Mrs Molesworth (continued 5)

“Yes, I see. I understand it all now,” said Mary, “and—”

“You do, but I don’t,” interrupted Mr Morpeth. “I want to know how you got out of the room. You could never have found the spring, after all, and in the dark too.”

Mary did not answer.

“Did you?” persisted her companion. “Come now, Miss Western, I do think I deserve a civil answer.”

“Well, then, I didn’t,” replied Mary.

“Do you call that a civil answer?” inquired Mr Morpeth.

“No,” said Mary, half laughing, “I don’t know that I do, but—”

“But what?”

“The truth is, I don’t want to tell you how I got out of the room, and I shall be exceedingly, infinitely obliged to you if you will say no more about the affair.”

“A short time ago you said you would be exceedingly obliged, or eternally grateful, or something of the kind if I would climb out of that window and find the housekeeper.”

“And so I was—so I am,” said Mary.

“Looks like it,” observed Mr Morpeth.

Then they walked on a few steps in silence, Mary feeling still uneasy, and somewhat conscience-smitten.

“Mr Morpeth,” she said at last, “what are you thinking?”

“Would you really like to know?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then, I was thinking that girls are all the same—very little satisfaction to be got out of any of them.”

“That means me, I suppose,” said Mary, slightly nettled.

“Perhaps,” replied Mr Morpeth, coolly. “You see, Miss Western, I did think you such a particularly sensible girl.”

“I dislike being considered a sensible girl more than anything you could say to me,” interrupted Mary.

“There you go!” said Mr Morpeth. “As I was saying, I thought you, till to-day, a very sensible girl—not like my sisters, who are forever flying out about something or other—and this afternoon you have really been so very uncertain and queer-tempered—”

“I know I have,” interrupted Mary again, stopping short as she spoke. “Mr Morpeth,” she went on, “we shall be meeting the others again directly. Will you be really so very kind as to say nothing more about this afternoon and all the trouble I have given you? I don’t think I am generally uncertain and queer-tempered, but I have really been a good deal worried and troubled lately, and—and I think if I could explain all you would say there was a little excuse for me.”

There was something very like the glistening of tears in the brown eyes; it was almost too dark to see, but the voice suggested enough to soften Mr Morpeth’s heart—far more boyish and impressionable than he would have liked to own to. A new idea struck him.

“Perhaps, after all, she had some reason for disliking that fellow,” he thought—“perhaps she knows more of him than she allows, and he has fallen in love with her—she is really awfully pretty—and is pestering her to marry him though she hates him. And her people are so poor, Mrs Greville says—”

He turned to Mary with a change of tone.

“Miss Western,” he said, earnestly, “I promise you to say no more about it, and I will do my best to prevent Mrs Greville or any one bothering you—I really will, and I’m sorry I said you were bad-tempered.”

“Thank you, thank you very much,” said Mary, cordially.

And in a few minutes they rejoined Mrs Greville and the Misses Morpeth, the former fortunately too much taken up with a more recent occurrence to have any thought to spare for Mary’s misadventures.

“Fancy, my dear,” she began, “what an escape you have had! Mr Cheviott has just left us; he has been showing us the pictures himself. So very kind and attentive! You have only just missed him.”

“How fortunate for me!” said Mary, dryly.

It was quite dark when they got back to Uxley, and the next morning Mr Western came over as arranged, and took Mary home again the same afternoon.

It seemed to her as if she had been away weeks or months instead of days. She was glad to be home again, and yet now, if she could have deferred her return, she would. Lilias asked her no questions, but still, either in Mary’s imagination or in fact, there was a tacit disappointment in her manner when she found Mary had nothing to tell.

“I was hopeful of some good result from what I had in my head,” thought Mary, “and Lily is so quick, though she had not the least idea of my doing such a wild thing. I fancy she knew by instinct that I was hopeful.”

“You did not hear anything of those people—the Romary people, I mean?” asked Lilias, at last, timidly, but with a sudden rush of colour into her face, which made Mary feel inclined to cry. It was about two days after she had come back.

“Yes,” she replied, “I did. I could not help hearing a good deal about them; they seem the staple subject of conversation in the neighbourhood.”

“About Captain Beverley—did you hear anything about him?” said Lilias, hastily. “Mary, you are concealing something from me—he is going to be married?”

“No, indeed. I heard nothing of that sort, Lily, I assure you. If I had, I would have told you about it at once; you know it is not my way to shirk such things—I am rather over-hasty the other way, I fear,” said Mary, with a little sigh. “And, indeed, I think I should almost have been glad to hear it. It would have been a stab and done with.”

“Mary, you are awfully hard,” said Lilias. Her voice was low and quivering.

“Hard!” repeated Mary, with amazement in her tone. She hard to Lilias! What fearful injustice—for a moment she felt too staggered to speak—how could Lilias misjudge her so? What a world it must be where such near friends could make such mistakes! Had she ever so misjudged any one? And, by an association of ideas which she herself could not have explained, her mind suddenly reverted to that never-to-be-forgotten scene in the Romary library, and the look on Mr Cheviott’s face which she had determined not to recognise as one of pain. Was it possible that in the cruel, almost insulting things she had said to him she had been influenced by some utter misjudgment of his motives?—was it possible that they were good and pure and unselfish?—could his cousin be a bad man, from whom he was chivalrously protecting Lilias’s innocence and inexperience? No, that was impossible. No man with Arthur’s honest eyes could be a bad man; but, if not this, what other motive could Mr Cheviott have that was not a mean and selfish one? Mary felt faint and giddy as these thoughts crowded upon her; the mere far-off suggestion of the tremendous injustice she might have done him, a suggestion born of the sharp pain of Lilias’s words to herself, seemed to confuse and stun her; all her ideas lost their proportion; all the data upon which her late actions and train of thought had been based suddenly failed her. And so swiftly had her mind travelled away from what had first started these misgivings that Lilias had spoken once or twice, in reply to her ejaculation, before the sense of her words reached her brain.

“Mary, Mary, listen to me. Don’t look so white and miserable,” Lilias was beseeching her. “I didn’t mean hard to me—I don’t even exactly mean hard to him—I mean hard about the whole, about the way it affects me. You don’t understand, and I don’t want you to think me a sentimental fool, but can’t you understand a little? Nothing would be so frightful to me as to have my faith in him destroyed, and, don’t you see, if it could be proved to me that he had been trifling with me, deceiving me, in fact—that all the time he had been caring for some one else more than for me—don’t you see how frightful it would be for me? It would be a stab indeed, but a stab that would kill the best part of me—all my faith and trust, Mary, do you see?”

“Yes,” said Mary, sadly, “I see.”

And she saw more—she saw that, for the sake of Lilias’s health and peace of mind, it was time that something should be done.

“She will grow morbid about it, and it will kill her youth and happiness, if not herself,” thought Mary. “I suppose it is on account of the isolated life we have had that this has taken such a terribly deep hold of her. For, after all, perhaps it is possible that, without being actually a bad, cruel man, Captain Beverley was not so much in earnest as she thought. I should call him a bad, cruel man, but I suppose the world would not—the world of which we know so little, as Mr Cheviott kindly reminded me! But what can I do for Lily?”

“Mary,” said Lilias, “what are you thinking about?”

“I am thinking that something must be done for you,” said Mary. “Lilias, I think it would be better for you to go away from home for a while.”

“Yes,” said Lilias. “I am almost beginning to think so myself. But I don’t see how to manage it, unless I advertise as a governess. We seem to have no friends.”

“By-the-bye,” said Mary, “that reminds me. Those Miss Morpeths at Uxley were talking about some Brookes who they think must be cousins of mother. I meant to have asked her about them, but I forgot.”

“They’re not likely to be much good to us, even if they are cousins of ours,” said Lilias, half bitterly. “None of mother’s rich relations have troubled themselves about her.”

And no more was said about the possible cousins just then.

A few days passed. Mary got back into home ways, from which even so short an absence as that of her visit to Uxley seemed to have separated her, and all was much as it had been before—much as it had been before that Sunday, now more than six months ago, when the little party of strangers had disturbed the equanimity of the Hathercourt congregation—before the still more fatal afternoon when Arthur Beverley had come over to see the Rector on business, and in his absence had stayed to tea with his wife and daughters in the Rectory drawing-room—much the same, but oh, how different! thought Lilias, wearily, as she tried her best to look as cheerful as of old—to take the same interest in daily life and its occurrences, which to a healthy mind is never wanting, however monotonous the daily life may be. She succeeded to some extent; she made herself believe that, at least, her trials were kept to herself, and allowed to shadow no other’s horizon. But she was mistaken. Her mother began to hope her child was “getting over it;” her father, who had but dimly suspected that anything was wrong, felt dimly relieved to hear her laugh, and joke, and tease as usual again; Alexa and Josey had their own private confabulations on the subject, deciding that either their eldest sister was a heartless flirt, or that, “between themselves, you know,” everything was satisfactorily arranged, though for some mysterious reason for a time to be kept secret, as any way it was clearly to be seen “that Lily was not in low spirits.” Only Mary, ignorant as she was and professed herself to be of all such misfortunes as are involved by falling in or out of love, was undeceived.

“Lilias is trying her best, but she is breaking her heart all the same,” she said to herself. “If only I could get her away for a while among new people and new scenes, there might be a chance for her.”

In the end it was kind Mrs Greville again who came to the rescue, and that, to Mary’s great relief, without any intervention of hers. Her one piece of concealment from Lilias had cost her dear; she had no wish to try again any independent action. What Mrs Greville did or did not suspect, Mary could not tell, but had their kindly friend known all, she could not have acted with greater consideration and tact. She was going to town for a fortnight, she wrote, most unexpectedly, to consult a famous doctor about some new symptoms in her husband’s chronic complaint. She was hopeful, yet fearful of the result. Should it be unfavourable, she would find it hard to “keep up” before her husband, away from home and all her friends. Would Mrs Western spare one of the girls to go with them and not exactly limit the time of her absence, as in case the doctor thought well of Mr Greville they might go on to Hastings, or somewhere for a month? Lilias, or Mary either, would be of the greatest comfort to her, but if she might venture to say so—Mary was too sensible to be offended—she would, if anything, prefer Lilias. She was such a special favourite of Mr Greville, and it was he, of course, who was to be the one most considered just now.

“Well, girls?” said Mrs Western, inquiringly, for there was silence when Mrs Greville’s note was first read in the conclave of three. Silence on Lilias’s part of mingled relief and repugnance. On Mary’s part the silence of caution, of fear lest her intense anxiety that Lilias should fall in with Mrs Greville’s proposal should injure its own cause by impulsive advocacy. “Well girls?”

“I think Mary had better go,” said Lilias.

“But you see what Mrs Greville says about preferring you,” suggested Mrs Western, gently, with some faint, instinctive notion of what was passing in her second daughter’s heart.

“Yes, but that’s rubbish,” said Lilias, the colour rising slightly in her cheeks. “Mr Greville likes us both. It is only that I chatter more than Mary, and, like all quiet, indolent men, he likes to be amused with the least possible trouble to himself. Mary is not so amusing, perhaps, because there is generally a large sprinkling of sense in her remarks, and even when, on rare occasions, she mixes it up with nonsense it is more fatiguing to separate the two than to take it all in comfortably, as pure, unadulterated nonsense like mine.”

“You are certainly giving us a specimen of it just now,” said Mary, parenthetically. “But seriously, mamma,” she went on, “I think we should consider what Mrs Greville says about preferring Lilias. I am speaking partly selfishly, for though I should have liked it well enough at another time, just now I should not like it at all. It would unsettle me altogether—I have just got all the things I want to do before the summer nicely arranged. Don’t be vexed with me or think me very selfish, Lilias,” for her sister was regarding her with an expression she did not quite understand.

To her surprise, Lilias, by way of answer, threw her arms around her and hugged her violently.

“Think you selfish! Mother just listen to her,” she exclaimed. “Fancy me thinking Mary selfish.” Then she hugged her again, and Mary felt there were tears in her eyes. “Selfish indeed! No, but I wouldn’t say as much for your truthfulness, you little humbug! Do you think I don’t see through all your unselfish story-telling,” she added in a lower voice.

“Then don’t disappoint me,” whispered Mary, and when at last she disengaged herself from Lilias’s embrace, she said aloud, quietly indeed, but firmly enough to carry her purpose, “it is not story-telling, it is true. I should not, in the very least degree, enjoy leaving home just now. And, what is more, I just won’t go, so, dear friends, you see my mind’s made up.”

And so it was settled, to be followed as was inevitable with these girls when any scheme of the kind was in prospect, by a solemn and momentous discussion as to ways and means—in other words, as to dresses and bonnets and ribbons! But Lilias brightened up wonderfully under the impetus of this discussion, and seemed, for the time, so like her old self that Mary began to take heart about her, and to hope everything from the change in prospect.

Chapter Eighteen.

What Happened in the Primrose Lane.

“Wee mortal wights whose lives and fortunes bee To common accidents still open layd, Are bownd with commun bond of frailtee To succour wretched wights...” Faery Queen.

It was within a few days of Lilian’s going. The bustle of preparation—of “doing up” the two white muslin evening dresses, the joint property of herself and Mary, but which Mary insisted on resigning to her sister; of “turning” the black silk skirt which had already done good service; and—most important of all—the cutting out and making the one new dress which the family finances had been able to afford—all was over. Everything was ready, and only not packed because it was a pity to crush the garments prematurely. Lilias’s temporary excitement, now that there was nothing more to do, was already on the wane. She was gentleness and sweetness itself, but with a look in her eyes that Mary did not like to see, and a clingingness in her manner which made both mother and sister wish that the day for her going were actually come and the parting, such as it was, fairly over.

It was a lovely afternoon—spring was really coming, or thinking of it anyway.

“The birds are talking about their new houses, aren’t they, Mary?” said little Francie, as she trotted along beside her sister. They had walked part of the way to Withenden with Lilias and Josey, who were bent on an expedition to the one village shop in quest of some wool for their father’s next winter socks, the knitting of which was to be Lilias’s “fancy work” while away from home. Mary had been glad when the idea struck Lilias, as her practical belief in the efficacy of a good long walk for low spirits of every kind was great.

“I wish I could go with you,” she had said to Lily, “but some one must take Francie out, and Alexa and Josey always get into scrapes unless one of us is with them. You had better take Josey, she is always ready for a long walk, and Alexa may potter about the garden with mother, just what she likes.”

“Very well,” said Lilias, “but you and Francie might come part of the way with us. Josey is considerably more agreeable out of doors than in the house, but two hours and a half of her, unalloyed, is about as much as I can stand. I am tired, Mary, horribly tired—‘not in my feet,’ as Francie says, but in my own self; and oh, I’m so sorry to have been such a plague to you all this time—it makes me feel as if I couldn’t go away.”

Her voice was dangerously tremulous, and of all things Mary dreaded a break-down, now at the last.

“Now, Lilias,” she said, in what Lilias sometimes called her “make-up-your-mind-to-it” tone, “you are not to begin talking rubbish. Do you hear, child? If you want to please me, there’s just one thing to do—go away with Mrs Greville and try to enjoy yourself. This will be the most unselfish thing you can do; and even if you feel at first as if you couldn’t enjoy yourself, it will come—you’ll see if it doesn’t. Now let us set off at once, or you and Josey will not be back by tea-time.”

They skirted the Balner woods in going, but coming home, Mary, not being pressed for time, yielded to Francie’s entreaty that they might choose the primrose lane, thereby saving herself a good deal of future discussion, as nothing but “ocular demonstration” would convince the child that there might not be a few primroses out, “just two or three, perhaps, as it was such a werry fine day.”

“But it is six weeks from now, at least, before they ever come out, Francie, dear,” said Mary, for the twentieth time; “they are not like little boys and girls, you see, who are there in the house all ready to come out the minute the sun shines and the fine weather comes. The primroses have all their growing to do first, and they need the sun and the spring rain to help them to grow, every year.”

“But is them never the same primroses?” said Francie, in some perplexity. “Is them new every year—never the same?”

“No,” said Mary, “they are never the same.”

But as she said the words their sound struck her. “Never the same,” nay, indeed, say rather, “ever the same,” she thought. ”‘Pale primroses,’ as pretty Perdita called them three hundred years ago! They must have looked up in our great-great-great-grandmothers’ faces just as they do in ours now—just as they will, centuries hence, smile at the Francies that will be looking for them then. What a strange world it is! Ever the same and never the same, over and over again.”

“What are you thinking about, Mary? Tell me,” said Francie.

“Nothing you would understand, dear,” Mary was saying, when the child interrupted her.

“Mary,” she said, “I hear such a funny noise, don’t you? It’s like something going very fast—oh! Mary, couldn’t it be one of the wild bulls running after us?”

Francie grew white with fear. Mary, hastily assuring her it could not be a wild bull, stood still to listen. Yes, Francie was right—there certainly was a sound to be heard of something rapidly nearing them, and the sound somehow made Mary’s heart beat faster.

“It can only be a horse,” she said; “I dare say its nothing wrong.”

But her face and actions belied her words. There was a gate close by the spot where they stood. Mary unlatched it, and drew Francie within its shelter. Not a minute too soon—the rushing, tearing sound grew nearer and nearer, but a turn in the lane hid the cause of it till close upon them.

Then—“Oh! Mary,” cried Francie, “it’s a horse that’s runned away—and look, Mary, there’s a lady on it. Oh! I’m sure she will be tumbled off,” and Francie burst out sobbing with mingled fear, pity, and excitement.

It was too true—though it all seemed to Mary to pass in an instantaneous flash—the horse dashed past the gate—how glad Mary afterwards felt that she had placed herself and her little sister too far out of sight for their presence to have been the cause of what happened—flew down the lane till an open gate and a cart just coming out of a field seemed to bring its terror to a climax. It swerved suddenly, how or why exactly no one could tell, and the slight, swaying figure in the saddle was seen to fall—heavily, lifelessly to the ground—but, thank Heaven, thought Mary, clear of the stirrup. There was not added to the spectacle, terrible enough as it was, the unspeakable horror of a prostrate figure dragged along the ground—of a fair face battered beyond recognition upon the stones.

No one seemed to be at hand to give any assistance—the horse continued for a while his headlong course down the lane; then, after the manner of its kind, having done all the mischief it could, stopped short, and in a few minutes was quietly nibbling the grass as if nothing had happened.

But Mary gave little attention to the horse, her whole thoughts flew to the motionless figure lying there in a dark heap, where it had been thrown—so still, so dreadfully still—that was all that Mary could distinguish, as, overcoming the first natural but selfish instinct which would have made her shrink away from a sight possibly of horror, certainly of sadness, she ran down the lane, closely followed by little Francie, who would not be left behind.

“Is the poor lady killed, Mary, does you think?” she said, when her sister had stooped to examine the face half hidden by the long habit skirt which had dropped over it in the fall.

“Run back, Francie. Stay over there by the gate, and be sure to tell me if you see any one coming. No, I don’t think she’s killed, but she’s very badly hurt, I fear,” said Mary, “and, oh, Francie, I know who she is. She’s that pretty lady that came to church that Sunday—do you remember? Mr Cheviott’s sister,” she murmured to herself. “How strange!”

Francie had already run off to her post of observation. Mary, afraid though she was of further complicating the unknown injury by anything she might ignorantly do to help poor Alys, yet could not bear to see the fair head lying on the careless ground. Slowly and cautiously she raised it on to her own knee, supporting the girl’s shoulder with one arm, while with the other she tenderly wiped away the dust and grass stains disfiguring the pallid cheek. The girl’s eyes were closed, to all appearances she was still perfectly unconscious, but in the moving, carefully though it was done, a slight spasm of pain contracted her features for a moment. Mary shivered at the sight.

“It may be her spine that is injured,” she thought to herself, “her arms are not broken, and I don’t think her head is hurt. Oh dear, oh dear, if only some one would come! If I had some water, or some eau de cologne, or anything—I don’t think I shall ever again laugh at Alexa for carrying about a scent-bottle in her pocket. Francie,” she called, softly. Francie was beside her in a moment.

“Nobody’s coming,” she whispered. “Oh, Mary, couldn’t I run home and fetch somebody? The horse wouldn’t run after me, would it?” with a little shudder of fright.

“You good little girl,” said Mary, approvingly. “No, dear, I don’t think you could run home. It is too far for you to go alone. But let me see—there must be some cottage or farm-house close to—Hilyar’s cottages are quite half a mile off—”

“Captain Bebberly lived near here, ’afore he wented away,” suggested Francie. “I came this way to his house once.”

“Of course,” exclaimed Mary, in a tone of relief, “the back way to the Edge Farm cannot be a quarter of a mile off. Look, Francie, dear, run back to the lane, and run on about as far as you can see from this gate. Then you’ll see another gate on your left—the other side from this—that gate will take you into a field which you must cross, and go through a stile, and then you’ll see Captain Beverley’s,”—even now she seemed to shrink a little from pronouncing the name—“Captain Beverley’s house. Go in and tell the first person you meet to come as quick as he can, and bring some water. Tell him it is Miss Cheviott that is hurt, and tell him where we are. Quick, darling, as quick as ever you can.”

Francie lingered for one instant.

“There won’t be none dogs, will there, Mary?” she said, her voice trembling a little.

“I think not,” said Mary. “And if there are, Francie, you must ask God not to let them hurt you. That’s what being brave means, dear.”

She said it, feeling that all her own nerve and bravery were being called for. If only she could have run across the fields with Francie—but to sit here, able to do nothing, watching the terrible stillness of the girl’s face—

It seemed hours before there came any change. At last a faint, gasping sigh reached Mary’s ears—a slight, very slight quiver ran through the form she held so tenderly, and Alys Cheviott opened her eyes—opened them, alas! but to close them again with a quick consciousness of pain.

“My back,” she whispered—“oh, my back! what have I done to it? Oh!”

Then she lay quiet for a minute or two, Mary not daring to move or speak—scarcely to breathe, till again Miss Cheviott opened her eyes.

“Where am I?” she said. “What has happened? Who is holding me? Laurence, is it you? I cannot move; it hurts me so. Where is Gypsy?”

“Gypsy is eating grass very comfortably in the lane,” said Mary, trying to speak in a cheerful, matter-of-fact tone. “It is I that am holding you, Miss Cheviott—I, Mary Western. Gypsy was very naughty; she threw you off, and I was just a little way behind and saw you.”

“Gypsy threw me off,” repeated Alys, slowly. “Oh, yes, I remember; she ran away.” A little shudder ran through her. “It is my own fault. Laurence said she was too fresh for me to-day. And you are Miss Western—how strange!”

“Mary Western,” the girl corrected.

“Yes, I know; I know your voice. How strange it should be you! I am very thankful. How long might I not have lain here without any one knowing? But my back—oh! Mary, what can I have done to my back?”

“I hope it is only strained, or bruised, perhaps,” said Mary, very gently, touched by Miss Cheviott’s unconscious use of her first name. “I have sent to the farm—Edge Farm—your cousin’s house, you know, for help; we are close to it.”

“Oh, yes, I know. I wanted to see it, and I thought a long ride would take it out of Gypsy. Poor Arthur, how sorry he will be if I am badly hurt!”

Something in her words struck Mary. Could it be true, then, that Captain Beverley was engaged to this girl? But what a time for such speculations! Mary checked herself, with a feeling almost of horror.

“What can have become of Thwaites? My groom, I mean,” said Alys, suddenly. “He was close behind me when Gypsy started off.”

“He must have taken a wrong turn,” said Mary. “Most likely he dared not follow too close, and must have lost sight of you. I wish some one would come. Do you think I could hold you more easily anyhow?”

“Oh, no; no, thank you, I mean,” said Alys, nervously. “Don’t move; that’s the only thing you can do for me. Don’t move the very least, please. Miss Western.”

“I won’t, dear, not the very least,” said Mary, soothingly. “And she is seven miles from home,” she added to herself, in consternation.

Alys’s eyes closed again, and she grew so white that Mary feared she was going to faint.

“What shall I do?” she thought, almost in despair, when, to her indescribable relief, a sound of approaching footsteps made itself heard. She dared not even turn her head to see whose they were, but soon the new-comers stood before her. They were two men from the farm, one, the bailiff, the choice of whom had led to Arthur’s first introduction at the Rectory, a kindly middle-aged man, who looked down on the sad little group before him with fatherly concern.

“Shall I try to lift the young lady, do you think, miss?” he whispered to Mary, but Alys caught the words.

“No, no,” she moaned, “don’t move me. Whatever you do, don’t move me.”

It seemed to Mary that her head was beginning to wander. She glanced up at the bailiff in perplexity.

“She must be moved, miss,” he replied, with decision, in answer to her unspoken question, “and the longer we wait the fainter-like she’ll get. Not to speak of catching rheumatics from the damp, which would be making a bad job a worser, for sure.”

Mary bent her face over Alys’s.

“Dear Miss Cheviott—Alys,” she whispered, “I fear we must move you.”

Alys shivered, but resisted no longer.

“Hold my hand, then—all the way,” she murmured, without opening her eyes.

“I can carry her quite as easy as on a shutter, and it’s less moving in the end. My missus’ll have the downstairs bed all ready,” said the bailiff, encouragingly. “But first, miss, we brought a drop of brandy, as the Captain left, and some water. Will you please try for to get her to swallow a spoonful before we move her, poor lamb?”

With some difficulty Mary succeeded. Then came the lifting her, a terrible business, notwithstanding the infinite tenderness of the stalwart bailiff. And all along the lane, many times Mary would have thought her unconscious of all that was passing, but for the convulsive pressure of the little hand that clung to hers so helplessly.

Half way up the lane the sad little cortège was reinforced by Francie, still out of breath, and with great pity shining out of her big blue eyes, and further on still by. Thwaites, leading his own horse and naughty Gypsy, now perfectly subdued and serene.

“He must go for a doctor,” said Mary, at once, when she caught sight of him. “Tell him so,” she added, turning to the young farm servant who had accompanied the bailiff. “Let me see—yes, Mr Brandreth at Withenden is the nearest.”

“That’s him as we always have at the Hall,” said Thwaites, catching the words; and apparently thankful to be told what to do, he gave over Gypsy to the young man’s charge, and mounting his own horse, was off in a moment.

The “down-stairs bed” was ready, and clean and comfortable enough to make Mary rejoice that the accident had not happened in a still more isolated part of the country.

“You are very brave,” she whispered, when at last the agony of the movement was over, and Alys, with death-white cheeks and quivering lips, was laid in the easiest position their ignorance could achieve.

A faint smile flickered over the poor girl’s face.

“Am I?” she whispered. “I am so glad. Please tell Laurence—and—Mary, kiss me, please. Somehow I have always wanted to love you both—her too—she is so pretty,” she murmured, softly. “And fancy my being in Arthur’s house like this.”

Then for a while she lay silent, and Mary’s thoughts turned to her own position. What should she do? She was most anxious to get home as soon as possible; it was already past Francie’s tea-time, and before long her mother would be getting alarmed. Besides, how more than disagreeable it would be for her to meet Mr Cheviott again! How could she tell how he might look upon her presence beside his sister, and what she had done to help poor Alys?

She got up from her seat by the bed-side, and with soft steps moved towards the door. But, faint as it was, the sound roused Alys.

“Where are you going, Miss Western?” she said.—“Oh, you are not going away from me are you? You will not leave me alone here—oh, do at least wait till the doctor comes, and hear what he says.”

Mary felt that it would be barbarous to refuse.

“No,” she replied, “I won’t go away if you would like me to stay; I will only just send a note to my mother to tell her where I am, otherwise she will wonder what has become of us. I will get Mrs Wills to send a man with my little sister and the note to mamma.”

“Oh, yes, your little sister—I remember seeing her standing by,” said Alys, dreamily; “I am so sorry to trouble you so. How good you are! Please come and sit beside me. Couldn’t Mrs Wills get you some tea?”

“Would you like some?” said Mary, eagerly catching at anything to break the weary suspense of waiting for the doctor’s arrival.

“I am very thirsty—yes, I think I should,” said Alys, faintly; so Mary hurried off to write her note, and bespeak some tea, though when ready, it was hard work to get Alys to swallow it. She seemed to shrink from the slightest movement with increasing and indescribable terror.

“It will be impossible to move her to Romary,” thought Mary with dismay. “What will be done? I wonder if the groom will have the sense to fetch Mr Cheviott as well as the doctor? I almost wish he would come now—it seems such a responsibility. And if only the doctor would come!”

After all, Dr Brandreth came much sooner than could reasonably have been expected, long as the hour and a half or so of waiting seemed to Mary, for Thwaites met him on the way to Withenden. Mary had just gone, at the doctor’s request, to borrow a pair of scissors from Mrs Wills, to cut off poor Alys’s riding habit, so as to save her all possible suffering, when, passing the open front door on her return, the sound of wheels suddenly stopping at the gate made her pause. Yes, it was Mr Cheviott. Mary hesitated. What should she do? She had no time to decide. Mr Cheviott was at the door before she had thoroughly taken in his arrival.

Whether he was prepared to find her there or not, she could not tell. His face certainly expressed no surprise, but then, again, it expressed nothing, and her first quick instinct of pity and concern for the terrible anxiety he must be enduring died suddenly away. Never had she seen his face harder or colder—“more insolently arrogant,” she said to herself, “as if he were indignant that accidents should happen to any one belonging to him as well as to other poor human beings.”

Her indignation calmed her trepidation, and she stood her ground coolly. Mr Cheviott raised his hat. Mary bowed.

“May I ask—” he began. “I suppose,” he went on, “it is here Miss Cheviott is?”

“Yes,” said Mary, but not moving aside so as to let him pass. “She is here. The doctor is with her?”

“But I can go in?” he exclaimed, with unmistakable eagerness and anxiety in his tone now. “She is surely not very seriously injured—not—not—”

His lips grew white, and then instantly a dark red flush rose to his brow, as if ashamed of any signs of agitation. Mary was somewhat mollified.

“I think,” she said, gently, “I had better tell her first that you have come, to prevent her being startled. She is quite conscious,” she added, “and I hope it is nothing very serious, but the doctor has not said anything yet. There are no bones broken—it is her back she complains of.”

“Her back,” repeated Mr Cheviott, the red flush fading away to a sallow whiteness—“her back! Good God, I trust not!”

“It may be only severely bruised,” said Mary, finding herself, despite her determination, already assuming the rôle of comforter. “I will tell her you are here if you will wait a moment.” And when, in a minute or two, Mr Cheviott was summoned to his sister, to his astonishment it was to find her supported in Mary’s arms, while Dr Brandreth was skilfully disentangling the wisps of muddy cloth from the poor girl’s form.

“That will do—beautifully,” he was saying. “Now, Miss Mary, lift her the least atom on the right side—that won’t hurt you, my dear. Good-day, Mr Cheviott,” for the first time noticing his presence. “A nice piece of work this, isn’t it? Still not so bad as it might have been, by a long way.”

“Laurence,” said Alys, faintly, “it was all my own fault. You said Gypsy was too fresh.”

“Hush, my darling. Never say any more about that part of it,” said Mr Cheviott, in tones that Mary could scarcely have believed were his.

“Kiss me, and say you forgive me, then, and I won’t,” entreated Alys.

He could not refuse, even though in stooping to kiss her he could not avoid his head’s brushing the sleeve of Mary’s dress. But motionless as she sat, he was conscious, through the thick grey tweed, of a sort of thrill of shrinking—an instinctive withdrawal from his slightest touch.

“How that girl must hate me,” he could not help thinking, even then.

“She has been so good and kind,” whispered Alys. “Laurence, you will thank her, won’t you?”

Chapter Nineteen.

Coals of Fire.

Benedick.—“Fair Beatrice, I thank you for your pains.” Beatrice.—“I took no more pains for those thanks than you took pains to thank me.” Much Ado about Nothing.

An hour or so later on this eventful afternoon—or evening, rather, it was fast growing dark—a cloaked and hooded figure was to be seen hastening along the lane which was the shortest way from Hathercourt Rectory to the Edge Farm. The figure had good need to be cloaked and hooded, in the waterproof sense of the term, and goloshed too, for the beautiful spring day had ended in, superficially speaking, very unbeautiful rain. It came pouring down—the footpath was a mass of mud already, and before long threatened to be indistinguishable from the road. Lilias—for it was she—had begun by picking her steps, but soon gave this up in despair. It was all she could do to get on at all, laden as she was with a rather cumbersome parcel under her cloak. But her step nevertheless was light and buoyant, and her face and eyes, had there been any one there to see them, or any light to see them by, would have told of eagerness and some excitement, instead of fatigue and depression, as, taking into consideration her seven miles’ walk to Withenden and back, and her present uncomfortable surroundings, might not unreasonably have been expected.

“It is horrible of me—I don’t understand myself,” she said, suddenly, aloud. Then she hurried on faster than before, pursuing, nevertheless, the same train of thought. “Why should I feel more buoyant and hopeful than I have done for long, just when such a terrible thing—or what may prove such a terrible thing—has happened to that poor girl? I know I am sorry for her—and even if I were not, I should be sorry to think how it will grieve Arthur; but yet—ah, yes, it is just the feeling of having, as it were, something to do with him again—of perhaps hearing him spoken of and of seeing the house where he was so lately. His own house?”

She had never been inside the farm-house. Often they had passed it in their walks with Arthur, and more than once he had tried to persuade the Rectory family to organise some sort of picnic party to his bachelor quarters; but to this Mrs Western had so decidedly objected that the project had never been fulfilled. So Lilias was rather in the dark, mentally as well as physically, as to the exact approach to the front door, if front door there was to a house whose three entrances were all much on a par, and in the end she hit upon the one which Mrs Wills decidedly considered the back door. It had the advantage, however, in the present state of the weather, of being near the kitchen, so her rap was answered without delay.

“My sister is still here, is she not? Miss Western—Miss Mary Western, I mean,” she explained, in reply to Mrs Wills’s mute look of bewildered inquiry.

“Oh, yes, miss, to be sure she is, and what we should have done without her I don’t know, and what we shall do now if she—”

She was interrupted.

“Shut that door, if you please, Mrs Wills,” a man’s voice called out, “it sets all the other doors in the house rattling,” and from an inner room Mr Cheviott came out to enforce his directions. He had almost shut the door in Lilias’s face before he perceived her. Then—“I beg your pardon,” he said instinctively, but, dim as the light was, Lilias felt certain he had recognised her.

“He will think he is going to have the whole Western family down upon him,” she thought, with a smile. Then she came forward a little.

“I am Miss Western,” she said, calmly, and something in the voice, a certain cheery yet half-defiant ring, reminded her hearer of Mary—he had never come into personal contact with Lilias before. “I have come for my sister—it was too stormy for my mother to come out, but she was getting uneasy, and my little sister could not quite explain. I hope Miss Cheviott is not seriously hurt?”

“Thank you,” he replied, “we can hardly tell. Will you be so good as to come in, and I will tell your sister you are here.”

Lilias came in, and depositing her parcel—bundle, rather—on the table, stood, nothing loth, beside the welcome blaze of the kitchen fire.

“How queer it is,” she thought, “Mary seems quite established here! In the very heart of the enemy’s camp, according to her opinion, at least, for she has always persisted that Mr Cheviott’s interference was to be blamed for it all. I don’t think it was. Arthur would not be so fond of him if he were that sort of man, and besides,” with an unconscious slight elevation of her pretty head, “he is not the sort of man to be interfered with.”

Then she glanced round the kitchen—a pleasant, old-fashioned farm-house kitchen, not unpicturesque as seen in the flickering firelight, alternately lighting up and hiding the dark rafters and the quaintly-carved oak settle, where for so many years old John Birley had sat and smoked his pipe, and mused on the fallen fortunes of his house. The last of the Hathercourt Beverleys, Mawde’s great-great-grandson, to have come down to the bent, blue-stockinged old farmer, whose figure, hobbling into church, Lilias had been familiar with ever since she could remember.

“Fancy Mawde Beverley, beautiful and refined as she almost certainly was—the Maynes of Southcote are said to have been very beautiful—fancy her looking forward along the centuries to that old rough man as one of her great-grandchildren!” thought Lilias. “If she could have looked forward to Arthur—what a difference! Life is a very queer thing—queer and sad too, I suppose. Still I am glad to be alive, and to take my chance of the goods and bads.”

Unconsciously to herself, hope was re-asserting itself in Lilias’s heart; she could not have spoken or felt thus a few days previously.

Her soliloquy was soon interrupted.

“Lily,” exclaimed a voice behind her, and turning round Lilias saw Mary entering the kitchen. “I could hardly believe Mr Cheviott when he said you were here,” Mary went on. “And all alone, too! Lily, I do believe he thinks us all half mad!” She gave a little laugh, but checked it suddenly.

Lilias looked at her in surprise.

“Why should he?” she said, quickly. “I don’t see anything particularly mad in my coming down to look after you. I am your elder sister. Mother could not come. I don’t think you are quite fair on that man, Mary.”

“Long may you think so,” said Mary, sarcastically.

Lilias’s face flushed.

“Mary,” she said, nervously, “you don’t mean that—that there is anything indelicate in my coming here, to this house? It did not strike me so, or—”

“Indelicate!—no, of course not. It is very, very good of you to have come,” said Mary, warmly; “only you see, I was so astonished.”

“But what were you intending?—what were you going to do?” said Lilias. “You can’t stay here all night without clothes, and you sent no message. We didn’t know what to think.”

“No,” said Mary, “I was just beginning to wonder what I should do. At first, you see, I was so taken up about that poor girl I could think of nothing else.”

“But she is not badly hurt,” interrupted Lilias; “you were laughing a minute ago; you don’t seem in bad spirits.”

“I don’t know,” said Mary, her voice saddening. “I think I was laughing out of a sort of nervousness. I really do not know whether she is much hurt or not, and the doctor either would not or could not say. I suppose to-morrow will show. But, Lilias, what am I to do? She cannot bear the idea of my leaving her.”

“Has she no maid with her?” asked Lilias.

“Yes, but she is a mere girl who has not been long with her. And the old housekeeper, Mrs Golding,” continued Mary, with a curious tone in her voice, “has sprained her ankle or something and cannot leave Romary. It would seem almost barbarous for me to leave her—Alys—Miss Cheviott, I mean—to-night, any way.”

“Don’t then; there is no objection to your staying under the circumstances. Why do you look so unhappy about it?” said Lilias. “Is it all your dislike to her brother?”

“No,” said Mary with some hesitation, “I don’t think that would affect me one way or the other, and as her brother, he is some degrees less odious than I could have expected. No, my feeling is, under the circumstances, Lilias, an intense dislike to putting them—him, I should say, in a position of obligation to us. It is like forcing him to be civil to us.”

“And why shouldn’t he be?” said Lilias, “it is much better than forcing him to be uncivil to us, anyway.”

“I don’t know that it is,” said Mary, smiling faintly. “I can’t altogether explain my feeling, but it is most uncomfortable altogether. He hates my staying as much as I do, and yet I can’t do a cruel thing. Why, I stayed up three nights in Bevan’s cottage when Jessie broke her leg, without a second thought?”

“Of course you did,” said Lilias, “and that’s the right way to put it. Forget all about her being Mr Cheviott’s sister, and just think of doing a kind thing. Mary, it’s very queer, but somehow it seems as if my troubles had, in a sense, done you more harm than me. Your sympathy for me has made you morbid.”

“Perhaps so,” replied Mary. “And I dare say you are right. But all the same,” she added, “I am not fond of ‘coals of fire;’ there always seems to me something mean in heaping them on.”

“But suppose you have no choice between that and letting your enemy hunger?” asked Lilias. “But ‘enemy’ and ‘coals of fire’—what absurdly strong expressions—only you will have it poor Mr Cheviott is the cause of it all.”

“Poor Mr Cheviott!” repeated Mary.

“I must be going,” said Lilias. “George is coming to meet me; he was to start just half an hour after me, so I cannot miss him, and I don’t want your friend to offer to see me home, so good-night, dear. You’ll find all you want in that bundle, and a good deal you won’t want, for mother would put in all manner of things she thought might be useful for Miss Cheviott—from cotton-wool to a hop pillow, and no doubt you have got all you want from Romary.”

“No,” said Mary, “that maid has no sense, and forgot nearly everything she should have remembered. I am very glad of your olla podrida, Lily. Good-night, and thank you.”

They kissed each other, and Lilias went out again into the rain and the darkness. Mary came back again into the kitchen, wishing, “dreadfully,” as the children say, that she could have gone with her sister. She stood by the fire feeling dull and lonely, and, to tell the truth, though the Rectory was only a mile away, rather homesick! She was tired, too, which state of things has more to do with our moods of depression than we, in youth anyway, take into sufficient account.

“I must go back to Miss Cheviott,” she said to herself; “how I do hope the doctor will think her better to-morrow. I may as well see what Lily has brought. How kind poor mother is!”

She was turning to examine the bundle when the half-closed door was pushed open and Mr Cheviott came in.

“My sister seems to be falling asleep,” he said. “Perhaps it will be as well if we leave her for a little. I promised her you would go back in half an hour, and in the mean time—why, has your sister gone, and alone?”

“My brother was to meet her, thank you,” said Mary. “And you? Can you—are you really going to stay with Alys all night?”

“Yes,” replied Mary. “My sister is going to explain to my mother.”

“It is exceedingly kind of you,” said Mr Cheviott; “but really—I feel ashamed.”

“You need not feel so,” said Mary, quietly. “I have—well not often, perhaps, but certainly several times—done far more for the poor people about here, and would do so again at any moment for any one in trouble.”

Mr Cheviott was silent. Then his glance happening to fall on a basket standing unopened on a side table, he started and crossed the room to where it stood.

“I am forgetting,” he said; and then, taking a small knife out of his pocket, he proceeded to cut the strings which fastened it, and to lift out its contents. It had all been a pious fiction of Alys’s about fancying she would go to sleep better if left alone. She had been making herself unhappy about Mary’s having had nothing to eat all the evening, and a basket of provisions having been sent from Romary by Mrs Golding, she had begged her brother to do the honours of the farm-house by unpacking them for Miss Western’s benefit. She was full, too, of a secret wish that somehow or other a better understanding might be brought about between her brother and this girl, to whom from the first she had felt so strongly attracted.

“They are both so good,” said Alys to herself, as she lay, far from sleeping, alas! poor girl, on Mrs Wills’s best bed. “Laurence, of course, I do believe to be the noblest man in the world, except for his prejudices, and Mary, I can feel, is as good as gold. Why should they dislike each other so? For, though she tries to hide it from me, I can see that she dislikes him quite as much as he does her. And I am almost sure it was she whom I saw the other day coming down our avenue and crying. What can it all be? There is something I don’t know about— at I’m sure of.”

Then her thoughts took another flight.

“I wish Laurence would marry,” she said to herself. “I wish he would marry just such a girl as Mary Western. How nice it would be for me! Or—supposing I don’t get better from this accident—supposing I get worse and die—how dreadfully lonely Laurence will be! Poor Laurence—” and Alys’s eyes filled with tears at the very thought.

In the mean time Mr Cheviott was unpacking the basket, and handily enough, as Mary, watching him with some curiosity, was forced to allow. All sorts of good things made their appearance—a cold ham, two chickens, a packet of tea, fine bread, wine, etc, etc. Mr Cheviott looked about him in perplexity.

“Are there no dishes of any kind to be had, I wonder?” he said, at last. “I don’t like to disturb Mrs Wills—she is giving her husband his supper in the back kitchen, I see. Poor people, we have put them about quite enough already.”

Mary could no longer stand aloof. She had felt half inclined to be nettled by Mr Cheviott’s calm manner of ignoring what she could not but own to herself had been, in its inference at least, a rude speech.

“He still feels he is under an obligation to me,” she had said to herself, hotly, “and therefore he won’t resent anything I say. I don’t agree with Lilias. I would much prefer his being uncivil, to civility of that patronising ‘I couldn’t-do-otherwise’ kind.” But the quiet good-nature with which he now turned to her for assistance appealed to something in Mary which could not but respond; the mixture of comicality too in the whole position was not without its attraction for her.

“You are not accustomed to kitchen arrangements,” she said, smiling a little; “there are the dishes—lots of real willow pattern, ‘all in a row’—just above your head. Stay, don’t you see? I can reach them.”

She stepped forward, put her foot lightly on a three-legged stool standing just under the shelf of dishes. But three-legged stools are cantankerous articles—they require to be treated with a certain consideration mysterious to the uninitiated. Mary, perhaps for the first time in her life, suffering from some amount of self-consciousness, gave no thought to the three-leggedness of the stool, and, light as was her spring upon it, it proved too much for its equilibrium; the stool tilted forward, and Mary would have fallen ignominiously—perhaps worse than ignominiously, for the kitchen floor was tiled with hard bricks—to the ground, had not Mr Cheviott darted forward just in time to catch her. Mary was exceedingly, ridiculously annoyed—she flushed scarlet, but before she had time to do more than spring back from Mr Cheviott’s supporting arms, he said with a smile, in which, notwithstanding her mortification, Mary could not detect any approach to a sneer:

“You are not accustomed to three-legged stools, it is very evident, Miss Western. Thank you all the same for your kind intentions, however. I think I can reach the dishes—”

He stretched upwards and got down two or three. Mary, to hide her discomfort, was glad to help in the “dishing up” that ensued, till between them a very appetising sort of picnic supper was spread out on the table, and Mary, to tell the truth, being really hungry, did not refuse her host’s invitation to fall to. He was hungry too, notwithstanding his anxiety, and for a few minutes the repast went on in silence. Then the ludicrousness of the scene struck Mary anew, more forcibly than ever. She could not restrain a smile, and Mr Cheviott, looking up at the moment, caught sight of it. He smiled too.

“What is it that amuses you so, Miss Western?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Everything I think,” she replied.

Mr Cheviott glanced round—then his eyes returned to the table.

“Mrs Golding has certainly sent us provisions enough to stand a siege,” he said.

“I suppose she thinks you and Miss Cheviott would starve outright without her to take care of you,” said Mary.

“Just exactly what she does think,” he replied. “How do you—have you ever seen her?”

Mary wished her remark had remained unspoken, but judged it best to put a good face upon it. “Yes,” she said, bravely, her traitorous cheeks flaming again, nevertheless; “I saw her that—that ill-starred day when I got locked up in your haunted room.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” said Mr Cheviott. Then he hesitated. “Why do you call it ‘that ill-starred day’?” he asked, with some curiosity. “It did not do you any harm, did it? You were not so very frightened, surely?”

“I was very frightened—ridiculously frightened,” replied Mary; “but I suppose my nerves, though I hate to speak or think of such things as nerves, were hardly in their usual order that day. I had had a good deal to try me. Yes, I was very frightened. When I heard your step approaching the door, I was nearly beside myself with fright.” Here a half-smothered exclamation from Mr Cheviott, which, had it been from any one else, would have sounded to Mary marvellously like “poor child!” caused her to hesitate. She looked up at him—no, he was calmly filling his wine glass—she must have been mistaken. Still she hesitated, but only for a moment. Could she ever hope for such an opportunity again? Be brave, Mary, and make the most of it! “It was not on account of my fright that I so dislike the remembrance of that day,” she went on, hurriedly. “It was because for the first—no, for the second time in my life, I felt that I had put myself into an utterly false, a most lowering position.”

“How?” said Mr Cheviott, quickly. But there was nothing impertinent in the question—his tone of interest was too genuine.

“How?” repeated Mary; “don’t you see how? If you do not, I am increasingly thankful to be able to tell you how—to show you how horrible it was for me to be forced into such a position. How? Why, of course, by re-entering a house where, only the day before, I had been so so—”

Mr Cheviott looked up, and again Mary saw the dark flush, not often seen there, rise to his forehead.

“So—so what? Do not speak hastily,” he said. “Yet perhaps it is best to know the worst. You are not going to say ‘so insulted’?”

“No,” said Mary, “I was not. So misjudged, I think, was the word on my lips.”

Mr Cheviott smiled—a bitter, sarcastic smile, it seemed to Mary, and perhaps she was right. It roused her to go on.

“I don’t know why I should care—the matter can have less than no interest for you, as little as your opinion of it ought to have for me, and yet I do care—care exceedingly that you, Mr Cheviott, should, know that I was actually forced into going to your house that day—that nothing but the risk of possible disloyalty to others, to another, at least, made me give in to do so. But of course I never dreamed of my going there coming to your knowledge. I may be blunt and plain-spoken, but I am not capable of such coarse, obtrusive defiance as that would have been.”

Mr Cheviott got up from his chair and walked about for a minute or two. “She thinks her position painful,” he said to himself, “and to such a sensitive girl it must be so, I suppose. Nothing that I could say would ever make her believe the light in which what she did really appears to me. And still less can she know how infinitely, unspeakably more painful than hers my position is!” Then he came back to the table, and standing opposite Mary, he said, earnestly:

“I am glad you have told me what you have felt about it,” he said; “but will you believe me, Miss Western, when I tell you that your coming again to Romary never struck me as you think. If I thought about it at all, it was to feel sure that, as you say was the case, you had been forced to come. It was not likely, was it,” he went on, with considerable bitterness in his tone, “that I should imagine you would wish to come in my way after—well, never mind. It is enough for me to say,” his voice resuming its earnest kindliness, “that nothing you could do would ever appear to me ‘coarse, or obtrusive, or defiant,’ or anything but brave and true and womanly.”

Mary was mollified in spite of herself. But her prejudices and prepossessions were far too deep-rooted to have received more than a very passing shake. And alas! in her moment of triumph she forgot to be generous.

“I am unaccustomed to compliments,” she said, coldly. “And I did not mean to ask you to make allowance for me. No doubt my disadvantages incline you to do so—just as you would have excused my ignorance of French the first time I spoke to you. You have misunderstood me, Mr Cheviott. I am not ashamed of what I did, I only regret the ignorance of the world which made me trust to not being misunderstood.”

Again Mr Cheviott got up from his seat—this time more hastily.

“I wonder,” he said, in a low, constrained voice,—“I wonder, Miss Western, if you are anxious to make me unsay some of the words I just now, in all honesty, applied to you?”

Mary did not reply.

“I have my wish,” she said to herself, “I have succeeded in forcing him to be uncivil.”

And when her conscience smote her a little she silenced it by the old reflection that it was Lilias’s enemy with whom she was doing battle. What question could there be of hurting the feelings of the man who had done his best to break her darling’s heart?—who had even avowed his deliberate intention of destroying the happy prospects that might have been hers?

Chapter Twenty.

An Enforced Armistice.

”... Yet he talks well But what care I for words? yet words do well When he that speaks them pleases those that hear. ... But for my part I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet I have more cause to hate him than to love him.” As You Like It.

There was not, however, much appearance of enmity by the following morning between these two thus strangely thrown together. All other feelings were for the time merged in increasing anxiety about poor Alys. For the night that followed her accident was a sadly restless and suffering one, and on the doctor’s early visit the next day he detected feverish symptoms which clouded his usually cheery face.

“I can say no more as to what lasting—or, comparatively speaking, lasting—injuries she may have received,” he said, in reply to Mr Cheviott’s anxious inquiries. “What we have to do at present is to try to get her over the immediate effects of the shock. An attack of fever would certainly only complicate matters, and I cannot see that she need have it if only we can keep her perfectly quiet.”

“Then there is no chance of moving her at present?” said her brother.

“It would be most unwise—bringing on the very risk I speak of,” replied Mr Brandreth, decidedly. “She is comfortable enough—thanks to Miss Western.”

“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “thanks to Miss Western—but that is just the point.”

“What?”

“I cannot expect Miss Western to turn into a sick-nurse to oblige absolute strangers—people who have no sort of claim upon her,” replied Mr Cheviott, haughtily.

Mr Brandreth glanced at him with some curiosity.

(“I wonder how much truth there was in those reports about Captain Beverley and Lilias Western,” he said to himself.)

“She must be required at home—her time must be valuable—I cannot offer to pay her,” continued Mr Cheviott, with increasing annoyance in his tone.

“They might be able to spare her. I believe they do keep a servant,” said Mr Brandreth, dryly.

“Nonsense, Brandreth, don’t joke about it,” said Mr Cheviott, irritably. “You must understand what I mean—the extreme annoyance of having to put one’s self under such an obligation to—to—”

“To people you know exceedingly little about, it is clear,” said Mr Brandreth, severely. “If it be a right and Christian thing to do, Mr and Mrs Western will spare their daughter to nurse your sister, Mr Cheviott, just as readily as they spared her to nurse Jessie Bevan when she broke her leg.”

“So Miss Western herself told me,” observed Mr Cheviott.

“Ah, then you have come upon the subject?” said the doctor. “And evidently Miss Mary has rubbed his high mightiness the wrong way,” he added to himself, with an inward chuckle.

“Not exactly. I never thought of having to ask her to stay longer than to-day. All that was said was when I was thanking, or trying to thank, her last night for what she had done, and I suppose I made a mess of it,” said Mr Cheviott, with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Well, I must be going,” said Mr Brandreth, rising as he spoke.

“And what is to be done?” asked Mr Cheviott, helplessly. “Am I to ask her to stay?”

“You are certainly not to send her away,” replied Mr Brandreth, greatly enjoying the situation; till, pitying Mr Cheviott’s discomfort, he added, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. I will tell Mary she is not to leave Miss Cheviott on any account till I see her again in the afternoon, and in the mean time I will see Mrs Western and explain it all to her, and let you know the result. I’ll take it all on myself, if that will comfort you.”

“You are very good,” said Mr Cheviott, fervently.

“I am sure they will spare her for a fortnight or so—”

“A fortnight!” ejaculated Alys’s brother, ruefully.

“At least,” said Mr Brandreth, pitilessly, “and be thankful if the fortnight sees you out of the wood. Lilias Western is going away to-morrow, or the day after, but the mother’s quite capable of managing without her daughters for once, and it will do Miss Alexa, the only fine lady of the family, no harm to have to exert herself a little more than usual.”

“Another daughter,” exclaimed Mr Cheviott. “Good Heavens! how many are there?”

“Five—and three sons. I’ve known them all ever since they were born.”

“And the eldest one—Miss Western—the one here is the second, is she not?—the eldest is going away, you say?” inquired Mr Cheviott, indifferently, imagining he had quite succeeded in concealing the real curiosity he felt as to this new move in the enemy’s camp.

“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, mischievously, “she is certainly going away, but where to I don’t know. She is a beautiful girl—you have seen her?—I should not be surprised to hear of her marriage any day. There has been some amount of mystery about her of late—they are rather reserved people at all times—and I could not help wondering if there could be anything on the tapis. She seems in very good spirits, anyway.”

“Ah, indeed!” said Mr Cheviott, carelessly. He hated gossip so devoutly that not even to satisfy the very great misgivings Mr Brandreth’s chatter had aroused, would he encourage it further. “Then we shall see you again in the afternoon, and till then I am to do nothing about these arrangements?” he added, and Mr Brandreth felt himself dismissed.

It was not afternoon, however, but very decidedly evening before the doctor paid his second visit to the farm. In the mean time he had seen Mrs Western and explained to her the whole situation, and the result had been a note to Mary from her mother desiring her not to think of coming home that afternoon, as she had intended, and promising a visit from Lilias the following morning, when all should be discussed and settled. Concerning this note, however, Mary, not feeling it incumbent on her to do so, had made no communication to Mr Cheviott.

“It will be time enough to tell him what my mother says if he mentions the subject,” she thought. “There is not much fear of his thinking I am staying here for the pleasure of his society.”

And in her absorbing care of poor Alys, and anxious watching for abatement in the unfavourable symptoms of the morning, she really forgot, feeling satisfied that she was acting in accordance with her parents’ wishes, any personal association of annoyance in her present surroundings.

Mr Cheviott marvelled somewhat at her calm taking-for-granted that she was to stay where she was; but, true to his agreement with Mr Brandreth, he said nothing. And the long, dull, rainy day passed, with no conversation between the two watchers but the matter-of-fact remarks or inquiries called forth by their occupation. By evening Alys’s feverishness and excitability decreased, yielding evidently to Mary’s scrupulous, fulfillment of the directions left with her.

“She has fallen asleep beautifully—she is as calm and comfortable as possible,” the young nurse announced triumphantly to Mr Cheviott, as she came into the kitchen where he, manlike, sat smoking by way of soothing his anxiety.

He looked up. Mary stood in the door-way, her eyes sparkling, a bright smile on her face. Just then there could not have been two opinions about her beauty. Mr Cheviott rose quickly.

“You are a born sick-nurse, Miss Western,” he said, heartily, speaking to her for almost the first time without a shadow of constraint in his voice. But, as he uttered the words, the smile faded out of Mary’s face and a white, wearied look crept over it. She half made a step forward, and then caught at a chair standing close by, as if to save herself from falling.

“It’s nothing,” she exclaimed, recovering herself instantaneously. “Don’t think I was going to faint. I never do such a thing. I was only giddy for an instant. I had been stooping over Al—Miss Cheviott’s bed to see if she was really asleep.”

“You have been doing a great deal too much, and I can never thank you enough—the truth is, I don’t know how to thank you without annoying you by my clumsiness,” said Mr Cheviott, remorsefully. But so genuinely cordial—almost boyish—was his way of speaking that Mary, even had she felt equal to warfare, could have found no cause of offence in his words.

“Don’t thank me, then,” she said with a smile, as she sat down in the old wooden arm-chair—the most comfortable the kitchen contained—which Mr Cheviott had drawn round for her to the side of the fire.

“I am too tired to discuss whether your ‘clumsiness’ or my ‘touchiness’”—a slight cloud overspread her face at the word, but only for an instant—“is to blame for my ungraciousness yesterday. If Mr Brandreth pronounces your sister decidedly better when he comes to-morrow I shall be well thanked.”

Mr Cheviott sat down without speaking, and looked at her. He could do so for the moment without risk of offence, for Mary’s eyes were fixed on the fire, which danced and crackled up the chimney with fascinating loveliness. Her face, seen now in profile and without the distracting light of her brown eyes, whiter too than its wont, struck him newly by its unusual refinement of lines and features.

“Where have those girls got their looks from?” he said to himself. “Alys was right that day that I was so cross to her in Paris, poor child; these Western girls might, as far as looks go, be anybody, to speak like a dressmaker! And where, too, have they learned such perfect self-possession and power of expressing themselves, brought up in the wilds of Hathercourt?”

“The fire looks as if it were bewitched,” said Mary, glancing up at last. “When we were children we always believed when it darted and crackled and laughed, as it were—just as it is now—we always thought fairies were playing at hide and seek in the flames.”

“Was it your own idea?” said Mr Cheviott.

“Not mine,” said Mary. “My fairies were all out-of-doors ones. Wood fairies were my favourites. Oh, dear! how dreadful it would be to live in a town?”

“Alys doesn’t think so,” observed her brother. “She often complains of the country being dreadfully dull.”

“Ah, yes—in her case I could fancy so,” said Mary, complacently. “No brothers or sisters, and a huge empty house. To enjoy the country thoroughly, it seems to me one must be one of a good large family.”

A faint remembrance flitted across Mr Cheviott’s mind of the half-contemptuous pity with which he had alluded to Mrs Brabazon to the overflowing numbers in Hathercourt Rectory. Now, Mary’s allusion slightly nettled him.

“Alys is not quite alone in the world,” he said, stiffly, hardly realising the fact that Miss Cheviott of Romary could be an object of commiseration to one of the poor clergyman’s numerous daughters. “She has a brother.”

“Oh, yes, of course,” allowed Mary. “But so much older than herself, you see. I can fancy her being dull sometimes.”

Mr Cheviott gave a slight sigh. Mary’s quick conscience pricked her.

“I should not have said that,” she thought. “Poor man, it would be dreadful for him just now, when she is lying ill, to think he has not made her life as happy as possible.”

She leaned her head on her hand and tried to think of some safe topic of conversation. These enforced tête-à-têtes she felt to be far the most trying part of her life at the farm. Mr Cheviott, looking up, observed her attitude.

“You are very tired, I fear, Miss Western,” he said, with the unconstrained kindliness in his voice which so softened and mellowed its tones.

Mary roused herself at once.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I am really not very tired. I am waiting rather anxiously for Mr Brandreth. I thought he would have been here before this. I must get something to do,” she went on, looking round. “I wish I had asked Lilias to send a few books.”

“Please don’t get anything to do,” said Mr Cheviott, eagerly. “You don’t know what a satisfaction it is to me to see you resting, and how glad I should be to do anything for you. Would you like—might I,” he went on, with a sort of timidity which made Mary smile inwardly at the idea of the unapproachable Mr Cheviott feeling any want of assurance in addressing her! “might I read aloud to you? I sent home for some books to-day. Alys is rather fond of my reading aloud,” he added, with a smile.

“I should like it very much indeed, thank you,” said Mary. “And if—just supposing the sound of your voice sent me sleep, you would not be very much offended, would you?”

Mr Cheviott laughed—he was already looking over some magazines which Mary had not before observed on the dresser.

“What will you have?” he said. “Poetry, science, fiction? Stay, here is a good review of H.’s last novel that I wanted to see. The German author, you know. Have you read it?”

He made the inquiry rather gingerly, being not without remembrance of the snub he had received à propos of the Misses Western’s knowledge of French.

“No,” said Mary, “I have not. But I have heard a good deal about it, and should like to hear more, so please read that review.”

It was a well written notice, and the subject of it one worthy of such writing. Mr Cheviott grew interested, and so did Mary. He read well, and she listened well; till some remark of the writer’s drawing forth from Mr Cheviott an expression of disagreement, Mary took up the argument, and they were both in the midst of an amicably eager discussion when the door opened and Mr Brandreth appeared on the threshold.

An amused smile stole over his face.

“Good news awaits me, I see,” he said, with some pomposity. “Miss Cheviott must be better, or her faithful nurse would not be chattering so merrily—eh, Miss Western?”

Mary looked up with a glimmer of fun in her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “she is better. That is to say, she is fast asleep, and has been for two hours. She is sleeping as quietly as a baby, quite differently from last night, and, as far as I could judge before she fell asleep, the feverish symptoms had subsided wonderfully.”

Mr Brandreth rubbed his hands and came nearer the fire, where Mr Cheviott, having risen from his chair, was standing in an attitude of some slight constraint.

“I expected you earlier,” he said, in a low voice not intended for Mary’s quick ears, which, as might naturally be expected, it reached with marvellous celerity.

“Ah, yes—sorry to have disappointed you,” said Mr Brandreth, still rubbing his hands, but by this time with less energy and more enjoyment, as they gradually thawed in front of the blazing fire. “I could not help it, however, and my mind felt more at ease about things here after I had seen Mrs Western. But I am sorry to have kept you here waiting for me all day, Mr Cheviott. It must be very tiresome for you.”

“I did not intend returning to Romary to-day,” said Mr Cheviott, speaking now in his ordinary voice. “Of course it would have been impossible.”

“I don’t know that,” replied Mr Brandreth. “There is not much that you can do for your sister, and it must be dreadfully wearisome work for you hanging about here all day, particularly in the evenings,” he added, in a tone of special commiseration, “when you cannot even get out for a stroll.”

Mary glanced up quickly.

“How I wish he would go back to Romary?” she had been thinking to herself while Mr Brandreth was speaking. “I would not mind staying here at all, in that case.”

But something indefinable in Mr Brandreth’s voice just now roused her suspicions. Was he laughing at Mr Cheviott? If so, he was, in a sense, laughing at her too. Mary began to feel rather indignant. Lilias was right; there was a touch of coarseness about Mr Brandreth notwithstanding his real goodness and kindness, which hitherto had always prevailed with Mary to take his friendly bantering in good part. Something, she knew not what, she was on the verge of replying, when Mr Cheviott anticipated her.

“The evenings?” he said, simply, yet with a sort of dignity not lost upon either of his hearers—“this evening, at least, has been anything but wearisome, as Miss Western has kindly allowed me to read to her, and I fortunately lighted upon an article which interested us both. I may ride over to Romary to-morrow to see if I am wanted for anything; but I could not feel content to leave this, with Alys still in so critical a state. I have not been very troublesome, I hope, have I, Miss Western?” he added, turning to Mary with a smile. There was not a shade of constraint in his manner now, yet no “Clara Vere de Vere” could have desired to be addressed with more absolute deference and respect.

For the first time Mary experienced a sensation of real friendliness towards her host for the time being. Hitherto her most cordial feeling with regard to him had been a sort of pity—a slightly pleasurable consciousness of meriting his gratitude; and in such one-sided sentiments, no root of actual friendliness—of which the “give and take” element is the very essence—could exist. Now, for the first time, a flash of something like gratitude to him, of quick appreciation of his instinctive chivalry, lent a softness to her voice and a light to her eyes which Mr Cheviott, without taking credit to himself for the change, was agreeably conscious of, as she replied, gravely:

“You have been very considerate indeed, Mr Cheviott. And it seems to me that till your sister is decidedly better, it would not be well for you to go away.”

“Thank you,” said Mr Cheviott, simply, while in his own mind Mr Brandreth whistled. How the wind lay was beginning to puzzle him.

“You saw mamma?” said Mary, interrogatively, turning to Mr Brandreth. “I had a note from her this afternoon, telling me not to go home to-day, and that you would see me again.”

Mr Cheviott heard her with some surprise. This, then, supplied the key of her quietly remaining at the farm all day with no talk of quitting her post. What a more and more interestingly unusual study this girl’s character was becoming to him! So brave, yet so shrinkingly sensitive, so wise, yet so unsophisticated, so self-reliant and coolly determined, yet yielding in an instant to the slightest expression of parental authority!

“Yes,” said Mr Brandreth, oracularly, “I saw your mamma, Miss Mary, and explained the whole to her. Her views of the situation, as I felt sure would be the case, entirely coincide with mine. She will not hear of your leaving Miss Cheviott at any risk to her, for I fully explained that your remaining might do what we doctors seldom are called in time enough for—it may save your patient an illness instead of curing her of one. The greatest triumph of the two, in my opinion! Furthermore, your mother desires you not to worry about things at home. Miss Alexa and Master Josephine,” (reverting to a very threadbare joke on poor Josey’s hobbledehoyism) “are developing undreamed-of capabilities—Josey was very nearly packing herself into your sister’s box in her anxiety to take your place as her assistant—yes, you are not to worry about things at home, and—let me see—oh, yes, you are to take good care of yourself and not get knocked up, and—and—Miss Lilias will be here in the morning and tell you all that has happened since you left home—let me see, how many hours ago?”

Mary laughed cordially. This kind of banter she could take in the best part. And she really was glad to hear all about home. How well she could fancy poor Josey’s ineffectual attempts at helping Lilias to pack, and Lilias’s good-humoured despair at the results!—it seemed ages since she had seen them all.

“Then I am to wait here till further orders,” said Mary, “and those orders, in the first place, I suppose, will be yours, Mr Brandreth?”

“Probably,” the doctor replied.

“And I? Whose orders am I to be under?” inquired Mr Cheviott.

“Miss Western’s,” said Mr Brandreth. “In my absence Miss Western is commander-in-chief.”

But his little pleasantry fell harmless this time. Mr Cheviott and Mary only smiled. And then Mary took the doctor into the next room to see unconscious Alys sleeping, as her friend had said, as sweetly as a baby.

Chapter Twenty One.

Pledged.

“Love, when ’tis true, needs not the aid Of sighs, or oaths, to make it known.” Sir C. Sedley.

“To-morrow” was a fine day at last. And Lilias was up betimes. It was the day before that of her leaving home, and, notwithstanding the great preliminary preparations, there were still innumerable last packings to do, arrangements to be made, and directions given—all complicated by Mary’s absence. Then there was Mary to see, and not wishing to be hurried in the long talk with her, without which Lilias felt it would really be impossible to start on her journey, she set off pretty early for the farm.

It was a great bore certainly, as Josey expressed it, that Mary should be away just at this particular juncture. Lilias missed her at every turn, and felt far from happy at leaving her mother without either of her “capable” daughters at hand, especially as Mr Brandreth had plainly given Mrs Western to understand that Mary’s stay at the Edge, if it were to do real and lasting good, might have to be prolonged over two or three weeks.

“That poor girl will not know how she is till she gets over the first shock of her accident,” he had said; “and if, as I much fear, there is any actual injury, she may be thrown back into a brain fever if there is no sensible, cheerful person beside her to help her over the first brunt of such a discovery.”

“But do you think her badly hurt—crippled, perhaps, for life?” Lilias had asked, with infinite sympathy in her face. “What a fate!” she was saying to herself; “far better, in my opinion, to have been killed outright than to live to be an object of pity, and even, perhaps, shrinking, on the part of others. Fancy such a thing befalling me, and my being afraid of Arthur ever seeing me again!”

She gave an involuntary shiver as she made her inquiry of Mr Brandreth, who looked surprised.

“Why, Miss Lilias,” he said, “you’ve not half your sister’s nerve! What have you been doing to yourself, you don’t look half so strong and vigorous as you used to.”

“That is why she is going away,” said her mother, quietly. “She has not been well lately. But tell us about poor Miss Cheviott, please.”

“I do not think she will be crippled for life—nothing so bad as that—but she will probably have to lie and rest for a long time. The great point is to get her well over the first of it, and that is why I am so anxious for Mary to stay.”

And so it had been decided, and somehow, in spite of her regret at its happening just at this time, Lilias could not bring herself to feel altogether distressed at Mary’s remaining at the farm; and though she did not exactly express this to her sister, Mary did not remain unconscious of it.

“I wish I were not going away, then it would be all right,” she said, when they were sitting together in the farm-house kitchen.

“I am most particularly glad you are going away,” Mary replied. “I hardly know that I could have agreed to stay here, had you not been going away.”

“Why?” asked Lilias, opening wide her blue eyes. “Because—because—oh! I can’t exactly put it into words,” replied Mary. “You might understand without my saying.” But seeing that Lilias still looked inquiringly, she went on: “Don’t you see—I don’t want these people—him, I mean,” (Mr Cheviott had ridden over to Romary),—“to think we would take advantage of this accident—this wholly fortuitous circumstance, not of their seeking, and assuredly not of ours, of my being thrown into their society, to bring about any intimacy, any possible endeavour to recall—you know whom I mean—to—to what we had begun to think might be.”

“Your powers of expressing yourself are certainly not increasing, my dear Mary,” said Lilias, with a smile, though the quick colour mounted to her cheeks. “I really do think you worry yourself quite unnecessarily about what Mr Cheviott thinks or doesn’t think. I cannot believe, as I have always said—I cannot believe he has been to blame as much as you imagine. Don’t you like him any better now that you have seen more of him?”

“I don’t want to like him better,” said Mary, honestly. “He is, of course, most courteous and civil to me—more than that, he is really considerate and kind, and certainly he is a cultivated and intelligent man, and not, in some ways, so narrow-minded as might have been expected. But I don’t want to like him, or think better of him; whenever I seem to be tempted to do so it all rises before me—selfish, cold, cruel man, to interfere with your happiness, my Lily.”

Mary gave herself a sort of shake of indignation.

“You are a queer girl, Mary,” said Lilias, putting a hand on each of her sister’s shoulders, and looking down—Lilias was the taller of the two—deep down into her eyes—blue into brown. The brown eyes were unfathomable in their mingled expression—into the blue ones there crept slowly two or three tears. But Lilias dashed them away before they fell, and soon after the sisters kissed each other and said good-bye.

“I wonder,” said Lilias to herself, as she stood still for a moment at the juncture of the two ways home, debating whether or not she might indulge herself by choosing the pleasanter but more circuitous path through the woods.

“I wonder if anything will have happened—anything of consequence, I mean—before I see Mary again, six weeks or so hence.”

An idle, childish sort of speculation, but one not without its charm for even the wiser ones among us sometimes, when the prize that would make life so perfect a thing is tantalisingly withheld from us, or, alas! when, in darker, less hopeful days, there is no break in the clouds about our path, and in the weariness of long-continued gloom we would almost cry to Fate itself to help us!—Fate which, in those seasons, we dare not call God, for no way of deliverance that our human judgment can call Divine seems open to us. Will nothing happen?—something we dare not wish for, to deliver us from the ruggedness of the appointed road from which, in faint-hearted cowardice, we shrink, short-sightedly forgetting that, to the brave and faithful, “strength as their days” shall be given.

But in no such weariness of spirit did Lilias Western “wonder” to herself; she was young and vigorous; there was a definite goal for her hopefulness; her visions of the future could take actual shape and clothing—and how much of human happiness does such an admission not involve? She “wondered” only because, notwithstanding the disappointment and trial she had to bear, life was still to her so full of joyful possibilities, of golden pictures, in the ultimate realisation of which she could not as yet but believe.

“Yes,” she repeated, as, deciding that a delay of ten minutes was the worst risk involved, she climbed the narrow stile into the wood—“yes, I wonder how things will be when dear Mary and I are together again? Such queer things have happened already among us. Who could have imagined such a thing as Mary’s being ‘domesticated’ with the Cheviotts? I wonder if Arthur Beverley will hear of it? Oh, I do, do wish I was not going away to-morrow!”

She stopped short again for a moment, and looked about her. How well she remembered the spot where she was standing! It was not far from the place where she and her sisters had met Captain Beverley that day when he had walked back with them to the Rectory. How they had all laughed and chattered!—how very long ago it seemed now! Lilias gazed all round her, and then hastened on again, and as she did so, somewhat to her surprise, far in front of her, at the end apparently of the wood alley which she was facing, she distinguished a figure approaching her. It was at some distance off when she first saw it, but the leafless branches intercepted but little of the light, which to-day was clear and undeceptive.

“It must be papa,” she said to herself, when she was able to distinguish that the figure was that of a man—“papa coming to meet me, or possibly he may be going on to see Mary at the farm.”

She hurried on eagerly, but when nearer the approaching intruder, again she suddenly relaxed her pace. Were her eyes deceiving her? Had her fancy played her false, and conjured up some extraordinary illusion to mislead her, or was it—could it be Arthur Beverley himself who was hastening towards her? Hastening?—yes, hastening so quickly that in another moment there was no possibility of any longer doubting that it was indeed he, and that he recognised her. But no smile lit up his face as he drew near; he looked strangely pale and anxious, and a vague misgiving seized Lilias; her heart began to beat so fast that she could scarcely hear the first words he addressed to her—she hardly noticed that he did not make any attempt to shake hands with her.

“Miss Western,” he said, in a low, constrained, and yet agitated tone, “I do not know whether I am glad or sorry to meet you. I do not know whether I dare say I am glad to meet you.” He glanced up at her for an instant with such appeal and wistfulness in his eyes that Lilias turned her face away to prevent his seeing the quick rush of tears that would come. “What you must have thought of me, I cannot let myself think,” he went on, speaking more hurriedly and nervously. “But you will let me ask you something, will you not? You seem to be coming from the farm—tell me, I implore you, have you by any chance heard how my poor cousin is? Is she still alive? She cannot—she must not be dead!”

His wildness startled Lilias. A rush of mingled feelings for an instant made it impossible for her to reply. What could be the meaning of it all? Why this exaggerated anxiety about Alys Cheviott, and at the same time this tone of almost abject self-blame? Lilias felt giddy, and almost sick with apprehension—was her faith about to be uprooted? her trust flung back into her face? Were Mary’s misgivings about to be realised? Was it true that Arthur, influenced by motives she could but guess at, had deserted her for his cousin?