends she seemed now to know so well—through the laughter and the smiles she knew to be around her, was this terrible ghastly consciousness offear. And it did not at once disappear when she awoke. It seemed still to be clinging to her, haunting the air round about her. Never had Hertha suffered in the same way to such an extent.

“What can be the matter with me?” she said to herself. “I feel poisoned with fear. Dear me, if this sort of thing is the kind of sensation one has in a haunted room, Heaven preserve me from such an experience! Butcanthere be any thing uncanny in this room? I have never felt it before. Oh no, it must all be fancy and nonsense. My nerves are upset, I suppose. I have been taking my friends’ troubles too much to heart.”

But she could not get to sleep again. Indeed, she felt almost afraid of doing so for fear of a repetition of her dream terrors. They grew fainter after a while, but she became increasingly wakeful. And at last she got out of bed, and throwing her dressing-gown round her, she went towards the window, of which the blind was drawn up.

It was the same window where she had sat looking out on the moonlight late the night before. Why did she go back there? Afterwards she could not tell. It seemed as if some invisible power had drawn her thither, and for the moment she had forgotten the slight shiver she had felt at believing she saw something moving in the shrubbery. But no sooner was she seated again at her old post than the remembrance returned to her; she would have liked to move away, but a sort of fascination, partly curiosity, partly a feeling she could not describe, retained her.

The moonlight was much less brilliant now. There seemed a slight haze, scarcely amounting to clouds, over the sky. But the night—for dawn was still some way off—was very calm, and there was no wind at all.

“There is literallynothingmoving,” thought Hertha. “The stillness almost frightens me. How quite absurdly fanciful I am becoming!” and, as if in a kind of anticipation of something, she knew not what, she held her breath in an intensity of listening. Then came over her the feeling of being no longer under her own control. She could not have moved had she wished to do so. But she did not wish it. With this new sensation her fears had all disappeared.

It came—the something she was watching for. Far off, at the extreme end of the walk already described, a faint flutter, between light and shadow—amovement—grew perceptible. A presence of some kind was there. It came on and on, slowly but steadily, and the moon came out again more clearly, its rays reflected on the vaguely defined figure, of which the most Hertha could for some moments have said was that it moved, and that it was white.

She sat as if turned to stone, yetshewas no longer afraid. Not even when, by degrees, she became aware that the form was undoubtedly that of a woman—a woman, young, graceful, but in dire distress, for as it advanced, with its slow, cadenced step, till within a few yards of the terrace just below her, she saw it lift its pallid arms in their shadowy white drapery, as if in piteous appeal, then wringing its hands, for one fleeting moment its face was raised to her as if her presence were known and realised, and she saw that it was that of a beautiful woman, weeping, weeping sorely, as if her very heart would break, for woe she was powerless to avert.

And a whisper ran through Hertha’s overwrought brain: “It is she—the White Weeper—she is appealing tome.”

But there was no sound, only the intense gaze of the exquisite though death-like and mournful face—and while she felt those eyes upon her, Hertha could have felt nothing beside.

Then they withdrew. Something made her at last able to close her own, and she half fell back on her chair. And when she looked again there was nothing—nothing whatever but the trees and the garden in the moonlight, utterly still, as if in an enchanted sleep.

And Hertha went back to bed, and fell almost at once into sound and perfectly dreamless slumber.

She woke at her usual hour, to sunshine and the sound of the birds’ joyous carolling this time. She lay still, thinking deeply, as she went over in her mind the strange experiences of the night. The question—“Was it all a dream?”—never for one moment occurred to her. Neither then nor at any future time did any doubt of the objective reality of what she had seen shake the intensity of the impression that had been made upon her.

Yet thefearwas all gone—in fact, ever since she had thrown off the nightmare-like oppression of her fantastic dream, it had been no longer there. She felt no reluctance to stay on at White Turrets, no repulsion to the room, no shrinking even from the long terrace walk, up and down which had paced those ghostly steps—the pitiful, shadowy form of the White Weeper. But still there was much for Hertha to consider. Why had the weird family guardian appeared toher?

“She may be there every night—always, for aught I know,” thought Miss Norreys, “but why weremyeyes opened to perceive her? Why did she appeal to me, as I feel convinced she did? Why not to self-willed Winifred, the cause of all the trouble and anxiety? Possibly she could not: perhaps Winifred is so constituted that no spirit could make its presence known to her. It must be that, I suppose. But what can I do? Winifred must know by this time that I do not sympathise with her mania for ‘a career,’ and that she has involved me in her folly in a far from pleasant way. However, I suppose I must speak to her more plainly and strongly than I have done—that is the only response I can make to you, poor troubled spirit!”

And before she began to dress she stood for a moment at the window, gazing along the path, now gleaming and brilliant in the clear morning sunshine, and while she did so, a sudden idea struck her. She would tell, in the first place at least,no one, except Winifred, of what she had seen.

“It shall be a confidence between her and me,” she decided, “and as such it may impress her the more—far more than if I told them all, and she heard every one cross-questioning me about it.” And no sooner had she thus resolved than she was conscious of a curious sensation of satisfaction, as if for the first time she had fully grasped the nature of the commission entrusted to her to perform.

She did not look quite like herself that morning when she went down-stairs. Her beautiful eyes were less clear and open; she seemed tired and slightly preoccupied, though she did her best to hide any signs of disturbance.

But Mrs Maryon and her two younger daughters were keen sighted, much more so than Winifred, and Hertha was assailed with affectionate inquiries as to whether she had a headache, or had she not slept well, etc, which she parried as best she could.

There were two or three letters for her—one, a large, rather thick one, in Mr Montague’s handwriting, she looked at irresolutely, then put it into her pocket unopened.

“It must be in reply to the long letter I sent him two days after I got here,” she said to herself. “I am glad he is back in England, but I think I would rathernotknow what he says till after I have spoken to Winifred.”

A special and uninterrupted talk with one member of a fairly large party, even if that party be a family one, is not always easy to achieve unobserved, though in a country-house it would seem a simple enough matter. But of late Winifred had rather avoided than sought Miss Norreys’s society. Some idea of the possible causes of complaint Hertha might believe herself to have against her for the conduct which Winifred was beginning to realise as not being, in appearance at least, candid, made the girl less at ease than heretofore in her friend’s society. She did not as yet allow this to herself: she would not own, even in thought, that she had been to blame. She “put it all down” to this visit of Miss Norreys to White Turrets, where, though on one side the favourable impression her friend had made on Mrs Maryon and the others was gratifying to Winifred, on the other it was somewhat irritating.

“I must wait till we are back in London again,” she said to herself. “Of course shemustbe civil and pleasant to them all, and they certainly have been very kind and nice. But she is more impressionable than I thought her. Seeing things here as she has done, I am afraid she will never sympathise thoroughly in the monotony and dullness of this narrow home-life. Still, after all, it can’t be helped. I must do without sympathy, I suppose. But—I do wish it had never come into mother’s head to invite Hertha down here.”

She was standing by herself in front of one of the windows of a long corridor, on to which opened several of the principal rooms on the first floor, when these reflections crossed her mind. This window overlooked the entrance to the walk so carefully eschewed by Celia—though not so much of it could be seen as from Miss Norreys’s room, situated in an angle of the house.

The association of the White Weeper’s reputed preference for this walk was always an irritation to Winifred, as was, in fact, everything real or imaginary which had to do with the old story.

She gave herself a little shake when she took in whither her gaze was absently directed.

“Ridiculous nonsense!” she half murmured, as she turned to go, and why she should have started violently, as at that moment a hand was laid upon her shoulder, she could not have told. It was not the sign of a guilty conscience, for, in all good faith, Winifred as yet had barely taken in that she had been at all to blame. “Misunderstood,” “narrowly judged,” she had told herself she had been, and she allowed that to others her conduct might haveseemeddisingenuous. But she was essentially honest, and it is sometimes as difficult for naturally candid persons to take in that they have put themselves into a crooked position, as for a crafty and calculating character to believe in straightforwardness in itself or others.

Still she started. And she was assuredly not nervous.

It was Hertha’s face she looked up into as she turned: Hertha’s eyes, searching—and what more? Was it reproach or anxiety, or a mingling of both, that Winifred read in their clear depths? And in spite of herself the girl looked away, while her colour deepened a little.

“Did I startle you?” said Miss Norreys. “I am sorry, but—I wanted to speak to you quietly. I have been looking for you.”

“I am only too ready and delighted to have a chance of you,” said Winifred, trying to carry the war into the enemy’s country. “But you know I scarcely see you; mamma and the others monopolise you so.”

There was a touch of truth in the reproach, but Hertha did not feel guilty. She had avoidedtête-à-têteconversation with Winifred out of consideration for the girl herself as much as for others.

“It is true that I have not sought for opportunities of being alone with you,” she said. “I am now quite ready to explain why, though I think you must have some idea of what I felt.” Winifred did not at once reply. She was again staring out of the window, and again a feeling of irritation came over her. Dideveryside of the house look out on that detestable lower terrace?

“I am quite ready for as long a talk as you like,” she said. “I daresay you have felt a little shaken in me, but—I think I can make you understand me.”

And she looked up in Hertha’s face so frankly, that again—and she was glad of it—the conviction of Winifred’s honesty of intention and absence of cunning or calculation returned to Miss Norreys almost as at first.

“Shall we go out for our talk?” Hertha said. “It is a lovely fresh morning, and I have just a little—headache of a kind. At least, I did not sleep well.”

“No, I remember: you did not look like yourself when you came down to breakfast,” said Winifred, with sudden compunction. “And I am keeping you standing about. Are you sure it won’t tire you? After all, we shall have plenty of time for talking in the future, I hope.”

Hertha shook her head.

“I don’t want to put it off,” she said. “Indeed, I cannot. If there were no other reason, you know how seldom I have a free half-day even at home. And there are other reasons. Can you get your hat? The air will do me good. I will wait for you by the sun-dial,” and she moved away as she spoke.

“I will be with you in two minutes,” said Winifred.

Chapter Eleven.A Victory.The sun-dial stood on the grass in front of, though at some little distance from, the principal entrance. For at White Turrets the ground immediately round the house was too much intersected by terraces, and on too many levels, to have any great unbroken expanse of lawn. And there, as she had said, Hertha was standing when, a few minutes later, Winifred joined her.Even Miss Maryon’s short-sighted eyes were struck by her friend’s general look and bearing, Hertha was leaning against the old stone, in a tired attitude. She was pale, too, and as Winifred drew near she gave a slight shiver.“Are you cold?” said the girl anxiously. “If you are, we can go indoors again at once.”“No, thank you, I am not really cold,” Miss Norreys replied; “it is only the creeping-together feeling one has after a bad night. When I did fall asleep, I slept, I think,tooheavily. I daresay it is a sort of nervousness. The air and moving about will do me good.”She turned as she spoke, and followed by Winifred, walked quickly towards the side of the house.“It is nicest on the terraces,” she said; “we can walk up and down, and talk quite undisturbed, and always find a seat if we want one.”“Ye-es,” said Winifred, lagging a little. “But would you mind coming round to the other side? it is so much more cheerful and sunny.”She was unusually deferential and subdued. “No,” said Hertha, with a touch of obstinacy, “I like the shady side best; I am not cold now. That walk with the aspens at the farther end is charming. And the others don’t like it—it is the haunted walk, isn’t it? So I may as well enjoy it while with you, who don’t mind nonsense of that kind.”“But I do mind it, though in a different way,” said Winifred; “it irritates me more than I can express. I really can hardly tell you how I detest any allusion to that old story.”“Really?” said Hertha, airily. “I think you should be above such feelings. It is inconsistent with your—well—your attitude to things in general. Here we are—let us show our defiance of such old wives’ tales by marching boldly up and down in the White Weeper’s own hunting-ground while we have our talk out.”Winifred laughed a little, but constrainedly. Matter-of-fact as she was, she did not quite understand her friend this morning.“Of course, I don’treallymind,” she said, “if you truly like this side best. And now will you tell me exactly what you have been vexed with me for, and in what way you have come to think less well of me than you used to do?”Hertha felt somewhat surprised. After all, Winifred was not so dense as appeared. And “to be quite fair on her,” thought Miss Norreys, “shemighthave resented my changing to her without giving her my reasons and a chance of justifying herself to some extent.”This reflection came at a good moment. It softened her tone to Winifred.“Yes,” she said, “I will be entirely frank with you, and put before you the whole story of our acquaintance, and what I did to help you, from my point of view, which is likely, I much fear, to be that of others; and I certainly will not exaggerate things. For,”—and here a generous impulse made her add warmly—“Idotrust you, Winifred. I trust your good intentions and your honesty of purpose, though I believe you deceive yourself; and self-deception is terribly insidious.”She paused a moment, but the girl did not speak. Hertha glanced round her as if to gather strength and breath for what she had to say. How fair and charming a prospect it was! There was something almostunrealin the vivid clearness of the spring beauty all about—unreconcilable with the troubles and anxieties which yet one knew must be there behind it all.But as Hertha’s gaze wandered farther, over to where, on the other side of some rising ground, the old church spire rose up into the blue, and the lazily curling smoke of the surrounding homesteads told of the human lives and interests close at hand, different thoughts arose in her mind. What infatuation was over the girl, or woman, beside her? Who could desire a more distinct field of usefulness than Winifred Maryon was deliberately rejecting? The awful problems relating to the poor of our overcrowded great cities must not be shirked by such as are wise enough to grasp them, but how thankful should be those whose duties in smaller spheres are clear and defined, lying among more normal conditions and along less conflicting paths!She turned to her companion abruptly.“Winifred, my dear child—my dear friend, if you don’t like to be called a child—IwishI understood you; that is at the root of it all. Icannotget at your motives, your way of looking at things.”Winifred looked up—a frown, not of annoyance but of perplexity, lining her usually unruffled forehead; her blue eyes fixed on Hertha’s face with a touch of appeal which was almost piteous.“Tell me,” she said, “tell me everything; I do want to know.”And Miss Norreys did as she asked. She went back to the beginning of their acquaintance, and told her all, as it had affected her herself, as it had taken shape and colour, from her point of view. She spoke as simply as she could, and tried her best to be practical and matter-of-fact. For talking to Winifred was not like talking to Celia, who, young as she was, could take in the sense of a sentence before it was half expressed, who felt thespiritunderlying and surrounding even the “commonest” commonplaces of life.Winifred did not interrupt her. Now and then her colour rose a little; once or twice, as Hertha was not sorry to see, she winced, and seemed on the point of bursting out with some exclamation. And then, when Miss Norreys had come to the end of the first part of her story and stopped, the girl looked up.“Yes,” she said, “I see how it must have looked to you, and I see, as I certainly did not before, that I wasnotperfectly ingenuous. To a certain extent I deceived you; at least, I allowed circumstances to deceive you and others, and I was glad of it, because it suited my purpose. But remember I did not start with any intention of deceiving you, and I thought I had a right to take advantage of the mistake when it arose; because, frommypoint of view, if my work was worth paying for, I had a right to the payment, don’t you see?” and she looked up anxiously.“Perhaps so, but you had no right to theposition, which alone made your earning payment possible. At least, you have no right to obtain it without explaining your circumstances,” said Hertha.Winifred was silent.“And,” Hertha went on, though sorry for the mortification she felt that her words must cause, “to tell the truth, I don’t think your work has been exactly worth paying for till now. Everything requires an apprenticeship; part of the idea of this society is to give girls who need to earn their livelihood a chance of fitting themselves to do so, by giving them the necessary apprenticeship gratis, and, more than that, by paying them from the first.”Winifred grew crimson.“I never thought of that,” she said. “I am perfectly ready, indeed I would much rather pay back what they have given me up to this. For I believe my workis, or will be from now, worth paying for.”“Very likely,” said Hertha, but then she went on to lay the situation in two aspects before Winifred—her own clear home duties, so peculiar and unmistakable; and the wrong of taking advantage of the society to the prejudice of some other girl in real need of it.The first of these Winifred began by disposing of glibly enough. The work of home was better done by Louise than by herself—better, well, not literally better—she knew she had a clearer head for figures, and a more ready grasp of things than her sister. But she was not nearly so patient and sweet tempered as Louise, she decided complacently: “Oh no, not nearly. I should try papa awfully.”Hertha stared at her.“And you would make your own shortcomings an excuse for neglecting duties?” she exclaimed. “What sophistry! What a vicious circle you are involving yourself in! Patience and self-control can be acquired. You speak as if your besetting sins belonged to you, like the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose.”Winifred did not reply.“And my second point—that of taking what is not meant for you?” Hertha went on.“That,” said Winifred, “is, I think, for the society to decide. Of course I am now quite ready to tell anything about my circumstances.”In her turn Hertha was silent. She agreed with Winifred that the society should decide, and she felt considerably inclined to believe that the societyhaddecided. For Mr Montague’s thick letter, though unopened, was in her pocket.But the conversation was by no means at an end.“Winifred,” said Miss Norreys again, “I have a great deal more to say to you—to tell you. But it would be such a satisfaction to me, and what matters infinitely more, to yourself afterwards, always—if you could now, without any further reason, try to see where your real duties lie.”“Iwilltry,” said Winifred, “but,” and at last the tears rose in her eyes, “I did so long for a wider, a fuller life.”“You cannot have found the petty detail and often wearisome round of work at — Street very widening or inspiriting surely.”“No, but I thought that would come. I was beginning to feel that somethingdependedon me, that I had a post—a place. And I like the feeling of ‘London,’” she added naïvely.Hertha smiled.“Yes,” she said, “I know that, and you may still have it. I think you should be more in London than you have been.”“There is Celia, too,” exclaimed Winifred.“I am not forgetting her. But about yourself—you have put it in words. It isthe sense of responsibilityabout home duties that has been wanting, and has made them unattractive and irksome. That will come, if you set your shoulder to the wheel. You will soon see that, as I do believe is the case, you will be able to do the work better than it has ever been done, and new developments and possibilities would open out. Why, with the experience you have acquired, you might work into the society’s hands down here—you might have a convalescent home, or a children’s holiday home.”Winifred’s melancholy face brightened a little.“I will think about it all,” she repeated, “and I will write anything you like to the society, or—but I hate troubling you—would not the best thing be for you to write to Mr Montague? And now, have you told me everything?”“No,” said Hertha. They were now approaching the end where the aspens stood. Hitherto in their pacing up and down they had not gone so far, but this time Miss Norreys had purposely prolonged their walk a little. “No,” she said, stopping short and looking round her with a strange kind of curiosity, “I have something more to tell you—where does this path go to, or end, Winifred?” she broke off suddenly.“Oh, I don’t know exactly. We never come this way,” the girl replied impatiently. “It goes along among the aspens, and then gets into a tangle. And some way further on there’s a brook that runs into a pond. It’s a wilderness sort of a place, and I hate it.”Hertha looked at her.“Winifred,” she said, “you have a sort of belief in the White Weeper story, otherwise you wouldn’t be so cross about it.”“I have not, I have not indeed,” said Winifred earnestly. “But I don’t deny that the association is painful. It is said to have been down here near the pond that the unfortunate woman spent her last night at home before her husband drove her by his cruelty to take refuge in the convent at Cruxfield, where she died. And there is always a creepy, shivery feeling about here; the rest of the place is so open and bright.”She could not repress a slight shudder as she spoke.“Do come away,” she added.“Not just for a moment. I want to tell you something here—on the very spot, from where—no, I will begin at the beginning,” said Miss Norreys.And in a few minutes Winifred was in possession of the whole details of Hertha’s night’s experience.She grew very pale, but listened without a word or gesture of interruption, till the end. Then she burst out:“Oh, surely, surely,” she exclaimed, “it was a dream. It must have been.”But Hertha shook her head.“No,” she said, “it was no dream—nothing in the least resembling what we are accustomed to call dreams. A vision it may have been. Perhaps all ghostly visitations are visions. But I was awake when I saw it. I remember her face perfectly. If I were an artist I could paint it.”“And it has impressed you very much?” said Winifred.“Naturally.”“And you have told no one but me?—thank you for that. It was good of you, for—of course they would associate it withme, with my being here.”“They could scarcely do otherwise,” said Hertha, drily.“It is strange,” said Winifred, as if thinking aloud. “Why, if such things are, why did she not appear tome?”“Perhaps she cannot. Perhaps you are one who could not be made conscious of such a presence,” said Hertha. “Perhaps—” But here she stopped, though with a little smile.“Go on, do,” said Winifred.“I was only going to say—don’t think me irreverent, but you are not easily ‘convinced against your will,’ Winifred. The verse about ‘Moses and the prophets’ came into my mind. I am not sure that you would give more heed to a ghost than to those who have already spoken.”“Not as much,” said Winifred. “But what, then, has been the use of the poor White Weeper’s troubling herself and you about me?”“To strengthenmyhands, perhaps—in my prophetic capacity, to increase my conviction.”“And what is that?”“A very strong one—that harm will come of your persistence. Increased trouble and sorrow to others it will certainly cause. Listen, Winifred.”And then she fired her last shot, by revealing to the girl Lennox Maryon’s confidence of the previous evening.Winifred was not pale now. Her cheeks burned, her face grew crimson to the very roots of her hair.“Louise!” she repeated, “Louise!”Hertha felt rather provoked.“Yes,” she said, “Louise. Your cousin is heart and soul devoted to her, and what wonder? She is charming and good, and often I almost think her beautiful. You have always underestimated her.”“Then,” said Winifred, without directly replying, “I suppose he neverreallycared for me.”“I am inclined to think he never did,” said Hertha. “But surely you should be very glad if it be so? You never cared for him.”“No,” said Winifred, “never. But,”—and a curious expression came into her face—“I suppose it is very contemptible, but it may be a sort of horrid mortification. I don’t know how I feel about it. And yet—oh yes, I do love Louise, and I know she is an angel of goodness, and I’m very fond of Len, in his way. I love them all, but—I’m beginning to see it so plainly. None of them love me. I am out of it all—why was I the eldest? Why can’t I go away and make my own way as I planned?”They were near a bench. Winifred flung herself upon it and burst into uncontrollable girlish sobs. She seemed to Hertha to have grown ten years younger, and never had Miss Norreys’ heart gone out to her so much as now.For a minute or two she let her cry undisturbed, then she said very gently:“My dear child, I think I understand you and the whole story. You have not sought their love in the past as you might have done, but you have it. You do not know how much they all love you. And—you areveryfortunate—see how duty and affection are pointing the same way in your case. You have it now in your power to win love and gratitude such as fall to the lot of few, by simply doing right.”“If it is right and done for that reason, I don’t deserve gratitude,” said Winifred, dejectedly.“Theywill think so, anyway. And it will be a sacrifice of your own wishes to those of others. That should and will bring gratitude.”Winifred sighed deeply.“I will do it then,” she said, “and once I say a thing, I don’t go back from it. I will give it up. But please leave me alone about it for to-day. I will keep out of the way till I am all right again.”They were not far from the house by this time.“I will run in by one of the side doors, and get to my own room,” Winifred went on. “Will you forgive my leaving you here—and—and I want to thank you, but I don’t quite know how I feel.”“Never mind about me. It is all right as far as I am concerned. I am very thankful,” said Hertha.Winifred was turning away when another thought struck her.“About Celia,” she said. “I did—unselfishly, I think—I did want to help her,” and the choke in her voice touched Hertha again.“I know you did, and rightly, and you may take comfort in the thought that it will, after all, have been through you that Celia is to have the opportunities she needs. She is to come to me, to live with me for a time, till, as she expresses it, she can ‘test’ herself. That is to say, dear Winifred, she cannowdo so. Had you held out, she would never have consented to leave home.”Through Winifred’s flushed and tear-stained face her blue eyes looked up at Hertha with perplexity.“I don’t think I yet quite understand your point of view,” she said. “Tell me, is it because you think Celia has special gifts, or that I have special calls, that you advise us so differently?”“Both,” Miss Norreys replied.“But supposing I had had her gifts as well as my calls, what then?”Hertha hesitated.“I cannot really say,” she replied. “It would have been more difficult to decide. At least, itseemsas if it would have been so. But imaginary positions are not what we have to deal with. And when there are what appear to be almost equally balanced claims upon us, assometimes, though not often, occurs, well, perhaps in such a case it does not matter so very much, in the highest sense of all,whichpath we take if we do it heartily and conscientiously. You would not have been left in doubt long, I feel sure, if such had been your case.”“And it isnot, so we need not trouble about it,” said Winifred, practically. “But one thing more, as we have come upon this. Do you think all girls who are not literally forced to earn their bread should stay at home and lead the old routine humdrum lives—I mean, of course, those who have no great or special gifts? Have you no sympathy with all the feeling of the day about women?”“The very greatest and deepest,” said Hertha. “But it is an immense subject, and cannot be treated in wholesale fashion. Individual lives differ so tremendously. All I can say about it roughly is that love of excitement and change and novelty should not be mistaken for real, deliberate desire to make the best and the most of the powers we have. And it should never be forgotten that ‘home’ is the place we are born into—in a very special sense woman’s own kingdom. Outside interests should radiate from and revolve round home—that is the ideal. When homehasto be given up, it should be done regretfully, as a sad necessity, whereas the wish to escape from it is, I fear, in many cases nowadays, the great motive.”“But girls are not alone to blame for that,” said Winifred. “Think what some parents are: tyrannical and selfish, scarcely allowing a daughter to have a mind or a soul of her own.”“I know that some are like that,” said Hertha.“If a girl does not marry, she is treated as if she had no right to have a self at all! But, where parents are reasonable, I doubt if any home-lifeneedbe narrow and stifling, and all the rest of it. Monotony is not necessarily an evil. There is immense monotony in all good work, at least in the qualifying one’s self for it. I think what makes home-life so trying and unsatisfying to so many unmarried women is the want of the sense of responsibility, the not feeling that it really matters, except for themselves, whether they are idle and frivolous or not. It is that sense of responsibility which makes even a dull, commonplace,marriedlife attractive. The wife feels herselfsomebody, a centre.”“Yes, I am sure it must be,” said Winifred. “But how is it all to be set right? There are so many girls who can’t marry nowadays, they say.”“Well, they must bear it. Cheerful acceptance of evils, irremediable forus, though in the long run they may be set right again, is, after all, averybig part of our life’s work, is it not? And as to actual, practical work, ‘usefulness’ in the noblest sense, I have great faith in its coming to those who take at once whatever comes in their way. It is like capital. Money makes money, we are told. Well, I believe that doing work brings work to do. But I did not mean to preach like this.”“I am glad of it. I will think about it,” said Winifred, gently.Then she turned away towards the house, walking slowly, however, for she felt weak and faint from the violent weeping so rare to her. And the sun had been beating on her head more than she realised. Like many English people, Winifred did not know the danger of the spring sun—altogether she felt strangely unlike herself.And Hertha did not keep her in sight, for she herself moved towards the front in search of a shady spot, where she might read Mr Montague’s letter undisturbed.

The sun-dial stood on the grass in front of, though at some little distance from, the principal entrance. For at White Turrets the ground immediately round the house was too much intersected by terraces, and on too many levels, to have any great unbroken expanse of lawn. And there, as she had said, Hertha was standing when, a few minutes later, Winifred joined her.

Even Miss Maryon’s short-sighted eyes were struck by her friend’s general look and bearing, Hertha was leaning against the old stone, in a tired attitude. She was pale, too, and as Winifred drew near she gave a slight shiver.

“Are you cold?” said the girl anxiously. “If you are, we can go indoors again at once.”

“No, thank you, I am not really cold,” Miss Norreys replied; “it is only the creeping-together feeling one has after a bad night. When I did fall asleep, I slept, I think,tooheavily. I daresay it is a sort of nervousness. The air and moving about will do me good.”

She turned as she spoke, and followed by Winifred, walked quickly towards the side of the house.

“It is nicest on the terraces,” she said; “we can walk up and down, and talk quite undisturbed, and always find a seat if we want one.”

“Ye-es,” said Winifred, lagging a little. “But would you mind coming round to the other side? it is so much more cheerful and sunny.”

She was unusually deferential and subdued. “No,” said Hertha, with a touch of obstinacy, “I like the shady side best; I am not cold now. That walk with the aspens at the farther end is charming. And the others don’t like it—it is the haunted walk, isn’t it? So I may as well enjoy it while with you, who don’t mind nonsense of that kind.”

“But I do mind it, though in a different way,” said Winifred; “it irritates me more than I can express. I really can hardly tell you how I detest any allusion to that old story.”

“Really?” said Hertha, airily. “I think you should be above such feelings. It is inconsistent with your—well—your attitude to things in general. Here we are—let us show our defiance of such old wives’ tales by marching boldly up and down in the White Weeper’s own hunting-ground while we have our talk out.”

Winifred laughed a little, but constrainedly. Matter-of-fact as she was, she did not quite understand her friend this morning.

“Of course, I don’treallymind,” she said, “if you truly like this side best. And now will you tell me exactly what you have been vexed with me for, and in what way you have come to think less well of me than you used to do?”

Hertha felt somewhat surprised. After all, Winifred was not so dense as appeared. And “to be quite fair on her,” thought Miss Norreys, “shemighthave resented my changing to her without giving her my reasons and a chance of justifying herself to some extent.”

This reflection came at a good moment. It softened her tone to Winifred.

“Yes,” she said, “I will be entirely frank with you, and put before you the whole story of our acquaintance, and what I did to help you, from my point of view, which is likely, I much fear, to be that of others; and I certainly will not exaggerate things. For,”—and here a generous impulse made her add warmly—“Idotrust you, Winifred. I trust your good intentions and your honesty of purpose, though I believe you deceive yourself; and self-deception is terribly insidious.”

She paused a moment, but the girl did not speak. Hertha glanced round her as if to gather strength and breath for what she had to say. How fair and charming a prospect it was! There was something almostunrealin the vivid clearness of the spring beauty all about—unreconcilable with the troubles and anxieties which yet one knew must be there behind it all.

But as Hertha’s gaze wandered farther, over to where, on the other side of some rising ground, the old church spire rose up into the blue, and the lazily curling smoke of the surrounding homesteads told of the human lives and interests close at hand, different thoughts arose in her mind. What infatuation was over the girl, or woman, beside her? Who could desire a more distinct field of usefulness than Winifred Maryon was deliberately rejecting? The awful problems relating to the poor of our overcrowded great cities must not be shirked by such as are wise enough to grasp them, but how thankful should be those whose duties in smaller spheres are clear and defined, lying among more normal conditions and along less conflicting paths!

She turned to her companion abruptly.

“Winifred, my dear child—my dear friend, if you don’t like to be called a child—IwishI understood you; that is at the root of it all. Icannotget at your motives, your way of looking at things.”

Winifred looked up—a frown, not of annoyance but of perplexity, lining her usually unruffled forehead; her blue eyes fixed on Hertha’s face with a touch of appeal which was almost piteous.

“Tell me,” she said, “tell me everything; I do want to know.”

And Miss Norreys did as she asked. She went back to the beginning of their acquaintance, and told her all, as it had affected her herself, as it had taken shape and colour, from her point of view. She spoke as simply as she could, and tried her best to be practical and matter-of-fact. For talking to Winifred was not like talking to Celia, who, young as she was, could take in the sense of a sentence before it was half expressed, who felt thespiritunderlying and surrounding even the “commonest” commonplaces of life.

Winifred did not interrupt her. Now and then her colour rose a little; once or twice, as Hertha was not sorry to see, she winced, and seemed on the point of bursting out with some exclamation. And then, when Miss Norreys had come to the end of the first part of her story and stopped, the girl looked up.

“Yes,” she said, “I see how it must have looked to you, and I see, as I certainly did not before, that I wasnotperfectly ingenuous. To a certain extent I deceived you; at least, I allowed circumstances to deceive you and others, and I was glad of it, because it suited my purpose. But remember I did not start with any intention of deceiving you, and I thought I had a right to take advantage of the mistake when it arose; because, frommypoint of view, if my work was worth paying for, I had a right to the payment, don’t you see?” and she looked up anxiously.

“Perhaps so, but you had no right to theposition, which alone made your earning payment possible. At least, you have no right to obtain it without explaining your circumstances,” said Hertha.

Winifred was silent.

“And,” Hertha went on, though sorry for the mortification she felt that her words must cause, “to tell the truth, I don’t think your work has been exactly worth paying for till now. Everything requires an apprenticeship; part of the idea of this society is to give girls who need to earn their livelihood a chance of fitting themselves to do so, by giving them the necessary apprenticeship gratis, and, more than that, by paying them from the first.”

Winifred grew crimson.

“I never thought of that,” she said. “I am perfectly ready, indeed I would much rather pay back what they have given me up to this. For I believe my workis, or will be from now, worth paying for.”

“Very likely,” said Hertha, but then she went on to lay the situation in two aspects before Winifred—her own clear home duties, so peculiar and unmistakable; and the wrong of taking advantage of the society to the prejudice of some other girl in real need of it.

The first of these Winifred began by disposing of glibly enough. The work of home was better done by Louise than by herself—better, well, not literally better—she knew she had a clearer head for figures, and a more ready grasp of things than her sister. But she was not nearly so patient and sweet tempered as Louise, she decided complacently: “Oh no, not nearly. I should try papa awfully.”

Hertha stared at her.

“And you would make your own shortcomings an excuse for neglecting duties?” she exclaimed. “What sophistry! What a vicious circle you are involving yourself in! Patience and self-control can be acquired. You speak as if your besetting sins belonged to you, like the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose.”

Winifred did not reply.

“And my second point—that of taking what is not meant for you?” Hertha went on.

“That,” said Winifred, “is, I think, for the society to decide. Of course I am now quite ready to tell anything about my circumstances.”

In her turn Hertha was silent. She agreed with Winifred that the society should decide, and she felt considerably inclined to believe that the societyhaddecided. For Mr Montague’s thick letter, though unopened, was in her pocket.

But the conversation was by no means at an end.

“Winifred,” said Miss Norreys again, “I have a great deal more to say to you—to tell you. But it would be such a satisfaction to me, and what matters infinitely more, to yourself afterwards, always—if you could now, without any further reason, try to see where your real duties lie.”

“Iwilltry,” said Winifred, “but,” and at last the tears rose in her eyes, “I did so long for a wider, a fuller life.”

“You cannot have found the petty detail and often wearisome round of work at — Street very widening or inspiriting surely.”

“No, but I thought that would come. I was beginning to feel that somethingdependedon me, that I had a post—a place. And I like the feeling of ‘London,’” she added naïvely.

Hertha smiled.

“Yes,” she said, “I know that, and you may still have it. I think you should be more in London than you have been.”

“There is Celia, too,” exclaimed Winifred.

“I am not forgetting her. But about yourself—you have put it in words. It isthe sense of responsibilityabout home duties that has been wanting, and has made them unattractive and irksome. That will come, if you set your shoulder to the wheel. You will soon see that, as I do believe is the case, you will be able to do the work better than it has ever been done, and new developments and possibilities would open out. Why, with the experience you have acquired, you might work into the society’s hands down here—you might have a convalescent home, or a children’s holiday home.”

Winifred’s melancholy face brightened a little.

“I will think about it all,” she repeated, “and I will write anything you like to the society, or—but I hate troubling you—would not the best thing be for you to write to Mr Montague? And now, have you told me everything?”

“No,” said Hertha. They were now approaching the end where the aspens stood. Hitherto in their pacing up and down they had not gone so far, but this time Miss Norreys had purposely prolonged their walk a little. “No,” she said, stopping short and looking round her with a strange kind of curiosity, “I have something more to tell you—where does this path go to, or end, Winifred?” she broke off suddenly.

“Oh, I don’t know exactly. We never come this way,” the girl replied impatiently. “It goes along among the aspens, and then gets into a tangle. And some way further on there’s a brook that runs into a pond. It’s a wilderness sort of a place, and I hate it.”

Hertha looked at her.

“Winifred,” she said, “you have a sort of belief in the White Weeper story, otherwise you wouldn’t be so cross about it.”

“I have not, I have not indeed,” said Winifred earnestly. “But I don’t deny that the association is painful. It is said to have been down here near the pond that the unfortunate woman spent her last night at home before her husband drove her by his cruelty to take refuge in the convent at Cruxfield, where she died. And there is always a creepy, shivery feeling about here; the rest of the place is so open and bright.”

She could not repress a slight shudder as she spoke.

“Do come away,” she added.

“Not just for a moment. I want to tell you something here—on the very spot, from where—no, I will begin at the beginning,” said Miss Norreys.

And in a few minutes Winifred was in possession of the whole details of Hertha’s night’s experience.

She grew very pale, but listened without a word or gesture of interruption, till the end. Then she burst out:

“Oh, surely, surely,” she exclaimed, “it was a dream. It must have been.”

But Hertha shook her head.

“No,” she said, “it was no dream—nothing in the least resembling what we are accustomed to call dreams. A vision it may have been. Perhaps all ghostly visitations are visions. But I was awake when I saw it. I remember her face perfectly. If I were an artist I could paint it.”

“And it has impressed you very much?” said Winifred.

“Naturally.”

“And you have told no one but me?—thank you for that. It was good of you, for—of course they would associate it withme, with my being here.”

“They could scarcely do otherwise,” said Hertha, drily.

“It is strange,” said Winifred, as if thinking aloud. “Why, if such things are, why did she not appear tome?”

“Perhaps she cannot. Perhaps you are one who could not be made conscious of such a presence,” said Hertha. “Perhaps—” But here she stopped, though with a little smile.

“Go on, do,” said Winifred.

“I was only going to say—don’t think me irreverent, but you are not easily ‘convinced against your will,’ Winifred. The verse about ‘Moses and the prophets’ came into my mind. I am not sure that you would give more heed to a ghost than to those who have already spoken.”

“Not as much,” said Winifred. “But what, then, has been the use of the poor White Weeper’s troubling herself and you about me?”

“To strengthenmyhands, perhaps—in my prophetic capacity, to increase my conviction.”

“And what is that?”

“A very strong one—that harm will come of your persistence. Increased trouble and sorrow to others it will certainly cause. Listen, Winifred.”

And then she fired her last shot, by revealing to the girl Lennox Maryon’s confidence of the previous evening.

Winifred was not pale now. Her cheeks burned, her face grew crimson to the very roots of her hair.

“Louise!” she repeated, “Louise!”

Hertha felt rather provoked.

“Yes,” she said, “Louise. Your cousin is heart and soul devoted to her, and what wonder? She is charming and good, and often I almost think her beautiful. You have always underestimated her.”

“Then,” said Winifred, without directly replying, “I suppose he neverreallycared for me.”

“I am inclined to think he never did,” said Hertha. “But surely you should be very glad if it be so? You never cared for him.”

“No,” said Winifred, “never. But,”—and a curious expression came into her face—“I suppose it is very contemptible, but it may be a sort of horrid mortification. I don’t know how I feel about it. And yet—oh yes, I do love Louise, and I know she is an angel of goodness, and I’m very fond of Len, in his way. I love them all, but—I’m beginning to see it so plainly. None of them love me. I am out of it all—why was I the eldest? Why can’t I go away and make my own way as I planned?”

They were near a bench. Winifred flung herself upon it and burst into uncontrollable girlish sobs. She seemed to Hertha to have grown ten years younger, and never had Miss Norreys’ heart gone out to her so much as now.

For a minute or two she let her cry undisturbed, then she said very gently:

“My dear child, I think I understand you and the whole story. You have not sought their love in the past as you might have done, but you have it. You do not know how much they all love you. And—you areveryfortunate—see how duty and affection are pointing the same way in your case. You have it now in your power to win love and gratitude such as fall to the lot of few, by simply doing right.”

“If it is right and done for that reason, I don’t deserve gratitude,” said Winifred, dejectedly.

“Theywill think so, anyway. And it will be a sacrifice of your own wishes to those of others. That should and will bring gratitude.”

Winifred sighed deeply.

“I will do it then,” she said, “and once I say a thing, I don’t go back from it. I will give it up. But please leave me alone about it for to-day. I will keep out of the way till I am all right again.”

They were not far from the house by this time.

“I will run in by one of the side doors, and get to my own room,” Winifred went on. “Will you forgive my leaving you here—and—and I want to thank you, but I don’t quite know how I feel.”

“Never mind about me. It is all right as far as I am concerned. I am very thankful,” said Hertha.

Winifred was turning away when another thought struck her.

“About Celia,” she said. “I did—unselfishly, I think—I did want to help her,” and the choke in her voice touched Hertha again.

“I know you did, and rightly, and you may take comfort in the thought that it will, after all, have been through you that Celia is to have the opportunities she needs. She is to come to me, to live with me for a time, till, as she expresses it, she can ‘test’ herself. That is to say, dear Winifred, she cannowdo so. Had you held out, she would never have consented to leave home.”

Through Winifred’s flushed and tear-stained face her blue eyes looked up at Hertha with perplexity.

“I don’t think I yet quite understand your point of view,” she said. “Tell me, is it because you think Celia has special gifts, or that I have special calls, that you advise us so differently?”

“Both,” Miss Norreys replied.

“But supposing I had had her gifts as well as my calls, what then?”

Hertha hesitated.

“I cannot really say,” she replied. “It would have been more difficult to decide. At least, itseemsas if it would have been so. But imaginary positions are not what we have to deal with. And when there are what appear to be almost equally balanced claims upon us, assometimes, though not often, occurs, well, perhaps in such a case it does not matter so very much, in the highest sense of all,whichpath we take if we do it heartily and conscientiously. You would not have been left in doubt long, I feel sure, if such had been your case.”

“And it isnot, so we need not trouble about it,” said Winifred, practically. “But one thing more, as we have come upon this. Do you think all girls who are not literally forced to earn their bread should stay at home and lead the old routine humdrum lives—I mean, of course, those who have no great or special gifts? Have you no sympathy with all the feeling of the day about women?”

“The very greatest and deepest,” said Hertha. “But it is an immense subject, and cannot be treated in wholesale fashion. Individual lives differ so tremendously. All I can say about it roughly is that love of excitement and change and novelty should not be mistaken for real, deliberate desire to make the best and the most of the powers we have. And it should never be forgotten that ‘home’ is the place we are born into—in a very special sense woman’s own kingdom. Outside interests should radiate from and revolve round home—that is the ideal. When homehasto be given up, it should be done regretfully, as a sad necessity, whereas the wish to escape from it is, I fear, in many cases nowadays, the great motive.”

“But girls are not alone to blame for that,” said Winifred. “Think what some parents are: tyrannical and selfish, scarcely allowing a daughter to have a mind or a soul of her own.”

“I know that some are like that,” said Hertha.

“If a girl does not marry, she is treated as if she had no right to have a self at all! But, where parents are reasonable, I doubt if any home-lifeneedbe narrow and stifling, and all the rest of it. Monotony is not necessarily an evil. There is immense monotony in all good work, at least in the qualifying one’s self for it. I think what makes home-life so trying and unsatisfying to so many unmarried women is the want of the sense of responsibility, the not feeling that it really matters, except for themselves, whether they are idle and frivolous or not. It is that sense of responsibility which makes even a dull, commonplace,marriedlife attractive. The wife feels herselfsomebody, a centre.”

“Yes, I am sure it must be,” said Winifred. “But how is it all to be set right? There are so many girls who can’t marry nowadays, they say.”

“Well, they must bear it. Cheerful acceptance of evils, irremediable forus, though in the long run they may be set right again, is, after all, averybig part of our life’s work, is it not? And as to actual, practical work, ‘usefulness’ in the noblest sense, I have great faith in its coming to those who take at once whatever comes in their way. It is like capital. Money makes money, we are told. Well, I believe that doing work brings work to do. But I did not mean to preach like this.”

“I am glad of it. I will think about it,” said Winifred, gently.

Then she turned away towards the house, walking slowly, however, for she felt weak and faint from the violent weeping so rare to her. And the sun had been beating on her head more than she realised. Like many English people, Winifred did not know the danger of the spring sun—altogether she felt strangely unlike herself.

And Hertha did not keep her in sight, for she herself moved towards the front in search of a shady spot, where she might read Mr Montague’s letter undisturbed.

Chapter Twelve.After all these Years.Miss Norreys found the sheltered corner she was in search of, and then she read her letter. It was a very long one, full of interest to her for reasons besides those affecting Winifred. And more than an hour had passed before, at last recalling herself to the present, she rose from her seat to return to the house.“How perfectly beautiful it is!” she thought. “This place is almost too sunshiny, so far as I have seen it. I should like to know it in winter, or in cloudy weather; I wonder if the ‘White cat’s palace’ feeling could still remain, or if it would seem more commonplace and homely.”“Homely,” in the sweetest sense of the word, it always was, however. As Hertha went slowly in, crossing the white-panelled entrance hall, and down one or two of the long passages, on a rather roundabout route to her quarters—for she now knew the house well, and felt a fascination in strolling about it—she passed one or two open doors, revealing glimpses of “interiors” which carried her in fancy back by a century or two. There was the still-room as it might have been in the days of the great-great-grandmothers of the present inhabitants; the white-shelved “napery” room with its snowy piles, which one knew by instinct must be lavender-scented; even the girls’ own sitting-room, which she passed on one of the first-floor landings, in spite of the very nineteenth-century piano and easel and wealth of books and book-cases, might, at the first rapid glance, have been the legendary tabby-lady’s own boudoir, with its lattice-paned windows and polished floor.“It is like no other place in the world,” said Hertha to herself for the twentieth time. “I only wish I could give to poor Winifred some of the quite indescribable charm it has for me. I suppose it is just that she has grown up in it; but yet Celia, and even Louise, feel it almost as I do. Well, Winifred may awake in many ways yet. She will probably love her home better when there is no stifled consciousness of self-reproach mixed up with it. How glad I am she gave in before she—or I—knew the contents of Mr Montague’s letter. I must answer it at once, by the bye.”She was standing in the corridor out of which her own room opened, leaning idly against the balusters here surrounding a sort of gallery overlooking the inner hall below, admiring the charming effects of the morning sunshine creeping in at the capriciously placed windows of this part of the house, lighting up the brasses of the great “dog fireplace,” and flecking the well-worn crimson carpet of the shallow-stepped staircase—a perfect picture of somewhat slumbrous peacefulness. All at once, through the morning quiet and stillness, re-echoing up and down from no direction that she could at once define, came a piercing scream—a scream so utterly at variance with everything around, that the startling terror of it was doubled in intensity.Hertha looked about her, horror-stricken. Then realising that the sound had entirely died away, she began to collect herself a little, to hope that it was some trick or folly among the servants, and she was hurrying to the stairs, when again broke out the cry; this time, however, accompanied by wild confused words and the sound of hurrying footsteps. They were hurrying towards her, and in another moment Miss Norreys recognised the voice as Celia’s.“Oh, come, come quickly,” she was calling. “She is dead! I am sure she is dead!”“Celia,” said Hertha, as the girl came flying along wildly, “whatisthe matter?”For all answer Celia caught her by the arm and dragged her backwards again—across the hall, for by this time Hertha had got to the foot of the staircase—down a side passage to a door leading out to the grounds. And there, just below the few steps leading from the terrace, for even here there were terraces to descend from as in the front, lay the cause of Celia’s agonised screams.It was Winifred, white and unconscious, very, very white, with the half-closed, unseeing eyes, that make the dearest and best known face look strange and dreadful.“Is she dead?” gasped Celia, who was almost as white as her sister.Hertha had stooped down beside poor Winifred, bending very closely over her.“Dead!” she repeated, looking up, “of course not. My dear Celia, you must have more self-control.”The rather cold, seemingly unsympathising words brought the young girl more quickly to herself than anything else could have done, which was Hertha’s intention, though, in truth, at the first moment she had been nearly as terrified as Celia.“Of course not. She has only fainted. Run and fetch Mrs Grimthorp—and water—and then, perhaps, Louise. Yes, Louise, tell her quietly so as not to startle her too.”Somewhat hurt, but inexpressibly relieved, Celia rushed off. And in a few minutes the crowd of anxious faces and ready hands was only too great. Miss Norreys dismissed them all, while she and the housekeeper set to work to bring Winifred round again. After a while they succeeded: she shivered and opened her eyes, smiled faintly at Hertha, mentioning something about her head, then seemed to relapse into semi-consciousness again.“It is more than a common faint,” said Hertha, regretfully. “I fear it may have been something of a sunstroke. Poor child, I hope I was not too hard upon her,” she added to herself.Winifred had to be carried into the house, to a bedroom, for there were several such at White Turrets, on the ground floor; the doctor sent for, and worst of all, her father and mother told of the catastrophe, a shock which Hertha and Louise would gladly have spared them had it been possible. And for a few hours there was some serious anxiety. But it gradually dispersed. Hertha’s idea had been correct: it was a mild case of sunstroke, aggravated, no doubt, by the unusual agitation and emotion that Winifred had gone through that same morning.By the third day she was much better, though not yet well enough to leave her room. And this was the day on which she was to have returned to London with her friend.“It is rather too bad—don’t you think so?” she said to Hertha, “that when Ihadgiven in I should be tied by the leg like this, literally,”—for in her fall one ankle had been sprained. “It seems to take away all the—the credit of it, as it were,” she went on, with a rueful smile.“No, dear, it does not. They all know—your parents and your sisters, and,” with a glance round to make sure that no one could hear, “your cousin. They all know what you had resolved, and as soon as you are well enough to talk more you will see what they feel about it,” Hertha replied.A gleam of bright pleasure crossed Winifred’s pale face.“Still,” she said, “does it not a little destroy your faith in our guardian ghost, as you choose to consider her? If I had been standing out about it, determined not to give in, she might have tried something of the kind, but as I had given in—”Her tone puzzled Miss Norreys.“You don’t mean to say that the White Weeper had anything to do with your fainting-fit—your fall?” she said.“N-no,” replied Winifred. “But if she is really so concerned about us all, about me in particular, she might have prevented it somehow, don’t you think?”Her tone of matter-of-fact discussion of the subject was almost amusing. Winifred would always be Winifred!“As things have turned out, I scarcely see that the catastrophe affects you or the whole question very much one way or the other,” said Miss Norreys, “except that—Winifred, it must show you how mistaken you have been in thinking you are not deeply cared for and loved.”“Yes,” said Winifred, flushing a little, “it may have been to show me that.” Then, after a little pause: “Practically, it only affects me in this way, that I had made up my mind to go back to London with you to do my work for a week or two—for nothing, of course,” and here she grew still more flushed, “till they replace me. And I wanted to collect my things and to say good-bye to two or three people—the people where I lodged, amongst them. I have been so interested in them—in the two poor daughters; the father and mother are dreadful people, very often intoxicated,” she added calmly.“My dear Winifred! And the society recommended such a place for a young girl to live at?” exclaimed Hertha, aghast.“Oh dear no, I found it out for myself. And I am not a young girl. I was able to be of great use to them. But for me there would have been an execution in the house ever so long ago.”And then some allusion in Mr Montague’s letter—which, in her newborn anxiety to spare Winifred further mortification, Hertha had determined she should never see, recurred to Miss Norreys’s mind. “It appears she has even set the society’s rules at defiance with regard to her lodgings.” She understood the sentence now.“I can do any commissions that need to be done for you. I have arranged now to stay till the day after to-morrow, and you will be able to tell me all by then,” she said quietly, thinking in her own mind that it was probably very well that Winifred was not to return to her self-chosen quarters at all. “The White Weeper must have been very wise not to have prevented the accident, even supposing she could have done so,” she thought to herself, while half laughing at her own fancifulness. But the idea suggested a question.“What did make you fall, I wonder?” she said. “Do you think you fainted first, or that the shock of the fall made you faint?”“I don’t know,” said Winifred. “It was very strange. I was dizzy—that was the sunstroke, I suppose. But I might have had a slight sunstroke without either falling or fainting. I have never fainted before, so I don’t know anything about it. But it was very strange. I felt dizzy, as I said, and I was going up the terrace steps—it wastheterrace, you know, that runs on to the aspens—when all at once I became icy cold, not cold in myself, but as if something outside me, something coming to me, had made me cold. It was so startling, so extraordinary, that the shock seemed to paralyse me—I felt myself going, and then I must have fallen. The next thing I remember is your face looking at me.”“It is strange,” said Hertha, “but I do not know much about fainting either.”“You see,” said Winifred, naïvely, “I don’t think in all my life before I had ever cried so violently, or—or felt so—so unlike myself.”“No,” agreed Hertha. And in her own mind she said that there are certainly “more things” close about us than we dream of. Who could say if the awakening of Winifred’s finer and more perceptive nature might not have begun?Two days later, Miss Norreys found herself in the train on her return journey to London. She was alone this time—she could scarcely believe that barely ten days had passed since the exquisite spring morning when she and Winifred travelled down together to the home Hertha had pictured to herself as so modest, if not humble, an abode. And even now she could not repress a smile at the thought of her own astonishment at the first sight of White Turrets, and her indignation against Winifred.How much seemed to have happened in those few days! It had been to Hertha like the reading of a very interesting book, in which, for the time, her own life and thoughts had been merged.“And not even the ghost story wanting, which is to be found in every orthodox novel nowadays,” she thought. “But I am not at the end of my story of real life yet. I have to prepare for pretty Celia coming to me next month, and to settle up Winifred’s small affairs. I am sorry for her accident, poor child, but very glad she is not coming up to London just now. It would have been almost impossible to conceal from her the real state of the case.”For Mr Montague’s letter—the letter which Hertha had refrained from reading before her talk with Winifred—had contained matter which would have been sorely mortifying to the heiress of White Turrets. The society among whose workers she had for a short time been enrolled had decided on dismissing her, feeling naturally indignant at the deception which its heads considered had been put upon them. Mr Montague was, of course, exonerated from all intentional collusion, but his position in the matter was unpleasant, and but for his firm and steady regard for Hertha, he might have visited on her some of his annoyance.“Nor could I have resented it if he had done so,” thought Miss Norreys.But Mr Montague had behaved well and unselfishly. All he could do he had done, and that had been to obtain a promise that if Miss Maryon at once sent in her resignation it would be accepted in lieu of a dismissal.“They are by no means sorry to be free of her,” he wrote, “for though a clever girl in several ways, her self-will and defiance of authority were impossible to stand, coupled as they were with complete inexperience and reluctance to ask or take advice.” And then followed the remark already quoted about Winifred’s change of quarters.Hertha sighed.“I do feel terribly sorry to have involved Mr Montague so uncomfortably,” she said. “Even now I feel as if I could shake Winifred with pleasure.”She took the letter out of her bag to read it again. She did not own to herself that in the postscript—for there was a postscript—lay its greatest interest. Yet her eyes dwelt on the two or three lines as if they would read in them more, far more, than was there.“I think I must tell you,” wrote her old friend, “that at last, after all these years, I have heard from Austin. He writes cheerfully, and hopes to be able to return home for good next autumn. He is not married.”But Hertha folded the page and replaced the letter resolutely in the envelope.“No,” she said to herself, “I must not think of him at all. After all these years, as Mr Montague says, it would be worse than folly, utter madness, to risk reopening the old wounds.”And Hertha knew how to use a mental lock and key.Still, all through the weeks and months that followed—through the fatigue and not infrequent trials and annoyances of her own almost overwhelmingly busy life—through her newly awakened, interest in, and friendship for, the family at White Turrets—througheverything, there ran, like the rippling of an all but inaudible brook in the summer time, a little acknowledged refrain of gladness, of hope. And the words, which were set to this fairy music were always the same. “Austin is coming home for good next autumn. He is not married.”Celia, pretty Celia, as Hertha called her to herself, joined Miss Norreys before long, as arranged. Long afterwards—alwaysafterwards, perhaps I should say—Hertha came to see what a happy thing for her at this juncture had been the advent into her own daily life of this fresh, enthusiastic, yet thoughtful young nature. They suited each other admirably. Celia was so entirely in earnest, so forgetful of self in her work, so grateful for the advantages she owed in considerable measure to her friend, that she seemed never in the way. She had, of course, many difficulties to contend with, for even genius cannot walk along a royal road for many steps together; then come the rough bits, the flat, dull, monotonous stretches, when one seems to be making no way, and worst, yet best of all, perhaps, the ever-increasing consciousness of falling short of one’s ever ascending ideal.But by degrees the great fact came to be incontestable—the genius was there.And Winifred, for her part, kept her promise man—or womanfully. She had not boasted in saying she was not one to do things by halves. She set her shoulder to the wheel of the duties she had never before taken any real interest in. There came up to Celia now and then lists of appallingly clever books on eminently practical subjects, all directly or indirectly connected with the management, on the best possible lines, of a large estate.And when Celia returned to London again, after a happy Christmastide at White Turrets the following winter, her report was most encouraging.“I cannot tell you how well Winifred is getting on,” she said, “and how excellently she does everything. And with her as his more than right hand, papa seems a different being. She reallyisvery clever.”“I am sure of it,” Miss Norreys replied warmly.“And the queer thing is, that though she has never been so useful in her life, she is so much less self-confident,” said Celia. “She is, oh, somuchsofter and more sympathising!”“I think that is natural. She is no longer at war with herself, and unconsciously on the defensive,” replied the elder woman.“But is it not delightful to you to think that it is really allyourdoing, dear Hertha?” asked Celia.Hertha smiled.“I do not feel that it was,” she said. “At least, my hands were strengthened very strangely. I—Celia,” she broke off abruptly, “I want to ask you something. Has the White Weeper been heard of or seen of late?”“No, I believe not once,” said Celia in surprise.Hertha bent her head in sign of satisfaction.“I thought so,” she said. “Celia,” she went on, “I think I will tell you now what I have never told any one but Winifred.”And she related the story of her strange experience that moonlight night at White Turrets.Celia listened breathlessly, her face growing a shade paler.“How extraordinary,howstrange!” she exclaimed. “And you think Winifred was really influenced by it?”“At least she did not mock at it—not in the very slightest,” said Hertha. “And—there was something more, that day she fainted, you remember?”“Yes,” said Celia.“Did she never tell you what she had felt?” And Hertha repeated what Winifred had told her.Celia shook her head.“No, she never told me. She knows I have always been so frightened about it. But—I scarcely see why she came, or tried to come, to Winifred herself, when the pointwasgained and she had given in?”“Ah—I must tell you the rest, and this I think impressed your sister most of all. A day or two after I returned to London, after that Easter time—I went, at her request, to collect her things and pay some moneyshethought due to the people she had lodged with. What do you think I found? A deserted house—in the possession of the police. There had been a fire the night but one before, caused, no doubt, by the people themselves, for they were a very undesirable lot. They had all escaped, however, as they lived below; but the upper rooms, the very rooms Winifred had had, were literally gutted—in a state of black, charred desolation. We cannot say, of course, but when I explained my errand, the policeman said the lady should be thankful that she had been prevented returning. ‘Ten to one if she could have been got out alive,’ he said.”“Oh, Hertha!” exclaimed Celia, horror-struck. “And you told Winifred?”“Yes, though not immediately. She was still ill when it happened. But I think it impressed her exceedingly. Still, as she has not told you about it, it may be as well never to mention it.”“I will never do so,” said Celia. “But I think I shall never feelafraidof the White Weeper again.”Then she went on to tell her friend about Louise and Lennox in their own house, their marriage having taken place the preceding autumn.“They are as happy as the good people in a fairy tale,” she said.When Celia went home the next time—a little more than a year after she had joined Miss Norreys, she took with her an astonishing piece of news. Hertha, Winifred’s typical, self-dependent woman,Hertha, was going to be married!“It is an old story,” said Celia, calmly. “An old story, ending very beautifully,Ithink. I cannot tell you much, for I do not know the whole. But they were separated for years, through nobody’s fault exactly, and neither has ever cared for any one else,” she added simply.“All the same,” said Winifred, “I am just alittledisappointed in her.”Celia’s own plans were not materially affected by this unexpected event, as, having by this time gathered experience, she was able to go on with her studies without actually sharing her friend’s home. Before long, those studies led her further afield for a time. But this sketch, or rough outline, rather—not worthy of the name of a story—of some girls’ experiences, must come to an end without chronicling the successes of the young painter, of whom great things are prophesied.Therearethose, too, who predict that Celia Maryon is about to try the experiment of reconciling the claims and duties of married life with those of a special vocation. And if it be possible to succeed in so doing, assuredly no woman could have a wiser, less exacting, and more sympathising husband than the one whom rumour has selected for her—Eric Balderson.The End.

Miss Norreys found the sheltered corner she was in search of, and then she read her letter. It was a very long one, full of interest to her for reasons besides those affecting Winifred. And more than an hour had passed before, at last recalling herself to the present, she rose from her seat to return to the house.

“How perfectly beautiful it is!” she thought. “This place is almost too sunshiny, so far as I have seen it. I should like to know it in winter, or in cloudy weather; I wonder if the ‘White cat’s palace’ feeling could still remain, or if it would seem more commonplace and homely.”

“Homely,” in the sweetest sense of the word, it always was, however. As Hertha went slowly in, crossing the white-panelled entrance hall, and down one or two of the long passages, on a rather roundabout route to her quarters—for she now knew the house well, and felt a fascination in strolling about it—she passed one or two open doors, revealing glimpses of “interiors” which carried her in fancy back by a century or two. There was the still-room as it might have been in the days of the great-great-grandmothers of the present inhabitants; the white-shelved “napery” room with its snowy piles, which one knew by instinct must be lavender-scented; even the girls’ own sitting-room, which she passed on one of the first-floor landings, in spite of the very nineteenth-century piano and easel and wealth of books and book-cases, might, at the first rapid glance, have been the legendary tabby-lady’s own boudoir, with its lattice-paned windows and polished floor.

“It is like no other place in the world,” said Hertha to herself for the twentieth time. “I only wish I could give to poor Winifred some of the quite indescribable charm it has for me. I suppose it is just that she has grown up in it; but yet Celia, and even Louise, feel it almost as I do. Well, Winifred may awake in many ways yet. She will probably love her home better when there is no stifled consciousness of self-reproach mixed up with it. How glad I am she gave in before she—or I—knew the contents of Mr Montague’s letter. I must answer it at once, by the bye.”

She was standing in the corridor out of which her own room opened, leaning idly against the balusters here surrounding a sort of gallery overlooking the inner hall below, admiring the charming effects of the morning sunshine creeping in at the capriciously placed windows of this part of the house, lighting up the brasses of the great “dog fireplace,” and flecking the well-worn crimson carpet of the shallow-stepped staircase—a perfect picture of somewhat slumbrous peacefulness. All at once, through the morning quiet and stillness, re-echoing up and down from no direction that she could at once define, came a piercing scream—a scream so utterly at variance with everything around, that the startling terror of it was doubled in intensity.

Hertha looked about her, horror-stricken. Then realising that the sound had entirely died away, she began to collect herself a little, to hope that it was some trick or folly among the servants, and she was hurrying to the stairs, when again broke out the cry; this time, however, accompanied by wild confused words and the sound of hurrying footsteps. They were hurrying towards her, and in another moment Miss Norreys recognised the voice as Celia’s.

“Oh, come, come quickly,” she was calling. “She is dead! I am sure she is dead!”

“Celia,” said Hertha, as the girl came flying along wildly, “whatisthe matter?”

For all answer Celia caught her by the arm and dragged her backwards again—across the hall, for by this time Hertha had got to the foot of the staircase—down a side passage to a door leading out to the grounds. And there, just below the few steps leading from the terrace, for even here there were terraces to descend from as in the front, lay the cause of Celia’s agonised screams.

It was Winifred, white and unconscious, very, very white, with the half-closed, unseeing eyes, that make the dearest and best known face look strange and dreadful.

“Is she dead?” gasped Celia, who was almost as white as her sister.

Hertha had stooped down beside poor Winifred, bending very closely over her.

“Dead!” she repeated, looking up, “of course not. My dear Celia, you must have more self-control.”

The rather cold, seemingly unsympathising words brought the young girl more quickly to herself than anything else could have done, which was Hertha’s intention, though, in truth, at the first moment she had been nearly as terrified as Celia.

“Of course not. She has only fainted. Run and fetch Mrs Grimthorp—and water—and then, perhaps, Louise. Yes, Louise, tell her quietly so as not to startle her too.”

Somewhat hurt, but inexpressibly relieved, Celia rushed off. And in a few minutes the crowd of anxious faces and ready hands was only too great. Miss Norreys dismissed them all, while she and the housekeeper set to work to bring Winifred round again. After a while they succeeded: she shivered and opened her eyes, smiled faintly at Hertha, mentioning something about her head, then seemed to relapse into semi-consciousness again.

“It is more than a common faint,” said Hertha, regretfully. “I fear it may have been something of a sunstroke. Poor child, I hope I was not too hard upon her,” she added to herself.

Winifred had to be carried into the house, to a bedroom, for there were several such at White Turrets, on the ground floor; the doctor sent for, and worst of all, her father and mother told of the catastrophe, a shock which Hertha and Louise would gladly have spared them had it been possible. And for a few hours there was some serious anxiety. But it gradually dispersed. Hertha’s idea had been correct: it was a mild case of sunstroke, aggravated, no doubt, by the unusual agitation and emotion that Winifred had gone through that same morning.

By the third day she was much better, though not yet well enough to leave her room. And this was the day on which she was to have returned to London with her friend.

“It is rather too bad—don’t you think so?” she said to Hertha, “that when Ihadgiven in I should be tied by the leg like this, literally,”—for in her fall one ankle had been sprained. “It seems to take away all the—the credit of it, as it were,” she went on, with a rueful smile.

“No, dear, it does not. They all know—your parents and your sisters, and,” with a glance round to make sure that no one could hear, “your cousin. They all know what you had resolved, and as soon as you are well enough to talk more you will see what they feel about it,” Hertha replied.

A gleam of bright pleasure crossed Winifred’s pale face.

“Still,” she said, “does it not a little destroy your faith in our guardian ghost, as you choose to consider her? If I had been standing out about it, determined not to give in, she might have tried something of the kind, but as I had given in—”

Her tone puzzled Miss Norreys.

“You don’t mean to say that the White Weeper had anything to do with your fainting-fit—your fall?” she said.

“N-no,” replied Winifred. “But if she is really so concerned about us all, about me in particular, she might have prevented it somehow, don’t you think?”

Her tone of matter-of-fact discussion of the subject was almost amusing. Winifred would always be Winifred!

“As things have turned out, I scarcely see that the catastrophe affects you or the whole question very much one way or the other,” said Miss Norreys, “except that—Winifred, it must show you how mistaken you have been in thinking you are not deeply cared for and loved.”

“Yes,” said Winifred, flushing a little, “it may have been to show me that.” Then, after a little pause: “Practically, it only affects me in this way, that I had made up my mind to go back to London with you to do my work for a week or two—for nothing, of course,” and here she grew still more flushed, “till they replace me. And I wanted to collect my things and to say good-bye to two or three people—the people where I lodged, amongst them. I have been so interested in them—in the two poor daughters; the father and mother are dreadful people, very often intoxicated,” she added calmly.

“My dear Winifred! And the society recommended such a place for a young girl to live at?” exclaimed Hertha, aghast.

“Oh dear no, I found it out for myself. And I am not a young girl. I was able to be of great use to them. But for me there would have been an execution in the house ever so long ago.”

And then some allusion in Mr Montague’s letter—which, in her newborn anxiety to spare Winifred further mortification, Hertha had determined she should never see, recurred to Miss Norreys’s mind. “It appears she has even set the society’s rules at defiance with regard to her lodgings.” She understood the sentence now.

“I can do any commissions that need to be done for you. I have arranged now to stay till the day after to-morrow, and you will be able to tell me all by then,” she said quietly, thinking in her own mind that it was probably very well that Winifred was not to return to her self-chosen quarters at all. “The White Weeper must have been very wise not to have prevented the accident, even supposing she could have done so,” she thought to herself, while half laughing at her own fancifulness. But the idea suggested a question.

“What did make you fall, I wonder?” she said. “Do you think you fainted first, or that the shock of the fall made you faint?”

“I don’t know,” said Winifred. “It was very strange. I was dizzy—that was the sunstroke, I suppose. But I might have had a slight sunstroke without either falling or fainting. I have never fainted before, so I don’t know anything about it. But it was very strange. I felt dizzy, as I said, and I was going up the terrace steps—it wastheterrace, you know, that runs on to the aspens—when all at once I became icy cold, not cold in myself, but as if something outside me, something coming to me, had made me cold. It was so startling, so extraordinary, that the shock seemed to paralyse me—I felt myself going, and then I must have fallen. The next thing I remember is your face looking at me.”

“It is strange,” said Hertha, “but I do not know much about fainting either.”

“You see,” said Winifred, naïvely, “I don’t think in all my life before I had ever cried so violently, or—or felt so—so unlike myself.”

“No,” agreed Hertha. And in her own mind she said that there are certainly “more things” close about us than we dream of. Who could say if the awakening of Winifred’s finer and more perceptive nature might not have begun?

Two days later, Miss Norreys found herself in the train on her return journey to London. She was alone this time—she could scarcely believe that barely ten days had passed since the exquisite spring morning when she and Winifred travelled down together to the home Hertha had pictured to herself as so modest, if not humble, an abode. And even now she could not repress a smile at the thought of her own astonishment at the first sight of White Turrets, and her indignation against Winifred.

How much seemed to have happened in those few days! It had been to Hertha like the reading of a very interesting book, in which, for the time, her own life and thoughts had been merged.

“And not even the ghost story wanting, which is to be found in every orthodox novel nowadays,” she thought. “But I am not at the end of my story of real life yet. I have to prepare for pretty Celia coming to me next month, and to settle up Winifred’s small affairs. I am sorry for her accident, poor child, but very glad she is not coming up to London just now. It would have been almost impossible to conceal from her the real state of the case.”

For Mr Montague’s letter—the letter which Hertha had refrained from reading before her talk with Winifred—had contained matter which would have been sorely mortifying to the heiress of White Turrets. The society among whose workers she had for a short time been enrolled had decided on dismissing her, feeling naturally indignant at the deception which its heads considered had been put upon them. Mr Montague was, of course, exonerated from all intentional collusion, but his position in the matter was unpleasant, and but for his firm and steady regard for Hertha, he might have visited on her some of his annoyance.

“Nor could I have resented it if he had done so,” thought Miss Norreys.

But Mr Montague had behaved well and unselfishly. All he could do he had done, and that had been to obtain a promise that if Miss Maryon at once sent in her resignation it would be accepted in lieu of a dismissal.

“They are by no means sorry to be free of her,” he wrote, “for though a clever girl in several ways, her self-will and defiance of authority were impossible to stand, coupled as they were with complete inexperience and reluctance to ask or take advice.” And then followed the remark already quoted about Winifred’s change of quarters.

Hertha sighed.

“I do feel terribly sorry to have involved Mr Montague so uncomfortably,” she said. “Even now I feel as if I could shake Winifred with pleasure.”

She took the letter out of her bag to read it again. She did not own to herself that in the postscript—for there was a postscript—lay its greatest interest. Yet her eyes dwelt on the two or three lines as if they would read in them more, far more, than was there.

“I think I must tell you,” wrote her old friend, “that at last, after all these years, I have heard from Austin. He writes cheerfully, and hopes to be able to return home for good next autumn. He is not married.”

But Hertha folded the page and replaced the letter resolutely in the envelope.

“No,” she said to herself, “I must not think of him at all. After all these years, as Mr Montague says, it would be worse than folly, utter madness, to risk reopening the old wounds.”

And Hertha knew how to use a mental lock and key.

Still, all through the weeks and months that followed—through the fatigue and not infrequent trials and annoyances of her own almost overwhelmingly busy life—through her newly awakened, interest in, and friendship for, the family at White Turrets—througheverything, there ran, like the rippling of an all but inaudible brook in the summer time, a little acknowledged refrain of gladness, of hope. And the words, which were set to this fairy music were always the same. “Austin is coming home for good next autumn. He is not married.”

Celia, pretty Celia, as Hertha called her to herself, joined Miss Norreys before long, as arranged. Long afterwards—alwaysafterwards, perhaps I should say—Hertha came to see what a happy thing for her at this juncture had been the advent into her own daily life of this fresh, enthusiastic, yet thoughtful young nature. They suited each other admirably. Celia was so entirely in earnest, so forgetful of self in her work, so grateful for the advantages she owed in considerable measure to her friend, that she seemed never in the way. She had, of course, many difficulties to contend with, for even genius cannot walk along a royal road for many steps together; then come the rough bits, the flat, dull, monotonous stretches, when one seems to be making no way, and worst, yet best of all, perhaps, the ever-increasing consciousness of falling short of one’s ever ascending ideal.

But by degrees the great fact came to be incontestable—the genius was there.

And Winifred, for her part, kept her promise man—or womanfully. She had not boasted in saying she was not one to do things by halves. She set her shoulder to the wheel of the duties she had never before taken any real interest in. There came up to Celia now and then lists of appallingly clever books on eminently practical subjects, all directly or indirectly connected with the management, on the best possible lines, of a large estate.

And when Celia returned to London again, after a happy Christmastide at White Turrets the following winter, her report was most encouraging.

“I cannot tell you how well Winifred is getting on,” she said, “and how excellently she does everything. And with her as his more than right hand, papa seems a different being. She reallyisvery clever.”

“I am sure of it,” Miss Norreys replied warmly.

“And the queer thing is, that though she has never been so useful in her life, she is so much less self-confident,” said Celia. “She is, oh, somuchsofter and more sympathising!”

“I think that is natural. She is no longer at war with herself, and unconsciously on the defensive,” replied the elder woman.

“But is it not delightful to you to think that it is really allyourdoing, dear Hertha?” asked Celia.

Hertha smiled.

“I do not feel that it was,” she said. “At least, my hands were strengthened very strangely. I—Celia,” she broke off abruptly, “I want to ask you something. Has the White Weeper been heard of or seen of late?”

“No, I believe not once,” said Celia in surprise.

Hertha bent her head in sign of satisfaction.

“I thought so,” she said. “Celia,” she went on, “I think I will tell you now what I have never told any one but Winifred.”

And she related the story of her strange experience that moonlight night at White Turrets.

Celia listened breathlessly, her face growing a shade paler.

“How extraordinary,howstrange!” she exclaimed. “And you think Winifred was really influenced by it?”

“At least she did not mock at it—not in the very slightest,” said Hertha. “And—there was something more, that day she fainted, you remember?”

“Yes,” said Celia.

“Did she never tell you what she had felt?” And Hertha repeated what Winifred had told her.

Celia shook her head.

“No, she never told me. She knows I have always been so frightened about it. But—I scarcely see why she came, or tried to come, to Winifred herself, when the pointwasgained and she had given in?”

“Ah—I must tell you the rest, and this I think impressed your sister most of all. A day or two after I returned to London, after that Easter time—I went, at her request, to collect her things and pay some moneyshethought due to the people she had lodged with. What do you think I found? A deserted house—in the possession of the police. There had been a fire the night but one before, caused, no doubt, by the people themselves, for they were a very undesirable lot. They had all escaped, however, as they lived below; but the upper rooms, the very rooms Winifred had had, were literally gutted—in a state of black, charred desolation. We cannot say, of course, but when I explained my errand, the policeman said the lady should be thankful that she had been prevented returning. ‘Ten to one if she could have been got out alive,’ he said.”

“Oh, Hertha!” exclaimed Celia, horror-struck. “And you told Winifred?”

“Yes, though not immediately. She was still ill when it happened. But I think it impressed her exceedingly. Still, as she has not told you about it, it may be as well never to mention it.”

“I will never do so,” said Celia. “But I think I shall never feelafraidof the White Weeper again.”

Then she went on to tell her friend about Louise and Lennox in their own house, their marriage having taken place the preceding autumn.

“They are as happy as the good people in a fairy tale,” she said.

When Celia went home the next time—a little more than a year after she had joined Miss Norreys, she took with her an astonishing piece of news. Hertha, Winifred’s typical, self-dependent woman,Hertha, was going to be married!

“It is an old story,” said Celia, calmly. “An old story, ending very beautifully,Ithink. I cannot tell you much, for I do not know the whole. But they were separated for years, through nobody’s fault exactly, and neither has ever cared for any one else,” she added simply.

“All the same,” said Winifred, “I am just alittledisappointed in her.”

Celia’s own plans were not materially affected by this unexpected event, as, having by this time gathered experience, she was able to go on with her studies without actually sharing her friend’s home. Before long, those studies led her further afield for a time. But this sketch, or rough outline, rather—not worthy of the name of a story—of some girls’ experiences, must come to an end without chronicling the successes of the young painter, of whom great things are prophesied.

Therearethose, too, who predict that Celia Maryon is about to try the experiment of reconciling the claims and duties of married life with those of a special vocation. And if it be possible to succeed in so doing, assuredly no woman could have a wiser, less exacting, and more sympathising husband than the one whom rumour has selected for her—Eric Balderson.

The End.

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