C.R. Coleridge (continued 2)

Between the newcomer and his father there was an impassable distance. Alvar never failed in courtesy; but Cheriton’s quick eyes soon perceived that he resented deeply the long neglect; saw too that the sight of him was a pain and distress to his father, sharpened his temper, and produced constant rubs; though he was careful to do everything that the proper introduction of his son demanded of him. A grand ball was organised in his honour, and also a stiff and ponderous dinner-party at which Alvar was to be introduced to the county magnates.

Special invitations were also sent to him by their various neighbours, and he created quite an excitement in the dull country neighbourhood. Mr Lester only half liked being congratulated on his son’s charming foreign manners; but still, as a novelty, Alvar had great attractions, and in society never seemed shy or at a loss. Mr Lester’s brother-in-law, Judge Cheriton, invited the stranger to pay him a visit when the season had a little advanced, and to let him see a little London society; for which attention Mr Lester, who hated London, was very grateful, as Alvar’s grandfather had Spanish friends there, and it would have been too intolerable for the heir of Oakby to have appeared there under auspices which, however distinguished, Mr Lester thought suitable only to a political refugee or a music master.

He had, when he had ceased to pay for Alvar’s English tutor, made him an allowance which had been magnificent in Spain, and greatly added to Alvar’s consideration there, and he now increased this to what he considered a sufficient sum for his eldest son’s dignity. In short he did everything but overcome his personal distaste to him; he never willingly spoke to him, and the very sight of him was an irritation to him. He got less too than usual of Cheriton’s company; their walks, and talks, and consultations were curtailed by Alvar’s requirements. Indeed Cherry was pulled in many different directions, and he ended by sacrificing all the reading that was to have been got through during the vacation. For the home life was very difficult, and the more they saw of the stranger the less they liked him.

“He’s not of our sort,” said Bob, as if that settled the matter, not perceiving that his slowness to receive impressions, and difficulty in accommodating himself to a new life, might spring as much from his Lester blood as from his Spanish breeding.

“He might try and look like an Englishman,” growled Jack.

“When you go to Spain, we shall see you in a sombrero dancing under the orange-trees to a pair of castanets,” retorted Cheriton. “We should all be so ready at foreign languages and so accommodating, shouldn’t we?”

Alvar’s individuality was not to be ignored, though unfortunately it was very distasteful to his kindred. He was so dignified, so terribly polite they were half afraid of him, and as the awe wore off, they wanted to quarrel with him. He announced that he loved riding, and seemed to know something of horses; he played billiards much too well to be a pleasant opponent to his father, he sang much too quaintly and prettily for his family to appreciate, and he played the guitar! Even Cheriton wished it had been a fiddle. He hated going to walk, smoked incessantly, and was indifferent to every one except Cheriton, to whom he deferred in everything.

Poor Cheriton! “Among the blind, the one-eyed is king,” and his sentiments were amazingly liberal for Oakby; but he was very young and deeply attached to his home and his surroundings, too tender-hearted not to be touched at Alvar’s preference, imaginative enough to realise his position, and yet repelled and put out of countenance by his peculiarities. To be tenderly addressed as “my brother,” “mi caro,” “mi Cheriton,” “Cherito mio,” to be deferred to on all occasions, and even told in the hearing of Jack and Bob “that his eyes when he laughed were the colour of the Mediterranean on a sunny day,” was, as he said, “so out-facing, that it made him feel a perfect fool,” especially when his brothers echoed it at every turn.

Yet he put up with it. It was so hard on the poor fellow if no one was kind to him! So hard, he added to himself, to be an unloved and unloving son.

Perhaps, after all, Alvar’s essential strangeness prevented Cheriton from feeling himself put aside.

Cheriton was very popular at school and at college. He had strong, intellectual ambitions, and though of less powerful mind than Jack, had attained to much graceful scholarship and possessed much command of language. He hoped to take honours, to go to the bar, and distinguish himself there under his uncle, Judge Cheriton’s, auspices. He had too a further and a sweeter hope, hitherto confided to no one.

But it was a certain “genius for loving” that really distinguished him from his fellows—really made him every one’s friend. He did not seek out his poorer neighbours so much from a sense of duty, as because his heart went out to every one belonging to Oakby, nay, every animal, every bit of ground—nothing was a trouble that conduced to the welfare of the place. This loving-kindness was a natural gift; but Cheriton made good use of it. He had high principles, and deep within his soul, struggling with the temptations of this ardent nature, were the pure aspirations and the capability of fervent piety which have made saints—responsibilities with which he was born.

But all this fire and force did not make tolerance easy; he was full of instinctive prejudices, and perhaps his greatest aids in his dealings with his new brother were his joyous unchecked spirits and the keen sense of the ludicrous that enabled him to laugh at himself as well as at other people.

Some little time after Alvar’s arrival there was a deep fall of snow, and while the pond was being swept for skating, the young Lesters, with Harry Seyton and the children from the rectory, who had come up for the purpose, proceeded to erect a snow man of gigantic proportions in front of the house.

“What a fright you have made of him!” said Cheriton, coming up with Alvar as they finished; “he has no nose and no expression.”

“Well, come and do his nose, then; it keeps on coming off,” said Nettie, who was standing on a bench to put the finishing touches.

Cherry was nothing loath, and was soon engaged in moulding the snowy countenance with the skill of long practice, while Alvar, with his great crimson-lined cloak wrapped about him, stood looking on.

“Give him a good lumpy nose, that won’t melt,” said Cherry. “There, he’s lovely! got an old pipe for him?”

As he spoke a great snowball came stinging against his face, and in a moment, to the astonishment of Alvar, the whole party set on Cherry, and a wild bout of snowballing ensued.

“No, no, that’s not fair! I can’t fight you all,” shouted Cherry; “and you’ve got all your snowballs ready made. Give me the girls, and then—Come on.”

“Oh, yes, yes; we’ll be on Cherry’s side,” cried Nettie.

It was a picturesque scene enough—the pale blue sky overhead, the dazzling snow under foot, the little girls in their scarlet cloaks or petticoats, their long hair flying as they darted in and out, the great boys struggling, wrestling, knocking each other about with small mercy. No one threw a snowball at Alvar; perhaps they had forgotten him, as he stood silently watching them as if they were a troop of Berserkers, till the contest terminated in a tremendous struggle between Cheriton and Jack, who were, of course, much the biggest of the party. Cherry was getting decidedly the worst of it, and either tripped in the rough snow or was thrown down into it by Jack, when suddenly Alvar threw off his cloak, stepped forward, and seizing Jack by the shoulders, pulled him back with sudden irresistible force.

“By Jove!” was all that Jack could utter.

“What on earth did you do that for?” ejaculated Cherry as soon as he gained his breath and his feet.

“He might have hurt you, my brother,” said Alvar, who looked flushed, and for once excited. “And besides, I am stronger than either of you. I could struggle with you both.”

“Hurt me? Suppose he had?” said Cherry disdainfully. “But, Jack—Jack, I do believe you’re getting too many for me at last.”

“That is what you call athletics,” said Alvar, who looked unusually bright.

“Yes; wrestling is a regular north-country game, and the fellows about here have taught us all the tricks of it. Come, Jack, let us show him a bout.”

The two brothers pulled off their coats, and set to with a will; and after a long struggle, and with considerable difficulty, Cheriton succeeded in throwing Jack.

“There, I’ve done it once more!” he said breathlessly, “and I don’t suppose I shall ever do it again. You’re getting much stronger than I am, and of course you’re heavier.”

“Let me try to throw you down,” said Alvar eagerly.

“Nay, Jack may have first turn; but it’s fair to tell you there’s a great deal of knack in it.”

Alvar, however, was man instead of boy; he was quite as tall as Jack, and however he might have learnt to exercise his muscles, his grasp was like steel; and though Jack’s superior skill triumphed in the end, Alvar rose up cool and smiling, and Jack panted out, in half-unwilling admiration,—

“You’d beat us all with a little training.”

“Ah yes; that is because I am an Englishman,” said Alvar complacently. “But I bear no malice, Jack. It is in sport.”

“Of course,” said Jack. “Now, Cherry, you try.”

“It’s hardly fair in a biting frost,” said Cherry; “nobody can have any wind. However, here’s for the honour of Westmoreland.”

The younger ones gathered round in an admiring circle, and Cheriton, who did not like to be beaten, put forth all the strength and skill of which he was master. But he was the more slightly made, and had met his match, and to the extreme chagrin of his brothers and Nettie, sustained an entire defeat.

“Well, I never thought you would throw him,” said Jack, in a tone of deep disappointment.

“Ah,” said Alvar, “they always called me the strong Englishman.”

“Papa was the strongest man in Westmoreland,” said Nettie.

“Then,” said Alvar, “so far I have proved myself his son, and your brother. I would not skate with you, for I should look like a fool; but I knew you could not easily throw me down, since that is your sport. But, my brother, I have hurt you.”

“No,” said Cheriton getting up, “only knocked all the wind out of me, and made me look like a fool! Never mind, we shall understand each other all the better. Come upstairs, and we will show you some of the cups and things we have won in boat-races and athletics.”

This was a clever stroke of Cheriton’s; he wanted to make Alvar free of the premises, and had not yet found a good excuse. So, leaving the younger ones to finish their snowballing, he and Jack conducted Alvar up to the top of the house, where, at the end of the passage where they slept, was a curious low room, with a long, low window, looking west, above the west window of the drawing-room, and occupying nearly one side of the room, almost like the windows of the hand-loom weavers in the West Riding.

There was a low seat underneath, broad enough to lie on, but furnished with very dilapidated cushions. There was a turning-lathe in the room, and a cupboard for guns, and sundry cases of stuffed birds, one table covered with tools, glue-pots, and messes of all descriptions; and another, it is but justice to add, supplied with ink, pens, and paper, and various formidable-looking books, for here the boys did their reading. There was a great, old-fashioned grate with a blazing fire in it, and very incongruous ornaments above it—a stuffed dormouse, Nettie’s property—she maintained a footing in the room by favour—various pipes, two china dogs, white, with brown spots on them, presented to Cherry in infancy by his nurse, and a wooden owl carved by their cousin Rupert—a cousin in the second degree, who had been much with them owing to his father’s early death. On one side of the room were arranged on a sort of sideboard the cups and tankards which were the trophies of the brothers’ prowess, and these were now each pointed out to Alvar, and the circumstances of their acquisition described. Cheriton’s were fewer in proportion, and chiefly for leaping and hurdle-racing; and Jack explained that Cherry’s forte was cricket, and that, since he had once knocked himself up at school by a tremendous flat-race, their father had greatly objected to his going into training.

“Oh, it’s not that,” said Cherry; “he would not care now; but I really haven’t time. I must grind pretty hard from now to midsummer.”

“There is one thing I have read of,” said Alvar, “in English newspapers. It is a race of boats on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge.”

“Oh, yes, you must go and see it. That’s Jack’s ambition—to be one of the crew.”

“Ah, but you see there’s no river at R—, and that’s so unlucky,” said Jack seriously.

And so what with explanations and questions the ice melted a little. Alvar looked smiling and beneficent; he did not seem at all ashamed of his own ignorance; and Jack evidently regarded him with a new respect.

Cheriton also contrived that the Seytons, with the vicar of Oakby, Mr Ellesmere and his wife, should be asked to dinner; and as the vicar had some general conversation, some information about Spain was elicited from Alvar, who, moreover, was pleased to find himself in ladies’ society, and was evidently at ease in it; while Virginia, in exchange for the pleasant talk that seemed to come out of her old life, could tell Cheriton that her cousin Ruth was coming to stay with her, and could confide in him that home was still a little strange.

“Well, strangers are strange,” said Cherry. “We are shaking down, but the number of tempers lost in the process might be advertised for ‘as of no value except to the owners,’ if to them. Only the home-made article, you understand—”

“Dear me,” said Virginia, “I should as soon think of losing my temper with the Cid. Aren’t you afraid of him?”

Cheriton made an irresistibly ludicrous face.

“Don’t tell,” he said, “but I think we are; and yet, you know, we think ‘yon soothern chap,’ as old Bates called him, must be ‘a bit of a softy’ after all.”

“Oh, Cherry, that is how you talked yourself when we were children,” exclaimed Virginia impulsively. “Do you know I feel I was born here, when I hear the broad Westmoreland. I never forgot it.”

“Nay, I’m glad you don’t say I talk so now,” said Cherry. “They tell me at Oxford that my tongue always betrays me when I am excited. But here comes Alvar; now make him fall in love with Westmoreland. Alvar, Miss Seyton has been abroad, so she is not quite a benighted savage.”

“My brother Cheriton is not a savage,” said Alvar, smiling, as Cherry moved away. “He is the kindest and most beautiful person I have ever seen.”

“Yes, he is very kind. But I hope, Mr Lester, that you do not think us all savages, with that one exception.”

“In future I can never think so,” said Alvar, with a bow. “These boys are savage certainly—very savage, but I do not care.”

“It is strange, is it not,” said Virginia, rather timidly, “to have to make acquaintance with one’s own father?”

“Of my father I say nothing,” said Alvar, with a sudden air of hauteur, that made the impulsive Virginia blush, and feel as if she had taken a liberty with him, till he added, with a smile, “Miss Seyton, too, I hear, is a stranger.”

“Yes, I have been away ever since I was a little girl, and—and I had forgotten my relations.”

“I have not known mine,” said Alvar; “Cheriton wrote to me once a little letter. I have it now, and since then I have loved him. I do not know the rest, and they wish I was not here.”

“But don’t you think,” said Virginia earnestly, “that we—that you will soon feel more at home with them?”

“Oh, I do not know,” said Alvar, with a shrug. “It is cold, and I am so dull that I could die. They understand no thing. And in Spain I was the chief; I could do what I wished. Here I must follow and obey. My name even is different. I do not know ‘Mr Lester.’ I am ‘Don Alvar.’ Will you not call me so?”

“But that would be so very strange to me,” said Virginia, parrying this request. “Every one will call you Mr Lester. How tall Nettie is grown. Do you not think her very pretty?”

“Oh, she is pink, and white, and blue, and yellow; but she is like a little boy. There is not in her eyes the attraction, the coquetry, which I admire,” said Alvar, pointing his remark with a glance at his companion’s lucid, beaming, interested eyes, in which however there was little conscious coquetry.

“I am sorry to hear you admire coquettes,” was too obvious an answer to be resisted.

“Nay, it is the privilege of beauty,” said Alvar.

Virginia, like many impulsive people, was apt to recollect with a cold chill conversations by which at the time she had been entirely carried away. But on looking back at this one she liked it. Alvar’s dignity and grace of manner made his trifling compliments both flattering and respectful. His feelings, too, she thought, were evidently deep and tender; and how she pitied him for his solitary condition!

Chapter Eight.

A Day of Rest.

“Gaily the troubadour touched his guitar.”

On the third Sunday morning after Alvar’s arrival, Mr Lester came down as usual at the sound of the gong, and as he glanced round the dining-room missed his two elder sons.

Prayers were over and breakfast had begun before Alvar entered.

“Ah pardon,” he said, bowing to his grandmother; “I did not know it was late.”

“I make a point of being punctual on Sunday,” said Mr Lester, in a tone of incipient displeasure.

“Cheriton is late too,” said Alvar.

“No,” said Jack, “he’s gone to Church.”

“All, then we do not go to-day,” said Alvar, with an air of relief so comical that even the solemn Jack could hardly stand it.

“Oh, yes, we do,” he said, “this is extra.”

“Cheriton,” said Mr Lester, “is very attentive to his religious duties.”

“I suppose he’ll have breakfast at the Vicarage,” said Nettie, as Alvar raised his eyebrows and gave a little shrug.

It was a gesture habitual to him, and was not intended to express contempt either for religion or for Cheriton, but only a want of comprehension of the affair; but it annoyed Mr Lester and called his attention to the fact that Alvar had appeared in a black velvet coat of a peculiar foreign cut, the sight of which he disliked on a week-day, and considered intolerable when it was contrasted with the spruce neatness of the rest of the party. He could not very well attack Alvar on the subject, but he sharply reproved Bob for cutting hunches of bread when no one wanted them, and found fault with the coffee. And then, apparently à propos of nothing, he began to make a little speech about the importance of example in a country place, and the influence of trifles.

“And I can assure every one present,” he concluded emphatically, “that there is no need to look far for an example of the evil effects of neglect in these particulars.”

“Elderthwaite?” whispered Nettie to Jack.

“Ay,” said Mrs Lester, “young people should show respect to Sunday morning. It is what in my father’s house was always insisted on. Your grandfather, too, used to say that he liked his dogs even to know Sunday.”

“It is strange to me,” said Alvar coolly.

“It will be well that you should give yourself the pains to become accustomed to it,” said his father curtly.

It was the first time that the stately stranger had been addressed in such a tone, and he looked up with a flash of the eye that startled the younger ones.

“Sir, it is by your will I am a stranger here,” he said, with evident displeasure.

“Stranger or no, my regulations must be respected,” said Mr Lester, his colour rising.

Alvar rose from his seat and proved his claim at any rate to the family temper by bowing to his grandmother and marching out of the room.

“Highty tighty!” said the grandmother. “Here’s a spirt of temper for you!”

“Intolerable insolence!” exclaimed Mr Lester. “Under my roof he must submit to what I please to say to him.”

“It’s just what I told ye, Gerald; a foreigner’s ways are what we cannot do with,” said Mrs Lester.

“Of course,” blurted out Jack, with the laudable desire of mending matters; “of course he is a foreigner. How can you expect him to be anything else? And father never said it was his coat.”

“His coat?” said Mr Lester. “It is his temper to which I object. When he came I told him that I expected Sunday to be observed in my house, and he agreed.”

“But he did not understand that you thought that coat improper on Sunday,” said Jack with persevering justice.

“I am not in the habit of being obscure,” said Mr Lester, as he rose from the table, while Jack thought he would give Alvar a little good advice.

Cherry was too soft; he was equally impartial, and would be more plain spoken. But as he approached the library he heard an ominous tinkling, and entering, beheld Alvar, still in the objectionable coat, beginning to play on the still more objectionable guitar, an air which Jack did not think sounded like a hymn tune.

Jack really intended to mend matters, but his manner was unfortunate, and in the tone he would have used to a disobedient fag he remarked, as he stood bolt upright beside his brother,—

“I say, Alvar, I think you’d better not play on that thing this morning.”

“There is no reason for you to tell me what to do,” said Alvar quietly.

“It’s not, you know,” said Jack, “that I think there’s any harm in it. My views are very liberal. I only think it’s a frivolous and unmanly sort of instrument; but the governor won’t like it, and there’ll be no end of a row.”

“You have not a musical soul,” said Alvar loftily, for he had had time to cool down somewhat.

“Certainly not,” said the liberal Jack, with unnecessary energy and a tone of disgust; “but that’s not the question. It’s not the custom here to play that sort of thing on a thing like that on a Sunday morning. Ask Cherry.”

“Would it vex my brother?” asked Alvar.

“If you mean Cheriton, it certainly would. He hates a row.”

“A row?” said the puzzled Alvar, “that is a noise—my guitar?”

“Oh, hang it! no, a quarrel,” began Jack, when suddenly—

“Sir, I consider this an act of defiance; I beg I may see that instrument put away at once,” and Mr Lester’s voice took the threatening sound that made his anger always appear so much worse than it really was. “I will have the proprieties of my house observed, and no example of this kind set to your younger brothers.”

Alvar had taken Jack’s interference with cool contempt, but now he started up with a look of such passion as fairly subdued Jack into a hasty—

“Oh come, come, I say, now—don’t!” Alvar controlled himself suddenly and entirely.

“Sir, I obey my father’s commands. I will say good morning,” and taking up his guitar went up to his own room, from which he did not emerge at church time, and as no one ventured to call him they set off without him. Among themselves they might quarrel and make it up again many times a day, but Alvar’s feelings were evidently more serious.

It was occasionally Cheriton’s practice to sing in the choir, more for the popularity of his example than for his voice, which was indifferent. Alvar had been greatly puzzled at his doing so, and had then told him that “in that white robe he looked like the picture of an angel,” a remark which so discomfited Cherry that he had further perplexed his unlucky brother by saying,—“Pray don’t say such a thing to the others, I should never hear the last of it. You’d better say I look like an ass at once.”

He did not therefore see anything of his family till he met them after the service, when Jack attacked him.

“What induced you to go out this morning? Everything has gone utterly wrong, and I shouldn’t wonder if we should find Alvar gone back to Spain.”

“Why, what’s the matter?”

“Alvar came down late in that ridiculous coat and then played the guitar. And if ever you saw a fellow in a passion! He likes his own way.”

“Was father angry?”

“I should just think so, I don’t expect they’ll speak.”

This was a pleasant prospect. Cheriton saw that his father’s brow was cloudy, and as he went upstairs his grandmother called him into her room.

“Cheriton,” she said mysteriously, as she sat down and untied her bonnet, “Jack has told you of your brother’s behaviour, and it’s my belief there’s a clue to it, and I hope you’ll take warning, for I sometimes think ye’ve a hankering after that way yourself.”

“What way, grandmamma? I never play the guitar on a Sunday morning.”

“Nay, but there’s more behind. It’s well known how Sunday is profaned in Popish countries. I’ve heard they keep the shops open in France. Your brother has been brought up among Papists, and it would be a sad thing for your father’s son to give all this property into the hands of the priests.”

“Dear me, granny, what a frightful suggestion. But I’m sure Alvar has no Romish sympathies. He has no turn for anything of the kind, and I should think the Roman Church was very unattractive in Spain.”

“Ay, but they’re very deep.”

“Well,” said Cherry, “if Alvar is a Jesuit in disguise, as you say, and rather a dissipated person, as my father seems to think, and has such an appalling temper as Jack describes, we’re in a bad way. I think I’ll go and see for myself.”

When Cherry entered Alvar’s room he found this alarming compound of qualities sitting by the fire looking forlorn and lonely. “Why, Alvar, what’s all this about?”

“Ah, my brother,” said Alvar, “you were absent and all has been wrong. My father is offended with me. I know not why. He insulted me.”

“Oh, nonsense! we never talk about being insulted. My father’s a little hasty, but he means nothing by it. What did you do that annoyed him?”

“I played my guitar and Jack scolded me. No one shall do so but you.”

“I daresay Jack made an ass of himself—he often does; but he is a thorough good fellow at bottom. You know we do get up in our best clothes on Sunday.”

“I can do that,” said Alvar, “but your Sunday I do not understand. You tell me I may not play at cards or at billiards; you do not dance nor go to the theatre. What good does it do? I would go to church, though it is tiresome, and I shudder at the singing. It is a mark, doubtless, of my father’s politics; but at home—well, I can smoke, if that is better?”

Driven back to first principles, Cheriton hardly knew what to say. “Of course,” he answered. “I have often heard the matter discussed, and I don’t pretend to say that at Oxford the best of us are as particular as we might be. But in a country place like this, carelessness would do infinite harm. And, on the whole, I shouldn’t like the rule to be otherwise.”

Alvar sighed, and made no answer.

“But,” continued Cherry, “I think no one has a right to impose rules on you. I wouldn’t bring out the guitar in the morning—it looks rather odd, you know—nor wear that coat. But we’re not so very strict; there are always newspapers about, and novels, and, as you say, you can smoke or talk, or play the piano—I’m sure no one would know what the tune was—or write letters. Really, it might be worse, you know.”

Perhaps Cherry’s coaxing voice and eyes were more effectual than his arguments; any way, Alvar said, “Well, I will offer my hand to my father, if he will take it.”

“Oh, no; pray don’t make a scene about it. There’s the gong. Put on your other coat, and come down. We do eat our dinner on Sunday, and I’m awfully hungry.”

Whether Mr Lester accepted the coat as a flag of truce, or whether he did not wish to provoke a contest with an unknown adversary, nothing more was said; but Alvar’s evil star was in the ascendant, and he was destined to run counter to his family in a more unpardonable way.

He had no sympathy whatever with the love for animals, which was perhaps the softest side of his rough kindred. All the English Lesters were imbued with that devotion to live creatures which is ingrain with some natures. No trouble was too great to take for them. Bob and Nettie got up in the morning and went out in all weathers to feed their ferrets, or their jackdaws, or whatever pet was young, sick, or troublesome. Cheriton’s great Saint Bernard, Rolla, ranked somewhere very near Jack in his affections, and had been taught, trained, beaten, and petted, till he loved his master with untiring devotion. Mrs Lester had her chickens and turkeys, Mr Lester his prize cattle and his horses, some of the latter old and well-tried friends.

It must be admitted that Oakby was a trying place for people devoid of this sentiment. Every one had a dog, more or less valuable, and jackdaws and magpies have their drawbacks as members of a family. Alvar openly said that he had never seen anybody make pets of dumb animals, and that he could not understand doing so; and though he took no notice of them, Rolla and an old pointer of Mr Lester’s, called Rose, had already been thrashed for growling at him.

On this particular Sunday afternoon, the bright cold weather clouded over and promised a thaw. Alvar preferred dulness to the weather out-of-doors, and Cheriton accompanied his father on the Sunday stroll, which included all the beasts on the premises, and generally ended in visits to the old keeper and coachman, who thought it the height of religious advantage to bear the squire read a chapter.

Mr Lester was aware that he had been impatient with his son, and that Alvar could not be expected to be imbued with an instinctive knowledge of those forms of religion with which his father had been inspired by his young brilliant wife, when “Fanny” had taught him to restore his church and build his schools in a fuller fashion than had satisfied his father, and made him believe that his position demanded of himself and his family a personal participation in all good works—some control of them he naturally desired.

He was, as Mr Ellesmere said, with a little shrug, when forced to yield a point, “a model squire,” conscientious and open-handed, but unpersuadable. Perhaps the clear-eyed, wide-souled Fanny might have allowed more readily for the necessary changes of twenty years. Certainly she would better have appreciated a newcomer’s difficulties; while poor Mr Lester felt that Fanny’s ideal was invaded, and not by Fanny’s son. It spoilt his walk with Cheriton, and made him reply sharply to the latter’s attempts at agreeable conversation. Cheriton at length left him at the old gamekeeper’s; and while Mr Lester’s irritable accents were softened into kindly inquiries for the old father, now pensioned off, he chatted to the son, at present in command, who had been taking care of a terrier puppy for him.

Finding that Buffer, so called from his prevailing colour, was looking strong and lively, Cheriton thought it would be as well to accustom him to society, and took him back to the house. He could not help wondering what would become of Alvar when he was left alone at Oakby. Another fortnight would hardly be sufficient to give him any comfortable, independent habits; how could he endure such deadly dulness as the life there would bring him? That fortnight would be lively enough, and there would be his cousin, Rupert Lester, for an additional companion, and another Miss Seyton, more attractive than Virginia, for an occasional excitement. If Alvar was so fascinating a person to young ladies, would he—would she—? An indefinite haze of questions pervaded Cheriton’s mind, and as he reckoned over the county beauties whom he could introduce to Alvar, and whom he would surely admire more than just the one particular beauty who had first occurred to his thoughts, he reached the house. He found his brothers and Nettie alone in the library, Alvar sitting apart in the window, and looking out at the stormy sky.

“Hallo!” said Jack, “so you have brought Buffer up. Well, he has grown a nice little chap.”

“Yes, I thought it was time he should begin his education. Nice head, hasn’t he? He is just like old Peggy.”

“Yes, he’ll be a very good dog some day.”

“Set him down,” said Bob; “let’s have a look at him.”

“Little darling!” said Nettie, enthusiastically.

Buffer was duly examined, and then, as Cherry turned to the fire to warm himself, observing that it was colder than ever, began to play about the room, while they entered on a discussion of the merits of all his relations up to their dim recollection of his great-grandmother.

Buffer made himself much at home, poked about the room, and at last crossed over to Alvar, who had sat on, unheeding his entrance. Buffer gave his trousers a gentle pull. Alvar shook him off. Here was another tiresome little beast; then, just as Cherry crossed over to the window in search of him, he made a dart at Alvar’s foot and bit it sharply. Alvar sprang up with a few vehement Spanish words, gave the little dog a rough kick, and then dashed it away from him with a gesture of fierce annoyance. Buffer uttered a howl of pain.

“I say, that’s too rough,” exclaimed Cherry, snatching up the puppy, which cried and moaned.

“But it bit me!” said Alvar, angrily.

“I believe you have killed him,” said Cheriton.

“You cruel coward,” cried Nettie, bursting into a storm of tears.

Alvar stood facing all the four, their blue eyes flashing scorn and indignation; but, angry as they were, they were too practical to waste time in reproaches. Jack brought a light, and Bob, whose skill in such matters equalled his literary incapacity, felt Buffer’s limbs scientifically.

“No ribs broken,” he said; “he’s bruised, though, poor little beggar! Ah! he has put his shoulder out. Now, Cherry, if your hand’s going to shake, give him to Jack. I’ll pull it in again.”

“I can hold him steady,” said Alvar, in a low voice.

“No, thank you,” said Cherry, curtly, as Jack put a hand to steady his hold, and the operation was performed amid piteous shrieks from Buffer. Alvar had the sense to watch them in silence. What had he done? A kick and a blow to any domestic animal was common enough in Spain. And now he had roused all this righteous indignation, and, far worse, offended Cherry, and seen his distress at the little animal’s suffering, and at its cause. Buffer was no sooner laid in Nettie’s arms to be cossetted and comforted, than he seized Cherry’s hand.

“Ah, my brother! I did not know the little dog was yours. I would not touch him—”

“What difference does that make?” said Cherry, shaking him off and walking away.

“I shall keep my dog out of his way,” said Bob, contemptuously.

“I suppose Spaniards are savages,” said Jack, in a tone of deadly indignation.

“He’d better play a thousand guitars than hurt a poor little innocent puppy!” said Nettie, half sobbing.

Alvar stood looking mournfully before him; his anger had died out; he looked almost ready to cry with perplexity.

Cheriton turned round. “I won’t have a fuss made,” he said. “Take Buffer upstairs to my room, and don’t say a word to any one. It can’t be helped.”

“I know who I shall never say a word to,” said Nettie; but she obeyed, followed by Jack and Bob. Alvar detained Cheriton.

“Oh, my brother, forgive me. I would have broken my own arm sooner than see your eyes look at me thus. It is with us a word and a blow. I will never strike any little beast again—never.”

He looked so wretched that Cheriton answered reluctantly, “I don’t mean to say any more about it.”

“But you are angry still?”

“No, I’m not angry. I suppose you feel differently. I hate to see anything suffer.”

“And I to see you suffer, my brother.”

“I? nonsense! I tell you that’s nothing to do with it. There, let it drop. I shall say no more.”

He escaped, unable further to satisfy his brother, and went upstairs, where Buffer had been put to bed comfortably.

“Did you ever know such a nasty trick in your life?” said Jack, as they left the twins to watch the invalid’s slumbers.

“Oh!” said Cherry, turning into his room, “it’s all hopeless and miserable. We shall never come to any good—never!”

“Oh, come, come now, Cherry,” said Jack, for once assuming the office of consoler. “Buffer’ll do well enough; don’t be so despairing.”

Cheriton had much the brighter and serener nature of the two; but he was subject to fits of reaction, when Jack’s cooler temperament held its own.

“It’s not Buffer,” he said, “it’s Alvar! How can one ever have any brotherly feeling for a fellow like that? He’s as different as a Red Indian!”

“It would be very odd and unnatural if you had much brotherly feeling for him,” said Jack. “Why do you trouble yourself about him?”

“But he does seem to have taken a sort of fancy to me, and the poor fellow’s a stranger!”

“You’re a great deal too soft about him. Of course he likes you, when you’re always looking him up. Don’t be superstitious about it—he’s only our half-brother; and don’t go down to tea looking like that, or you’ll have the governor asking what’s the matter with you.”

“Remember, I’ll not have a word said about it,” said Cheriton emphatically.

Nothing was said publicly about it, but Alvar was made to feel himself in disgrace, and endeavoured to re-ingratiate himself with Cherry with a simplicity that was irresistible. He asked humbly after Buffer’s health, and finally presented him with a silver chain for a collar.

When Buffer began to limp about on three legs, his tawny countenance looking out above the silver engraved heart that clasped the collar with the sentimental leer peculiar to puppyhood, the effect was sufficiently ludicrous; but he forgave Alvar sooner than his brothers did, and perhaps grateful for his finery, became rather fond of him.

Chapter Nine.

Ruth.

“She has two eyes so soft and brown.”

There was a little oak-panelled bedroom at Elderthwaite, which had been called Ruth’s ever since, as a curly-haired, brown-skinned child, the little orphan cousin had come from her grandmother’s in London and paid a long visit in the North some five or six years before the winter’s day on which she now occupied it, when she came to be present at the Lesters’ ball. She was a nut-brown maid still, with rough, curly hair and great dark eyes, with curly, upturned lashes—eyes that were like Virginia’s in shape, colour, and fervour, but which glanced and gleamed and melted after a fashion wholly their own. She was slender and small, and though with no wonderful beauty of feature or perfection of form, whether she sat or stood she made a picture; all colours that she wore became her, all scenes set off her peculiar grace. Now, her brown velvet dress, her rusty hair against the dark oak shutter, as she sat crouched up in the window-seat, were a perfect “symphony in brown.”

Ruth Seyton was an orphan, and lived with her grandmother, Lady Charlton, a gentle, worldly old lady, whose great object was to see her well married, and to steer her course safely through all the dangers that might affect the course of a well-endowed and very attractive girl. The scorn which Ruth felt for the shallow feelings and worldly notions with which she was expected to enter on the question of her own future was justifiable enough, and led to a violent reaction and to a fervour of false romance. Ruth had found her hero and formulated her view of life, and the hero was Rupert Lester, whom she was about to meet at the ball given in Alvar’s honour, and between whom and herself lay the memory of something more than a flirtation.

The theory was, that the hero once found, the grand passion once experienced, was its own justification, itself the proof of depth of character and worth of heart. A girl who paused to consider her lover’s character or her friends’ disapproval, when she had once given her heart away, was a weak and cold-natured creature in her opinion. She knew that many difficulties lay between her and Rupert Lester, and she gloried in the thought of how they should be overcome, rejoiced in her own discrimination, which could see the difference between this real passion and the worldly motives of some of her other admirers, or the boyish fancy of Cheriton Lester, who talked to her about his brothers and his occupations, and had room in his heart, so it seemed to her, for a thousand lesser loves. Ruth believed that she despised flirtation; but there could be no harm in being pleasant to a boy she had known all her life and whose attentions just now were so convenient. Besides, Cheriton was really very like his cousin Rupert, very like the photograph which she now hid away as Virginia came in search of her.

The two cousins had been a great deal together at intervals and were fond of each other, and Virginia knew something about Rupert; but Ruth knew better than to give her full confidence on the subject.

“Well,” she said, as her cousin entered, “and how does the world go with you? Do you see much of the Lesters?”

“Yes; while the frost lasted I used to go down to the ice with the boys, and we met there. Cheriton comes over here sometimes, and once he brought his brother.”

“What, the Spaniard? How do they manage? Is he very queer?”

“Oh, no! Of course he is very unlike the others. Cherry gets on very well with him. I believe Mr Lester does not wish the boys to come here much,” added Virginia, abruptly.

“Well, it wasn’t approved of in Roland’s time,” said Ruth.

“Were we always bad company?” said Virginia. “I have had a great deal to learn. Why did you never make me understand better what Elderthwaite was like?”

“But, Queenie,” said Ruth cautiously, using a pet name of Virginia’s girlhood, “surely you were told how tumbledown the place was, and how stupid and behindhand everything would be. Poor dear Uncle James ought to have lived fifty years since.”

“I don’t believe that parish priests taught their people nothing but to catch rats fifty years since,” said Virginia, with a touch of the family bitterness in her voice. “Is it because papa is poor that the men-servants get tipsy, and Dick and Harry are always after them? Oh, Ruth,” suddenly softening, “I ought not to have said it, but the boys aren’t brought up well; and if you saw how wretched the people in the village are—and they look so wicked.”

“Yes,” said Ruth, as Virginia’s tears silenced her, “but you know we Seytons are a bad lot. We’re born, they say, with a drop of bad blood in us. Look at Aunt Julia, she was driven desperate and ran away—small blame to her—when her lover’s father forbade the match; but they caught and stopped her. After that she never cared what she did, and just lived by making fun of things.”

Virginia shuddered. Could her lazy, sarcastic aunt have ever known the thrillings and yearnings which were beating in her own heart now?

“There is not much fun in it,” she said. “No. As for Dick, I don’t think much of him. Poor old Roland was worth a dozen of him. I don’t care what people do as long as they are something. But Dick has no fine feelings.”

“Ruth,” said Virginia, “I think I was not taught better for nothing. I am sure papa is very unhappy; he thinks how wrong everything is. Poor papa! Grandpapa was such a bad father for him. I cannot make friends with Dick, and Harry will go back to school. Indoors I have nothing to do; but I am going to ask Uncle James, and then if I go to the cottages and get the children together a little, perhaps it may be better than nothing. Old nurse says they all grow up bad. Poor things, how can they help it!”

“Well, Queenie,” said Ruth dubiously, “I don’t think the people are very fit for you to go to. I don’t think Uncle Seyton would like it.”

“I should not be afraid of them,” said Virginia. “It would be doing something for papa, and doing good besides.”

To think of her father as an involuntary victim to the faults of others was the one refuge of Virginia’s heart; his graceful, melancholy gentleness had caught her fancy, and she was filled with a pity which, however strange from a child to a father, vibrated in every tender string of her nature. On the other hand, all her notions of right were outraged by the more obvious evils prevailing at Elderthwaite, and she went through in those first weeks a variety of emotions, for which action seemed the only cure. She felt as if the sins of generations lay on her father’s shoulders, and she wanted to pull them on to her own—wanted to stand in the deadly breach with the little weapon that her small experience had put into her hand. She wanted to teach a few poor children, a thing that might only be a pleasant occupation or the most commonplace of duties. But it was turning her face right round on the smooth slope the Seytons were treading, and trying to make a step up hill.

Ruth did not think that first step would be easy, and would have liked to see Virginia go downstairs in a somewhat less desperate humour, to find her uncle chatting to Miss Seyton in the drawing-room.

“Ha, ha, Miss Ruth! Come North just in time to make a conquest of the fine Frenchman at Oakby.”

“I thought he was a Spaniard, uncle,” said Ruth.

“Eh, pretty much of a muchness, aren’t they? I’ve got a card for a grand ball to go and see him. Ha, ha! I’d sooner see him with a red coat on at Ashrigg meet next Thursday.”

“But you must go to the ball, uncle, and dance with me,” said Ruth.

“That’s a bargain,” said the jolly parson, striking his hands together. “Any dance I like?”

“To be sure.”

“Ah, mind you look out, then. When you’re sitting quiet with the Frenchman you’ll see your old uncle round the corner.”

“I never dance with any one who doesn’t know the trois temps, uncle.”

“Bless my soul! My favourite dance is the hornpipe, or old Sir Roger—kiss the girls as you pop under. That’s an old parson’s privilege, you know.”

All this time Virginia had been standing apart, working up her courage, and now, regardless of the unities of conversation, and with a now-or-never feeling, she began, her fresh young voice trembling and her colour rising high.

“Uncle James, if you please. I wanted to tell you I shall be very glad to do anything to help you, if you will allow me.”

“Help me, my dear? Teach me the troy tong, or whatever Ruth calls it?”

“To help you in the parish, uncle.”

“Parish? Ha, ha! Do they have the pretty girls to read prayers in the grand Ritualistic places nowadays?”

“I thought I might perhaps teach some of the children,” faltered poor Virginia through her uncle’s peal of laughter.

“Teach? We don’t have many newfangled notions here, my dear. Do your wool-work, and dance your troy tong, and mind your own business.”

“I have always been accustomed to do something useful,” said Virginia, gaining courage from indignation.

“Now look here, Virginia,” said Parson Seyton emphatically. “Don’t you go putting your finger into a pie you know nothing of. There’s not a cottage in the place fit for a young lady to set her foot in. There’s a vast deal too much of young women’s meddling in these days; and as for Elderthwaite, there’s an old Methody, as they call him, who groans away to the soberer folks, and comforts their hearts in his own fashion. What could a chit of a lass like you do for them? Go and captivate the Frenchman with your round eyes—you’ve a grand pair of them—and give me a kiss.”

Parson Seyton put out his hand and drew her towards him.

“But, uncle,” she stammered, yielding to the kiss in such utter confusion of mind that she hardly knew what she was doing—“But, uncle, do you like that Methodist to—to attract the people?”

“Bless your heart, child, people must have their religion their own way. They’d stare to hear me convicting them of their sins. ‘What’s the parson done with his own?’ they’d ask. But it comforts them like blankets and broth, and it’s little they get of either,” with a side glance at his sister; “so I take good care to keep out of the way. I told Cherry Lester I should go and hear him some Sunday afternoon. ‘Hope it would do you good, parson,’ says he, coolly. Eh, he’s a fine lad. What a confounded fool old Lester must think himself to have this foreign fellow ready to step into his place.”

“Are you and Cheriton as great friends as ever, uncle?” asked Ruth.

“Friends! Oh, he’s like Virginia here. Wants to teach me a lesson now and then. Got me over last year to their grand meeting of clergy and laity for educational purposes, and there I was up on the platform with the best of them.”

“Did you make a speech, uncle?” asked Ruth.

“I did, my lass, I did! When they had quarrelled and disputed, and couldn’t by any means agree, some one asked my opinion, and I said, ‘My lord,’—Lord — was there, you know,—‘and my reverend brethren, having no knowledge whatever of the subject, I have no opinion to give.’ And old Thorold—he comes from the other side of the county, mind you,—remarked that ‘Mr Seyton’s old-fashioned wisdom might find followers with advantage.’ Ha—ha—you should have seen Cherry’s blue eyes down below on the benches when I gave him a wink! ‘Old-fashioned wisdom,’ Miss Virginia; don’t you despise it.”

“Hallo, uncle!” shouted Harry, putting his head in, “here’s a fellow come tearing up to say the wedding’s waited an hour, and if the parson isn’t quick they’ll do without him.”

“Bless my soul, I forgot all about ’em. Coming—coming—and I’ll give ’em a couple of rabbits for the wedding dinner. Virginia’ll never ask me to marry her, that’s certain.” And off strode the parson, while poor Virginia, scandalised and perplexed as she was, was fain, like every one else, to laugh at him.

Chapter Ten.

The Old Parson.

“He gave not of that text a pulled hen That saith that hunters ben not holy men.”

Perhaps no amount of angry opposition to her wishes could so have perplexed Virginia as her uncle’s nonchalance, which, whether cynical or genial, seemed to remove him from the ranks of responsible beings, and to make him a law unto himself. When we read of young high-souled martyrs, we are apt to fancy that their way was plain before them; that however hard to their flesh, it was at least clear to their spirit; that Agnes or Cecilia, however much afflicted by the wickedness of their adversaries, were never perplexed by anything in them that was perhaps not wicked. Virginia Seyton was full of desires as pure, wishes as warm to lead the higher life, was capable of as much “enthusiasm of humanity” as any maiden who defied torture and death; but she was confronted by a kind of difficulty that made her feel like a naughty girl; the means to fulfil her purpose were open to so much objection that she could hardly hold firmly to the end in view. It may seem a very old difficulty, but it came upon her as a startling surprise that so much evil could be permitted by those who were not altogether devoid of good. For she was inclined to be sorry for this jolly, genial uncle, and not to wish to vex him; while yet his every practice and sentiment was such as she had been rightly taught to disapprove.

Anxious for a chance of settling her confused ideas, she slipped away by herself, and went out into the muddy lanes, heedless of a fast-falling shower.

The thaw had set in rapidly, and rich tints of brown, green, and yellow succeeded to the cold whiteness of the snow on moor and hill-side. A thaw, when the snow has fairly gone, even in the depth of winter, has a certain likeness to spring; the violent, buffeting wind was warm and soft, and the sky, instead of one pale sheet of blue, showed every variety of wild rain-cloud and driven mist.

Virginia plunged on through the mud with a perplexity in her soul as blinding as the tears that rose and confused the landscape already half-blotted out by wreaths of mountain mist. Suddenly, as she turned a corner, something bounced up against her, nearly knocking her down, and a voice exclaimed,—

“Down, Rolla! How dare you, sir! Oh, dear me, how sorry I am! that great brute has covered you with mud;” and Cheriton Lester, very muddy himself, and holding by the neck an object hardly recognisable as Buffer, appeared before her.

“I was very muddy before,” said Virginia. “Why, what has happened to the puppy?”

“He fell into the ditch. Nettie will wash him; it’s her favourite amusement. I was coming up here to ask after a young fellow I know, who works at this farm; he hasn’t been going on very well lately.”

“I suppose you know every one in Oakby,” said Virginia, abruptly.

“Pretty well,” answered Cherry. “I couldn’t help doing so.”

“I should like to know the people in Elderthwaite,” said Virginia.

“It would be a very good thing for some of them if you did.”

“Ah!” she said, suddenly, “but Uncle James will not let me do so.”

“Ah!” said Cherry, with an inflection in his voice that Virginia did not understand. Then he added quickly, “What did you want to do?”

“I wanted,” said Virginia, moved, she hardly knew why, to confidence as they walked on side by side, “to go to the cottages sometimes, and perhaps teach some of the children. Don’t you think it would be right?”

“I think it would hardly do for you to go about at haphazard among the cottagers.”

“But why? I am used to poor people,” said Virginia.

Her sentences were short, because she was afraid of letting her voice tremble; but she looked at him earnestly, and how could he tell her that many of the people whom she wished to benefit owed her family grudges deep enough to make her unwelcome within their walls, how betray to her that the revelations they might make to her would affect her relations to her own family more than she could hope to affect their lives in return. But Cheriton was never deaf to other people’s troubles, and he answered with great gentleness—

“Because we’re a rough set up here in the North, and they would scarcely understand your kind motives. But the children—I wish you could get hold of them! I do wish something could be done for them. What did the old parson say to you?”

“He said he didn’t approve of education.”

“Oh, that’s no matter at all! I declare I think I see how you might do it, and we’ll make the parson hunt up a class for you himself! What! you don’t believe me? You will see. Could you go down to the vicarage on Sunday mornings?”

“Oh, yes! but Uncle James—”

“Oh, I’ll make him come round. They might send over some benches from Oakby, and the children would do very well in the vicarage hall.”

“But, Cheriton,” exclaimed the astonished Virginia, “you can’t know what my uncle said about it!”

“He said, ‘Eh, they’re a bad lot. No use meddling with them,’ didn’t he?” said Cheriton, in the very tone of the old parson.

“Something like it.”

“Never mind. He would like to see them a better lot in his heart, as well as you or I would.”

“Ruth says he is really very kind,” said Virginia; “and I think he means to be.”

“Ah, yes, your cousin knows all our odd ways, you know. She is with you?”

“Yes, she came yesterday.”

“Ah! she knows that he is a very kind old boy. He loves every stone in Elderthwaite, and you would be surprised to find how fond some of the people are of him. Now I’ll go and see him, and come and tell you what he says. May I?”

“To be sure,” said Virginia, “and perhaps then Aunt Julia will not object.”

“Oh, no, not to this plan,” said Cherry. He called Rolla, and went in search of the parson.

Cherry liked management; it was partly the inheritance of his father’s desire for influence, and partly his tender and genial nature, which made him take so much interest in people as to enjoy having a finger in every pie. As he walked along, he contrived every detail of his plan.

Jack was wont to observe that Elderthwaite was a blot on the face of the earth, and a disgrace to any system, ecclesiastical or political, that rendered it possible. But then Jack was much devoted to his young house-master, and wrote essays for his benefit, one of which was entitled, “On the Evils inherent in every existing Form of Government,” so that he felt it consistent to be critical. Cheriton had a soft spot in his heart for a long existing form of anything.

He soon arrived at the vicarage, a picturesque old house, built half of stone and half of black and white plaster. It was large, with great overgrown stables and farm-buildings, all much out of repair. Cheriton found the parson sitting in the old oak dining-room before a blazing fire, smoking his pipe. Some remains of luncheon were on the table, and the parson was evidently enjoying a glass of something hot after it. Cheriton entered with little ceremony.

“How d’ye do, Parson?” he said.

“Ha, Cherry! how d’ye do, my lad? Sit down and have some lunch. What d’ye take? there’s a glass of port in the sideboard.”

“Thanks, I’d rather have a glass of beer and some Stilton,” said Cherry, seating himself.

As he spoke, a little bit of an old woman came in with some cold pheasant and a jug of beer, which she placed before him. She was wrinkled up almost to nothing, but her steps were active enough, and she had lived with Parson Seyton all his life.

“Ay, Deborah knows your tastes. And what do you want of me?”

“I want to give you a lecture, Parson,” said Cherry coolly.

“The deuce you do? Out with it, then.”

“Virginia has been telling me that you will not let her teach the little kids on a Sunday.”

“Bless my soul, Cheriton! d’ye think I’m going to let the girl run all over the place and hear tales of her father and brothers, and may be of myself into the bargain?”

“No,” said Cherry; “but you ought to be very much obliged to her, Parson. It’s a shame to see those little ruffians. Now you’re going to call on half-a-dozen decentish people and tell them to send their children down here of a Sunday morning at ten o’clock. Virginia will teach them in the hall. I’ll get them to send over a couple of forms from Oakby. Don’t let her begin with above a dozen, and don’t have any big boys at first. Deborah might give them a bit of cake now and again to make the lessons go down. What do you say?”

“I say you’re the coolest hand in Westmoreland, and enough to wile the flounders out of the frith!” said the old parson, as Cherry peeped at him over his shoulder to see the effect of his words.

“What are we coming to?”

“A model school, perhaps.”

“And a model parson. Eh, Cherry, these enlightened days can’t do with the old lot much longer.”

“Oh, you’re moving with the times,” said Cherry, as he came and stood with his back to the fire, looking down at the parson as he filled his pipe, and smiling at him. Perhaps no other being in the world could have got Parson Seyton to consent to such an innovation, but he loved Cheriton Lester, who little knew how much self-respect the allegiance of his high-principled, promising youth was worth to the queer old sporting parson. One atom of pretence or of priggishness in a well-conducted correct young man would have been of all things odious to him, but the shrewd old man believed in Cheriton to the backbone, and of all the admiration and affection that the popular young man had won perhaps none did him so much credit as the love that made him a sort of good angel to rough Parson Seyton.

“You got my best dog out of me when I gave you Rolla,” he said, “so I suppose you’ll have your own way now.”

“And it’ll turn out quite as well as Rolla,” said Cherry rather illogically.

Parson Seyton set about fulfilling his promise after a manner of his own.

He rapped with his dog-whip at a cottage door and thus addressed the mother:—

“Eh, Betty, there’s a grand new start in Elderthwaite. Here’s Miss Virginia going to turn all the children into first-rate scholars. Wash them up and send them over to my house on Sunday morning, and I’ll give a penny to the cleanest, and a licking to any one that doesn’t mind his manners.”

If Parson Seyton had been a school-board visitor he could hardly have put the matter more plainly, and on the whole could hardly have adopted language more likely to be effectual.

Chapter Eleven.

Alvar Confidential.

“He talked of daggers and of darts, Of passions and of pains.”

The rain had ceased, and long pale rays of sunshine were streaming through the mist as Cheriton made his way through a very dilapidated turnstile and across a footpath much in need of drainage towards Elderthwaite House. As he came up through the overgrown shrubberies he saw in front of him a small fur-clothed figure, and his colour deepened and his heart beat faster as he recognised Ruth. He had been thinking that he should see her ever since his promise to Virginia, but he had not expected to meet her out-of-doors on so wet a day, and he had hardly a word to say as he lifted his hat and came up to her. She was less discomposed, perhaps less astonished.

“Ah! how do you do?” she said. “Do you know when I saw some one coming I hoped it might be your new brother. I am so curious to see him.”

“He is not a bit like any of us,” said Cherry.

“No? That would be a change, for all you Lesters are so exactly alike.”

Ruth had a way of saying saucy things in a soft serious voice, with grave eyes just ready to laugh. Cheriton and she had had many a passage of arms together, and now he rallied his forces and answered,—

“Being new, of course he’ll be charming. Rupert and Jack and I will know all our partners are longing for him. But as he can only dance with one young lady at a time, in the intervals I shall hope—I am much improved in my waltzing—just to get a turn.”

“Really improved—at last?” said Ruth; then suddenly changing to sympathy—“But isn’t it very strange for you all? How do you get on? How do you like him?”

“Oh, he isn’t half a bad fellow, and we’re excellent friends.”

“That’s very good of you. Now I have such a bad disposition that if I were in your place I should be half mad with jealousy.”

Cheriton laughed incredulously.

“I daresay you would stroke us all down the right way. Rupert says he feels as if he were lighting his cigar in a powder-magazine. But they get on very well, and Grace and Mary Cheriton think him perfectly charming.”

“I think I shall come to the ball in a mantilla. But have you done anything for poor Virginia?”

“Oh, yes; the old parson only wanted a little explanation,” said Cherry, quite carelessly enough to encourage Ruth in adding earnestly,—

“It is so good of her to want to help these poor people. Queenie is like a girl in a book. I really think she likes disagreeable duties.”

“I am sure you, who can sympathise with Virginia and yet know all the troubles, will be able to make it smooth for her. I wish you would.”

“Ah, but I am not nearly so good as Virginia,” said Ruth—a perfectly true statement, which she herself believed. Whether she expected Cheriton to believe it was a different matter.

Alvar had no excuse now for finding Oakby dull; the house was full of people, Lady Cheriton and her daughters were enchanted with his music, and he brightened up considerably and was off Cheriton’s mind, so that nothing spoilt the radiance of enjoyment that transfigured all the commonplace gaiety into a fairy dream. The younger ones found the times less good. Jack was shy and bored by fine people, Bob hated his dress clothes, Nettie was teased by Rupert, who varied between treating her as a Tomboy and flattering her as an incipient beauty, and thought her grandmother’s restrictions to white muslin and blue ribbons hard. But Mrs Lester had no notion of letting her forestall her career as a county beauty.

When Cheriton came back from Elderthwaite he found the whole party by the hall fire in the full tide of discussion and chatter, Nettie on the rug with Buffer in her arms complaining of the white muslin.

“Sha’n’t I look horrid, Rupert?”

“Frightful; but as you’ll be sure to bring Buffer into the ball-room he’d tear anything more magnificent.”

“I sha’n’t bring in Buffer! Rupert, what an idea! He’ll be shut up, poor darling! But at least I may turn up my hair, and I shall. I’m quite tall enough.”

“Turn your hair up? Don’t you do anything of the sort, Nettie. Little girls are fashionable, and yellow manes and muslin frocks will carry the day against wreaths and silk dresses. You let your hair alone, and then people will know it’s all real by-and-by.”

“Well, I’d much rather turn it up,” said Nettie simply.

“Well, perhaps I would,” said Rupert. “Fellows might say you let it down on purpose.”

Rupert conveyed a great deal of admiration of the golden locks in his tone, but Nettie, though vain enough, was insensible to veiled flattery.

“Plait it up, Nettie,” said Cherry briefly.

“If anybody thought I did such a nasty, mean, affected thing as that I’d never speak to him again. Never! I’d cut it all off sooner,” cried Nettie.

“Young ladies’ hair does come down sometimes,” said Rupert; “when it’s long enough.”

“Mine never shall,” said Nettie emphatically.

“Don’t do it yourself, then,” said Cherry.

“If Nettie ever takes to horrid, affected, flirting ways,” said Jack, who had joined the party, “I for one shall have nothing more to say to her.”

“You don’t admire flirts, Jack?” said Rupert.

“I don’t approve of them,” said Jack crossly.

“Oh, come, come, now, Jack, that’s very severe.”

“Poor Jack!” said Cherry; “he speaks from personal experience. There was that heartless girl last summer, who, after hours of serious conversation with him, went off to play croquet with Tom Hubbard, and gave him a moss-rose-bud. Poor Jack! it was a blow; he can’t recover from it! It has affected all his views of life, you see.”

“Poor fellow!” said Rupert, as Jack forcibly stopped Cherry’s mouth; “I’d no notion it was a personal matter. Will she be at the ball?”

“No; you see, we avoided asking her.”

“Cherry!” interposed the disgusted Jack, “how can you go on in this way! It’s all his humbug, Rupert.”

This serious denial produced, of course, shouts of laughter—in the midst of which Alvar entered and joined himself to the group round the fire as they waited for the arrival of some friends of Cheriton’s.

“And what have you been about?” asked Cherry.

“I have been singing with your cousins. Ah, it is pleasant when there are those who like music!”

“You found all these fellows awful savages, didn’t you?” said Rupert.

Alvar turned his great dark eyes on Cheriton with the same sort of expression with which Rolla was wont to watch him.

“Ah, no,” he said; “my brother is not a savage. But I do like young ladies.”

“But I thought,” said Rupert, “that in Spain young ladies were always under a duenna, so that there was no chance of an afternoon over the piano?”

“But I assure you Miladi Cheriton was present,” said Alvar seriously.

“Oh, that alters the question!” said Rupert. “But come, now, we have been hearing Jack’s views—let us have your confessions. Is the duenna always there, Alvar?”

“Here is my sister,” said Alvar, with the oddest sort of simplicity, and yet with a tone that conveyed a sort of reproach to Rupert and—for the first time—of proprietorship in Nettie.

Rupert burst into a shout of laughter: “My dear fellow, what are you going to tell us?”

“She is a young girl; surely even here you do not say everything to her?” said Alvar, looking perplexed.

“By Jove, no!” said Rupert; “not exactly.”

“Since Nettie is here, we should not have asked you to tell us anything we did not wish her to hear,” said Cheriton, with a sense of annoyance that Alvar should be laughed at.

“You did not ask me,” said Alvar quietly.

At this moment Bob called Nettie so emphatically, that she was obliged unwillingly to go away.

“Now then, Alvar,” said Rupert, “now for it. We won’t be shocked. Tell us how you work the duennas.”

“It would not have been well to explain that to Nettie,” said Alvar seriously.

“Why not?” said Jack, suddenly boiling up. “Do you think she would ever cheat or want a duenna? English girls can always be trusted!”

“Can they?” said Rupert. “Shut up, Jack; you don’t understand. We only want you to tell us how you do in Spain. Affaires du coeur—you know, Alvar.”

Alvar looked round with an air half-shrewd, half-sentimental; while Cheriton listened a little seriously. He knew very little of Alvar’s former life; perhaps because he had been too reticent to ask him questions; perhaps because Alvar found himself in the presence of a standard higher than he was accustomed to. Anyway, Nettie might have heard his present revelations.

“There was a time,” he said, sighing, “when I did not intend to come to England—when I had sworn to be for ever a Spaniard. Ah, my cousin, if you had seen my Luisa, you would not have wondered. I sang under her window; I went to mass that I might gaze on her.”

“Did you now? Foreign customs!” interposed Rupert; while Cherry laughed, though he felt they were hardly treating Alvar fairly.

“I knew not how to speak to her. She was never alone; and it was whispered that she was already betrothed. But one day she dropped her fan.”

“No, no—surely?” said Cherry.

“I seized it, I kissed it, I held it to my heart,” said Alvar, evidently enjoying the narration, “and I returned it. There were looks between us—then words. Ah, I lived in her smiles. We met, we exchanged vows, and I was happy!”

Rupert listened to this speech with amusement, which he could hardly stifle. It was inexpressibly ludicrous to Cheriton; but the fun was lost in the wonder whether Alvar meant what he said. This was neither like the joking sentiment nor the pretended indifference of an Englishman’s reference to such passages in his life; yet the memory evidently cost Alvar no pain. Jack sat, looking totally disgusted.

“At last,” Alvar went on, “we were discovered. Ah, and then my grandfather was enraged, and her parents, they refused their consent, since she was betrothed already. I am an Englishman, and I do not weep when I am grieved, but my heart was a stone. I despaired.”

“She must have been a horrid little flirt not to tell you she was engaged,” said Jack.

“She did not know it till we had met,” said Alvar.

“What awful tyranny!”

“Ah, and she was your only love!” sighed Rupert.

“No,” said Alvar simply, “I have loved others; but she was the most beautiful. But I submitted, and now I forget her!”

“Hm—the truest wisdom,” said Rupert.

Cherry was growing angry. He did not think that Rupert had any business to make fun of Alvar, and he was in a rage with Alvar for making himself ridiculous. That Alvar should tell a true love-tale with sentimental satisfaction to an admiring audience, or sigh over a flirtation which ought to have been a good joke, was equally distasteful to him. He burst out suddenly, with all his Lester bluntness, and in a tone which Alvar had hitherto heard only from Jack,—

“If you fellows are not all tired of talking such intolerable nonsense, I am. It’s too bad of you,” with a sharp look at Rupert. “I don’t see that it’s any affair of ours.”

“You’re not sympathetic,” said Rupert, as he moved away; for he was quite familiar enough with his cousins for such giving and taking.

Chapter Twelve.

The Oakby Ball.

“She went to the ball, and she danced with the handsome prince.”

That week of gaiety, so unusual to Oakby, was fraught with great results. The dim and beautiful dream of the future which had grown with Cheriton Lester’s growth became a definite purpose. Ruth Seyton was his first love, almost his first fancy. Whatever other sentiments and flirtations had come across him, had been as light as air; he had loved Ruth ever since he had taught her to ride, and since she had tried to teach him to dance. He had always found her ready to talk to him of the thoughts and aspirations which found no sympathy at home, and still more ready to tease him about them. She was part of the dear and sacred home affections, the long accustomed life which held so powerful a sway over him, and she was besides a wonderful and beautiful thing, peculiar to himself, and belonging to none of the others.

He had not seen her since the season when he had met her in town with Virginia; he did not know very much really about her, but she was kind and gracious to him, and he walked about in a dream of bliss which made every commonplace duty and gaiety delightful. Ruth was mixed up in it all, it was all in her honour; and though Cheriton’s memory at this time was not to be depended on, he had spirits for any amount of the hard work of preparation, and a laugh for every disagreeable.

He regarded his tongue as tied till after he had taken his degree in the summer—he hoped with credit; after which his prospects at the bar with Judge Cheriton’s interest, were somewhat less obscure than those of most young men. He had inherited some small fortune from his mother, and though he could not consider himself a brilliant match for Miss Seyton, he would then feel himself justified in putting his claims forward. Many spoke with admiration of the entire absence of jealousy which made him take the second place so easily; but Cheriton hardly deserved the praise, he had no room in his mind to think of himself at all.

His cousin Rupert was a more recent acquaintance of Ruth’s, though matters had gone much further between them. His attentions had not been encouraged by her grandmother, as, though his fortune was far superior to anything Cheriton possessed, his affairs were supposed to be considerably involved, and this was so far true, that it would have been very inconvenient to him to lay them open to inquiry at present. He hoped, however, in the course of a few months to be able so to arrange them, as to make it possible to apply to Ruth Seyton’s guardians for their consent.

Rupert was a lively, pleasant fellow, with a considerable regard for his Oakby cousins, though he had never considered it necessary to regulate his life by the Oakby standard, or concerned himself greatly with its main principles. His life in the army had of course been quite apart from Cheriton’s at school and college, and the latter did not care to realise how far the elder cousin, once a model in his eyes, had grown away from him. Nor did he regard him as a rival.

Ruth gave smiles and dances to himself, and he little guessed that while he did his duty joyously in other directions, looking forward to his next word with her, she had given his cousin a distinct promise, and engaged to keep it secret till such time as he chose to ask for her openly. Perhaps Rupert could not be expected to scruple at such a step, when he knew how entirely Ruth had managed her affairs for herself in all her intercourse with him.

And as for Ruth she rejoiced in the chance of making a sacrifice to prove her love; and whether the sacrifice was of other people’s feelings, her own ease and comfort, or of any little trifling scruples of conscience, ought, she considered, to be equally unimportant. “Love must still be lord of all,” but the love that loves honour more was in her eyes weak and unworthy. Faults in the hero only proved the strength of his manhood; faults in herself were all condoned by her love.

Ruth was clever enough to put into words the inspiring principles of a great many books that she read, and a great deal of talk that she heard, and vehement enough to act up to it. Rupert, who had no desire to be at all unlike other people, had little notion of the glamour of enthusiasm with which Ruth plighted him her troth at Oakby.

The Lesters had expended much abuse on the morning of their ball on the blackness of the oak-panels, which no amount of wax candles would overcome but what was lost in gaiety was gained in picturesqueness, and the Oakby ball, with its handsome hosts and its distinguished company, was long quoted as the prettiest in the neighbourhood. Perhaps it owed no little of its charm to the one in whose honour it was given. Alvar in society was neither silent nor languid; he was a splendid dancer, and played the host with a foreign grace that enchanted the ladies, old and young. At the dinner-party the night before he had been silent and stately, evidently fearing to commit himself before the country gentlemen and county grandees, who were such strange specimens of humanity to him; but with their daughters it was different, and those were happy maidens who danced with the stranger. He was of course duly instructed whom he was thus to honour, but he found time to exercise his own choice, and Virginia was conscious that he paid her marked attention.

Why waste more words? She had found her fate, and softened with home troubles, attracted by the superiority of the Lesters, and dazzled with the charm of a manner and appearance never seen before, yet suiting all her girlish dreams of heroic perfection, she was giving her heart away to the last man whose previous training or present character was likely really to accord with her own.

Though she had never been an acknowledged beauty, she could often look beautiful, and the subtle excitement of half-conscious triumph was not wanting to complete the charm.

“There never had been such a pleasant ball,” said Cheriton the next morning, as he was forced to hurry away to Oxford without a chance of discussing its delights.

“It is indeed possible to dance in England,” said Alvar.

“I think we made it out very well,” said Rupert, with a smile under his moustaches.

“There are balls—and balls,” said Ruth to her cousin. “You don’t always have black oak, or black Spanish eyes, eh, Queenie? or some other things?”

And Virginia blushed and said nothing.

Nettie, after all, had rejoiced in the partners of which her white frock and plaited hair had not defrauded her (she never should forgive her hair for coming down in Rupert’s very sight in the last waltz). Jack had not been so miserable as he expected; and Alvar found that it was possible to enjoy life in England, and that the position awaiting him there was not to be despised, even in the face of parting from his beloved Cheriton.

Rupert by no means considered Alvar as an amusing companion, nor Oakby in the dull season an amusing place, but it suited him now to spend his leave there, and suited him also to be intimate at Elderthwaite. Consequently he encouraged Alvar to make excuses for going there, and certainly in finding some interests to supply Cheriton’s place. He cultivated Dick Seyton, who was of an age to appreciate a grown-up man’s attentions, so that altogether there was more intercourse between the two houses than had taken place since the days of Roland.

Ruth was paying a long visit at Elderthwaite. One of her aunts—her grandmother’s youngest and favourite child—was in bad health, and Lady Charlton was glad to spend some time with her and to be free from the necessity of chaperoning her granddaughter. The arrangement suited Ruth exactly. She could make Elderthwaite her head-quarters, pay several visits among friends in the north, and find opportunities of meeting Rupert, whose regiment was stationed at York, and who was consequently within reach of many north-country gaieties.

For the present no gaieties were needed by either to enliven the wintry woods of Elderthwaite; they were as fairy land to the little brown maiden who, among their bare stems and withered ferns found, as she believed, the very flower of life, and had no memory for the bewitching smiles, the soft, half-sentimental laughter, the many dances, and the preference hardly disguised which were the food of Cheriton’s memory, and gave him an object which lightened every uncongenial task. These little wiles had effectually prevented every one from guessing the real state of the case. Rupert’s difficulty was that he never could be sure how far Alvar was unsuspicious. There was a certain blankness in his way of receiving remarks, calculated to prevent suspicion, which might proceed from entire innocence, or from secret observation which he did not choose to betray. But he was always willing to accompany Rupert to Elderthwaite, and in Cheriton’s absence found Virginia by far his most congenial companion.

The amount of confidence already existing between Ruth and her cousin really rendered the latter unsuspicious, and ready to further intercourse with Rupert, believing Ruth to be in a doubtful state of mind, half encouraging, and half avoiding his attentions. And Ruth was very cautious; she never allowed Rupert to monopolise her during his ostensible visits, and if any one at Elderthwaite guessed at their stolen interviews, it was certainly not Virginia.

The scheme of the Sunday class had answered pretty well. Virginia knew how to teach, and though her pupils were rough, the novelty of her grace and gentleness made some impression on them.

The parson did not interfere with her, and it never occurred to her that he was within hearing, till one Sunday, as she tried to tell them the simplest facts in language sufficiently plain to be understood, and sufficiently striking to be interesting, and felt, by the noise on the back benches, that she was entirely failing to do so, a head appeared at the dining-room door, and a stentorian voice exclaimed,—

“Bless my soul, you young ruffians; is this the way to behave to Miss Seyton? If any lad can’t show respect to a lady in my house, out he’ll go, and, by George he won’t come in again.”

This unwonted address produced an astonished silence; but it frightened the teacher so much more than her class, that her only resource was to call on the more advanced ones with great solemnity “to say their hymn to the vicar.”

Parson Seyton straightened himself up, and listened in silence to—

“There is a green hill far away,” stumbled through in the broadest Westmoreland; and when it was over, remarked,—

“Very pretty verses. Lads and lasses, keep your feet still and attend to Miss Seyton, and—mind—I can hear ye,” a piece of information with which Virginia at any rate could well have dispensed.

But she was getting used to her rough uncle, and was grateful to Cheriton for the advice that he had given her, and so she told Alvar one day when they were all walking down to the vicarage, with the ostensible purpose of showing Nettie some enormous mastiff puppies, the pride of the vicar’s heart.

In the absence of her own brothers Nettie found Dick Seyton an amusing companion, “soft” though he might be; she began by daring him to jump over ditches as well as she could, and ended by finding that he roused in her unsuspected powers of repartee. Nettie found the Miss Ellesmeres dull companions; they were a great deal cleverer than she was, and expected her to read story books, and care about the people in them. Rupert and Dick found that her ignorance made her none the less amusing, and took care to tell her so.

So everything combined to make intercourse easy; and this was not the first walk that the six young people had taken together.

“Your brother,” said Virginia to Alvar, “was very kind to me. I should never have got on so well but for his advice.”

“My brother is always kind,” said Alvar, his eyes lighting up. “I cannot tell you how well I love him.”

“I am sure you do,” said Virginia heartily, though unable to help smiling.

“But in what was it that he helped you?” asked Alvar.

Virginia explained how he had persuaded her uncle to agree to her wishes about teaching the children.

“To teach the ignorant?” said Alvar. “Ah, that is the work of a saint!”

“Oh, no! I like doing it. It is nothing but what many girls can do much better.”

“Ah, this country is strange. In Spain the young ladies remain at home. They go nowhere but to mass. If my sister were in Spain she would not jump over the ditches, nor run after the dogs,” glancing at Nettie, who was inciting Rolla to run for a piece of stick.

“Do you think us very shocking?” said Virginia demurely.

“Nay,” said Alvar. “These are your customs, and I am happy since they permit me the honour of walking by your side, and talking with you. You, like my brother, are kind to the stranger.”

“But you must leave off calling yourself a stranger. You too are English; can you not feel yourself so?”

“Yes, I am an Englishman,” said Alvar. “See, if I stay here, I have money and honour. My father speaks to me of a ‘position in the county.’ That is to be a great man as I understand it. Nor are there parties here to throw down one person, and then another. In Spain, though not less noble, we are poor, and all things change quickly, and I shall not stay always here in Oakby. I am going to London, and I see that I can make for myself a life that pleases me.”

“Yet you love Spain best?”

“I love Spain,” said Alvar, “the sunshine and the country; but I am no Spaniard. No, I stayed away from England because it was my belief that my father did not love me. I was wrong. I have a right to be here; it was my right to come here long ago, and my right I will not give up!”

He drew himself up with an indescribable air of hauteur for a moment, then with sudden softness,—

“And who was it that saw that right and longed for me to come, who opened his heart to me? It was Cheriton, my brother. He has explained much to me, and says if I learn to love England it will make him happy. And I will love it for his sake.”

“I hope so; soon you will not find it so dull.”

“Nay, it is not now so dull. Have I not the happiness of your sympathy? Could I be dull to-day?” said Alvar, with his winning grace.

Virginia blushed, and her great eyes drooped, unready with a reply.

“And there is your cousin,” she said, shyly; “he is a companion; don’t you think him like Cheriton?”

“Yes, a little; but Cheriton is like an angel, though he will not have me say so; but Rupert, he has the devil in his face. But I like him—he is a nice fellow—very nice,” said Alvar, the bit of English idiom sounding oddly in his foreign tones.

Virginia laughed, spite of herself.

“Ah, I make you laugh,” said Alvar. “I wish I had attended more to my English lessons; but there was a time when it was not my intention to come to England, and I did not study. I am not like Cheriton and Jack, I do not love to study. It is very pleasant to smoke, and to do nothing; but I see it is not the custom here, and it is better, I think, to be like my brother.”

“Some people are rather fond of smoking and doing nothing even in England.”

“It is a different sort of doing nothing. I hear my father or Cheriton rebuke Bob for doing nothing; but then he is out of doors with some little animal in a bag—his ferret, I think it is called—to catch the rats; or he runs and gets hot; that is what he calls doing nothing.”

There was a sort of bonhommie in Alvar’s way of describing himself and his surroundings, and a charm in his manner which, added to a pair of eyes full of fire and expression, and a great deal of implied admiration for herself, produced no small effect on Virginia.

She saw that he was affectionate and ready to recognise the good in his brothers, and she knew that he had been deprived of his due share of home affection. She did not doubt that he was willing himself to do and to be all that he admired; and then—he was not boyish and blunt like his brothers, nor so full of mischief as Cheriton, nor with that indescribable want of something that made her wonder at Rupert’s charm in the eyes of Ruth; she had never seen any one like him.

She glanced up in his face with eyes that all unconsciously expressed her thoughts, and as he turned to her with a smile they came up to the vicarage garden, at the gate of which stood Parson Seyton talking to Mr Lester, who was on horseback beside him.

“Ha, squire,” said the parson, “Monsieur Alvar is a dangerous fellow among the lasses. Black eyes and foreign ways have made havoc with hearts all the world over.”

Mr Lester looked towards the approaching group. Virginia’s delicate face, shy and eager under drooping feathers, and the tall, slender Alvar, wearing his now scrupulously English morning suit with a grace that gave it a picturesque appropriateness, were in front. Ruth and Rupert lingered a little, and Nettie came running up from behind, with Rolla after her, and Dick Seyton lazily calling on her to stop. Mr Lester looked at his son, and a new idea struck him.

“I wish Alvar to make acquaintances,” he said. “Nothing but English society can accustom him to his new life.”

Here Alvar saw them, and raised his hat as he came up.

“Have you had a pleasant walk, Alvar?” said his father, less stiffly than usual.

“It has been altogether pleasant, sir,” said Alvar, “since Miss Seyton has been my companion.”

Virginia blushed, and went up to her uncle with a hasty question about the puppies that Nettie was to see, and no one exchanged a remark on the subject; but that night as they were smoking, Rupert rallied Alvar a little on the impression he was making.

Alvar did not misunderstand him; he looked at him straight.

“I had thought,” he said, “that it was here the custom to talk with freedom to young ladies. I see it is your practice, my cousin.”

“Yes, yes. Besides, I’m an old friend, you see. Of course it is the custom; but consequences sometimes result from it—pity if they didn’t.”

“But it may be,” said Alvar, “that as my father’s son, it is expected that I should marry if it should be agreeable to my father?”

“Possibly,” said Rupert, unable to resist trying experiments. “Fellows with expectations have to be careful, you know.”

“I thank you,” said Alvar. “But I do not mistake a lady who has been kind to me, or I should be a coxcomb. Good-night, my cousin.”