Chapter VIII · MARY JANE’S DISCOVERY.

It is a sultry August evening; Mary Jane, the upper housemaid, much refreshed by her comfortable tea, is sitting at an open window, gossiping with the head laundry-maid, and unpicking a brown merino dress, which she is praising to the skies.

“Real French, four shillings a yard. We all got dresses when Sir Reginald was married. I’ve had this three winters, and thanks to the lining, there’s a good three winters’ more wear in it yet. I would have left it as it is, only it’s old-fashioned you see,” holding it up with a deprecating gesture. “Parker is going to lend me one of Lady Fairfax’s for a pattern, that cream-coloured one; she had it on on Sunday.”

“Eh,” said her companion—whose fingers were equally busy, giving some startling finishing touches to a Dolly Varden hat—“but it will never suit you. You’re too plump, Mary Jane; what looks well on a slip of a girl like her is nothing to go by; one of Miss Ferrars’ dresses now would be more your style. That rose and gray thing, with the kilted skirt, and the plaster up the front, for instance. This brown, piped with red, and red bows like hers, would look fine and fashionable.”

“Maybe you are right,” replied Mary Jane, putting her thimble in her mouth and looking at her friend reflectively. “I’ll have a look at it this evening whilst they are at dinner. The gray one did you say?”

“See, here they come! the whole riding party!” exclaimed the laundry-maid with animation. “Just look, Polly, and you’ll see Sir Reginald will never offer to lift my lady off her horse, he leaves it to Mr. Geoffrey. See, there, I told you so! Ain’t they just a queer couple? I can’t make them out. If they were old, or if one of them was ugly even, you might understand. They do say,” she continued confidentially, “as how Sir Reginald never meant to marry her, nor anyone, only she was his ward and he thought that it would be the best way to look after her, but that he don’t care two straws about her; he hates womankind, Cox says.”

“Well, I’m sure,” replied Mary Jane, with a toss of her head, “if that sweet young lady isn’t good enough for him, I should like to know what he wants more! She’s too good for him, I’m thinking; that’s what ails him! He may be very handsome, and a great fighter—and he is a grand-looking young gentleman—but I think he treats her shameful, if all be true, never speaking to her nor looking at her no more nor if she were a marble statue set up in the corner. I’ll never forget how good she was to me when I had a sore hand last winter, dressing it her own self every day, and always speaking to me so nice and kind all the time. Dear, dear! If Philip Banks was to turn out such a husband as hers I should cry off, I can tell you,” she concluded, with a decided slap of her bare hand on the stone window-sill. “I did hear,” she continued, “as how he was very fond of her once. I was sick and at home when they came to Looton, but they say as he downright worshipped her just at first. Mrs. Morris herself told me, but I don’t believe it. I never saw no signs of it. Seeing’s believing to my mind. Laws! what’s this in the lining? A letter, I declare! It must have run down from the pocket-hole. My stars, Johanna, whatever shall I do?” turning a very dismayed countenance to her friend. “It’s a letter Lady Fairfax gave me to post a good three years ago to Sir Reginald. I remember now quite well reading the address. She seemed so terribly put out that the post-bag had gone, and as I was going down to the village, I offered to take it along with three or four from the servants’ hall. I put them all in my pocket, and this has slipped into the lining instead. What am I to do?” she asked with breathless volubility.

“I would ask Mrs. Morris, if I were you. There she is in the passage now; run and catch her.”

Mrs. Morris said:

“Take it to Sir Reginald after dinner, and tell him how it happened; honesty is the best policy.”

“Not for millions! I’ll take it to my lady, if you like. She could not scold if she tried ever so.”

“He won’t say a word to you either, Mary Jane. He is just his father all over. There never was a quieter nor a kinder master; and, besides, how could anyone scold you for what was an accident?”

“I tell you, Mrs. Morris, I’m afraid of my life of him. I see him every morning coming down before seven. He passes me just as if I was a sweeping brush. Now if it was Mr. Geoffrey—he always has a word and a joke—I’m not a bit afraid of him!”

“Mr. Geoffrey is a good deal too fond of joking and jesting with servants and keeping them from their work; and you will just take that letter and give it to Sir Reginald before you sleep to-night,” concluded Mrs. Morris authoritatively.

“But he looks so stern and severe, I shall just sink into the ground if he gives me one of those sharp looks of his.”

“Don’t you talk rubbish, Mary Jane; go and give up that letter after dinner, and be off to your rooms now.”

Dinner over, the laundry-maid came into the servants’ hall, and whispered to her reluctant friend:

“Now is your time, Polly. They are all in the pleasure-ground except Sir Reginald, and he’s writing in the library, Thomas says. Just you go and give a knock at the door, and hand in the letter; he can’t eat you. I’ll go with you as far as the swing-door,” she added generously, “and wait.”

With loudly-beating heart, Mary Jane arrived at the library-door, knocked, and entered. Her master was writing at a table by the light of a reading-lamp. He looked up, and gazed into the shadow for some seconds before he exactly made her out.

Then, laying down his pen, he said:

“Well, what is your business? One of the servants, are you not?”

There was more of the “orderly-room” in his manner than was altogether pleasant. His dealings with soldiers’ wives were short, sharp, and decisive; the very unruly women of the Seventeenth Hussars were more afraid of three words from the Major than a hundred from the Colonel.

He imagined that Mary Jane had come to lodge some complaint, so he repeated:

“What can I do for you? what do you want?”

“Please sir, I’m Foster, the upper housemaid, and it’s about this letter,” said she, timidly approaching, and laying down the yellow, crumpled missive.

“A letter,” he repeated carelessly, taking it up; but seeing the superscription, he changed colour. “And where, may I ask, did you get this?”

“Please sir, Lady Fairfax gave it to me to post more than three years ago. It must have slipped down between the lining of my dress and the pocket. I found it just now when I was ripping up the skirt. I’m very sorry indeed, sir, for I remember now that Lady Fairfax was very particular about it. I made sure I had posted it with the others.”

“Well, at any rate it was not your fault,” he exclaimed, after some reflection, turning over the long looked for letter in his hand. “It was honest of you to bring it to me; you might have burnt it, and said nothing about it; and it happens to be a letter of the very greatest consequence. Here,” said he, unlocking a drawer, “is a note instead,” handing her ten pounds; “and see that your pockets have no holes in them in future.”

Mary Jane received the gift with profuse and voluble thanks, as she backed and curtseyed out of the room; and from that time forward declared that her master was the nicest, pleasantest, most generous gentleman in England.

It is needless to say that Sir Reginald lost no time in tearing open the letter, which ran as follows:

“My dear Husband,

“You will be surprised to get a letter from me, considering my very recent heartless wicked treatment of you, and more surprised still to hear that I am writing to entreat your forgiveness. Ever since you left I have been so very, very miserable, and as each day has passed I have been more firmly convinced of your innocence, and that I have been the most unjust and ungenerous of wives. You will, I know, make allowance for my youth and a naturally jealous hot temper. These are but feeble excuses; no one but you, who have always been so good to me, would entertain them for an instant. I sometimes think I must have been mad; any way, whatever you may do I shall never forgive myself. But you will pardon me, I know; not only because of your promise, but because—how can I tell you? I had a bad fainting fit the other day, and Morris was frightened and sent for the doctor; he says that before summer, all being well, there will be a little inmate in the nursery here. I have not told this great secret to anyone, neither must you. Long before summer your letter will have come, won’t it? Once this has fairly started, I shall count the very days till the answer comes back. If none comes I will know that you cannot forgive me, and indeed I don’t deserve that you should. But you will write to me a kind letter too, my darling Regy. Think how very lonely I am, I have no one but you in all the world. The post is just going out, so I must conclude. I direct this by the address you left with Helen, so it will be sure to reach you safely. Mind you write by return mail to

“Your loving and penitent wife, “Alice Fairfax.”

When he had read this to the end he laid it down, and began to pace about the room in great agitation.

“What a brute I must seem to her! What must she have thought of me all these years? Why, no later than yesterday”—he paused in his walk, overwhelmed with the recollection—“I rejected her overtures for peace. I was savagely rude to her. My poor little Alice, you had indeed said quite enough, more than enough,” he muttered, resuming his walk. “What must she think of me? How can she have borne with me all this time? I refused, yes, point-blank, to kiss her, idiot that I was. I might have guessed at something of this kind, only that my devilish pride had strangled my common sense; and all this frightful misunderstanding was owing to this wretched bit of paper, this letter, that I would have given five years of my life for, and she, poor girl, has been breaking her heart about, and all the time it has been lying inside the skirt of that woman’s dress. After all,” he continued, taking it up, “it is a very dear and precious letter; I would not part with it, late as it comes, for a field-marshal’s bâton.” He read it twice over again, lingering on almost every word, then folded it up very carefully and put it in his waistcoat-pocket as he walked to the window. “No wonder,” said he, “she gave me a cool reception; I wonder what sort of one she would give me now if I could catch her alone? She ought to hate me pretty well by this time, it is not my fault if she does not. But she likes me a little bit still. She must, or she never could have stood the way I have treated her. If she only cares for me just one quarter as much as I care for her we shall do very well,” he thought to himself joyfully, as he stepped out of the window and joined the party who were sitting in the pleasure-ground, basking in the moonlight, and inhaling the soft bracing air, heavy with the perfume of syringa, roses, and new-mown hay.

Mr. and Mrs. Mayhew, Miss Saville, and Mary were reposing in various garden-chairs.

“Where is Alice?” asked her husband abruptly.

“Oh, she and Geoffrey have gone to gather pears for the public weal.”

“What, at this hour!” he exclaimed, standing at the top of the steps, gazing after two figures who were rapidly disappearing in the direction of the garden. “Small chance of a tête-à-tête with Alice to-night,” he said to himself as he pulled his moustache thoughtfully.

Five minutes later, Geoffrey came running back alone; breathlessly he jerked out: “Such a trick as I’ve played her! She offered to race me to the big pear-tree, each starting from the garden-gate, and going one north the other south; I agreed, and when I saw her well started south I just came home! What a state she will be in when she finds herself alone at the end of the ghost-walk! She says she is not, but I believe she is, horribly afraid of ghosts and bogies; and if she meets the cavalier who is said to stalk about the garden won’t it be fun? I only wish I had thought of it in time, I’d have dressed up. It pays her off nicely for some of the pretty little jokes she has practised on me. It’s not too late yet”—snatching up a shawl and a garden-hat and commencing a toilet.

“I can’t say that I exactly see the humour of the situation,” said Reginald, as, springing down the steps and vaulting lightly over an iron railing, he set off by a short cut to the garden at a run.

“Active fellow, is he not?” observed Geoffrey, removing the shawl in which he had already enveloped himself. “But this alacrity in joining his wife, in the present overcharged state of the domestic atmosphere, is something quite new. The sky is not going to fall, is it?” he added, looking up interrogatively.

“No; but really, Geoffrey, you shouldn’t have left her,” remonstrated Helen. “The garden is an awful eerie place by moonlight, I should not care to take a solitary walk there myself.”

The pear-tree, which was to have been the goal, was the pear-tree par excellence of the whole garden; it was trained along a wall covered with fruit-trees, beneath which ran a broad gravel terrace, approached by several flights of steps, one of which was exactly opposite this particular tree.

Alice, breathless and triumphant, had arrived first at the foot of the steps. She looked up and down the broad walk; no sign of Geoffrey.

“How very odd,” she thought.

Presently she heard his rapidly-approaching footsteps, and, mounting the terrace, began to gather pears with much deliberation. Hearing him arrive, she never troubled to turn her head, merely remarking as she reached up for a lovely, yellow, corpulent pear:

“Snail! You ought to be ashamed of yourself. I could trundle a wheelbarrow faster than you can run.”

“Could you indeed?” replied her husband, putting his arm round her slender waist.

“Geoffrey, how dare——Reginald!” she gasped, dropping all the pears.

“I may dare, may I not?” said he, taking her in his arms and giving her twenty kisses. “Look here,” said he, smiling at her indignant eyes and crimson cheeks, “I’ve just had a letter from you, my darling,” producing the letter and hurriedly telling her the story.

“And the other one I wrote to Afghanistan?” she asked breathlessly.

“That I never heard of till now; the Afridis made short work of our letters.”

“Then you have never had a line from me till to-day?” she cried, backing towards the wall and looking at him with dilated eyes.

“Never, since I left Cannes.”

“Then oh, Regy, what must you have thought of me?”

“Just what I have been asking myself, what can you have thought of me? No wonder you called me harsh, cruel, and tyrannical; such names were too mild a term for me. What an unmanly, vindictive wretch I must have appeared! And you, you richly deserve the name of the ‘patient Grizzel.’ Don’t you think so?” drawing her towards him by both hands. “Come, tell me what you thought of me for never answering your letter.”

Too overwhelmed to speak, she stood dumb before him, with both her little trembling hands in his.

“You can’t think,” he went on, “how I hoped and hoped for even one line, after that Cheetapore affair had been cleared up. Surely then I learnt that ‘hope deferred maketh the heart sick.’”

Seeing the ready tears in Alice’s eyes he stopped.

“Why, you little goose, you are never going to cry now, are you? It was not your fault I did not get your letter. I have it safe now, and I am the happiest man in England this instant; that is to say,” lowering his voice almost to a whisper, “if you will forgive me, Alice, and if you love me still?”

“Forgive you!” she echoed, speaking with an effort, “it is for you to forgive me. Do forgive me,” she pleaded, with lovely beseeching eyes; “it cost me more than you. My punishment seemed at times greater than I could bear.”

At the mere recollection of what she had endured, two large tears that could no longer be suppressed escaped from her eyelashes, and rolled down her pale cheeks.

“My Alice, my love, you were forgiven long, long ago; only it seemed to me, till now, that you did not want my forgiveness. You would not speak, and I could not; I tied my hands most effectually that day on Southsea pier. And, after all, Alice, you would not have respected me if I had not required some apology, or if I had tendered you a forgiveness you had never asked for, after the way you broke up our home and turned me adrift. No, my darling,” in answer to a piteous look, “I am not scolding you. I never, never will be rough or rude to you again, if you will promise to forgive me for the barbarous way I have treated you lately. When I think of the thousand-and-one rudenesses I’ve been guilty of—intentionally too—I feel that I am asking a great deal. If I had only your capacity for blushing, you would see how thoroughly ashamed I feel. Am I to be forgiven?” leaning towards her.

“Of course you are.”

“And,” speaking still more earnestly, “you like me a little in spite of all?”

A deep blush was his only answer for some seconds; then, with an effort, she raised her truthful eyes to his, and said:

“You know I do; you need not have asked. It is,” she pursued, with emotion, “far more a question whether—whether you care for me. I know you never will, never can, as you once did; but it has seemed to me at times that you almost hated me.”

“Indeed?” with a beaming smile long foreign to his countenance; “I see you are more easily imposed upon than ever. You know very well, it is patent to even Geoffrey, that I have always loved you exactly three times better than you love me. It is not in your nature to love as I do, though I never make much fuss about my feelings; still you may as well know that you are more to me, ten times over, than anything in the world. Even at the worst of times it has always been the same. What troubled me most, when I thought I was dying, was, not my many sins and shortcomings, not the thought of a future world, not what ought to come first with all of us, my soul; no, it was you, that I might only see you once more, even for an instant, was the prayer, the thought, that never left me night or day. I will not conceal from you, Alice, that I did my very best to stifle recollection, to forget you, to throw my whole heart into my profession. It was no good; nothing, not a draught of the Egyptian nepenthe itself would have banished you from my heart. When I first went to India I used to take long headlong rides, half in hopes of galloping away from my thoughts, half in hopes of killing myself. I sometimes think I was a little mad then.”

“Reginald, you must have been,” she exclaimed with conviction.

“Yes; you don’t half know how miserable I’ve been without you. Well, I quieted down in time, and when the fighting came off I took it out of myself in that way. But wherever I was, you were seldom absent from my mind; whether alone in my quarters, or sitting round a noisy camp fire, or on a still starry night, on the line of march, your face was ever before me. As to never caring for you as before, I believe I love you better—yes, better than when we were first married; though had anyone suggested such a possibility at the time, I would have throttled him on the spot. But do not,” he continued with a smile, “spread the fact among the young married ladies of your acquaintance; they might try and follow your example, with scarcely such happy results. Lovers’ quarrels are not always the renewing of love.”

“How can you joke on such a subject, Regy?” she asked almost inarticulately.

“Well, then, I’ll be serious once more. Never, as long as you live, doubt my love for you, Alice. Do you believe in it now?”

“I do,” she whispered, “and you have made me very, very happy.”

“Then you can’t refuse to make me happy! You have not given me one kiss yet, remember, and you have three years’ arrears to make up. To begin with, I’ll take the one you offered me the other night now.”

“I daresay you will,” she replied demurely, with a spice of her old spirit. “Have you ever heard, ‘He that will not when he may,’ etc.? And you took quite enough just now to last you for a long time,” she added, with a deep blush.

“You are not going to put me on allowance, are you? I tell you plainly I won’t stand it. After offering me a kiss you never can again pretend you are shy. Now, candidly, can you? I’m afraid you are a little impostor,” quietly insinuating his arm round her waist.

“I see you are as great a tease as ever, at any rate, Reginald,” she exclaimed tragically. “If you ever dare to allude to my foolish, idiotical offer, I won’t say what I shall do to you. I am not an impostor, and you know very well I am shy; you often said it—it——”

“Well, go on, I would not commence a sentence I was afraid to finish if I were you!”

“Well, that it was my only fault—there!”

“And so it was; and as you are cured now of course you are perfect.”

A silence. At length she said:

“Were you really going away to-morrow, Regy?”

“Yes, indeed I was. I have been lingering on here from day to day, hoping for one little word, just one, and it did not come. I would have gone back into the world a hard, embittered, cynical man. You smile, you think I am that already?”

“Tell me, Regy, will you be the very same Regy I knew of old, and will the rude, cold, stern guardian I have met lately, and—I tell you in confidence that I am a little afraid of—will he go?”

“He will,” replied her husband, with quiet decision. “He will take his departure along with the haughty young lady with whom he gets on so well. Are you sorry? Are you sorry to lose your guardian and find your husband?”

“Sorry!” she repeated, taking the flower out of his button-hole with the calmest air of rightful appropriation. “Do I look sorry? By-the-way, for the third time of asking, you may as well give me my wedding-ring”—fastening the flower in the front of her dress, and holding out a small white palm. “How glad I shall be to see it again,” she exclaimed, as she eagerly watched him disengaging it from his chain.

“Here it is,” handing it to her; “it is a travelled ring.”

“Let me see”—turning it to the moonlight and scrutinising it closely—“if it is my own. Yes, there is the ‘R. A.’ entwined. Now please to put it on.”

“Alice,” he said, taking her little ring-less hand in his and slipping it on her finger, “remember, you are not to remove it again.”

“I never will, you may be very sure, as long as I live, and when I die it shall be buried with me. See, it is quite too big for me now,” holding up her hand.

“It is indeed,” he reluctantly owned to himself, as he looked at the fragile, almost transparent fingers held up for his inspection. An agonising thought flitted through his brain and turned his heart, as it were, to ice. “Had he gained her but to lose her after all?”

“Why do you shiver?” cried Alice gaily. “Why do you look so odd—you are not ill, are you?”

“Ill? Not I!” recovering himself with an effort. “It is probably your friend the goose walking over my grave.”

“Don’t talk of graves,” she said with a shudder, drawing nearer to him involuntarily, and laying her hand on his shoulder. “You don’t know,” she added in a low voice, “what a good wife I am going to be. You have given me back my wedding-ring, and in return I promise solemnly to be truthful, loving, and obedient as long as I live. Nothing but death can ever come between us now,” she added tremulously, as, stealing her arm round his neck, she gave him the tenderest and shyest of kisses.

“You little witch!” he exclaimed, returning it with interest. “Do you know that that is almost the first kiss you have ever given me of your own accord, Lady Fairfax? What a change a few hours can make in one’s life! This morning, mine seemed so empty, so cheerless; just what it has been for the last three years. I had no one to look after, or care about much, except myself, and I am not very fond of myself; sometimes, I know all my faults quite as well, nay, far better than you do.”

“What are they?” she asked with a smile. “Let us compare notes.”

“I am determined to the verge of obstinacy, and beyond it. Proud to a degree little short of insanity. Overbearing, supercilious, tenacious, I would die sooner than yield, once I have made up my mind that I am in the right. If I had been less blinded by my pride, I would have written to you when Maurice was born, and saved us both two long miserable years. How can I ever make amends to you, my darling? How can I ever overtake these years I have left you alone?”

“Hush!” she said, “you must not abuse yourself. It has been all my fault from first to last; it is only like you to take the blame, but you know very well it all lies at my door. But, indeed, indeed I have been punished, and justly punished! I ought to have trusted you, Reginald; if I had followed my first impulse I would have spared myself many a bitter tear. I seem to have been under some malign influence, and to have had an absolute vocation for making you and myself miserable, that awful winter that seems so many years ago. Since then, Time has crawled by and brought no remedies for me—a blank empty future, and nothing to look back on but hateful haunting recollections; only for Maurice I must have gone melancholy mad. You will never leave me again, will you?

“You won’t go to Looton now?” she added suddenly.

“Yes; in fact I must. I’ll run down there for a few days and see how everything is getting on, look into the accounts, ride over the home farm, etc., and tell them to be ready for us at Christmas.”

“At Christmas?” she echoed in amazement.

“Yes. I shall then come back here and take you off abroad for the next three months. You were talking of Nice the other day: will you accept me as a companion instead of your aunt? How would you like to spend the autumn in Italy?”

“And Maurice?”

“Oh, Maurice will be made over to Helen; she will take excellent care of him. He has had a very good time the last two years; it’s my turn now. I must have you all to myself, no rivals, small or large, which is one reason why I don’t want to settle down at home just at present. We should have nothing but one scene of visiting, feasting, and mutual entertainments. Whereas, roaming about abroad, we can scorn all social claims, spend our time as we please, and, if the worst comes to the worst, pretend we are bride and bridegroom. If you are a good girl and get strong and well by Christmas I shall bring you home again; if not, I shall take you on to Egypt.”

“Egypt!” she echoed. “Why Egypt? And why do you sigh, Regy, and look at me so wistfully?” she asked, raising her gray eyes to his fond dark ones, that seemed to brim over with a look of anguish she could not understand.

“I did not sigh,” he replied mendaciously. “And why not go to Egypt? You know you have always had a craving to out-travel Helen and to see the old Nile. Come, it is getting late, I cannot let you stay out any longer; the dew is falling, you must go in.”

“Ah! I see you have had enough of me already,” she replied with a pretty little shrug. “Tell me, Regy, who have you got in this locket?—you never used to wear one.”

“Who do you think—are you jealous? A Begum who took rather a fancy to me,” he said, opening the case and revealing herself. “As long as I had the original I never wore it of course. I believe this locket is a kind of talisman; it has been twice into action, for I never left it out of my possession night or day.”

They were slowly promenading up and down the centre garden-walk, now stopping for an instant, now again going on, this time very, very leisurely, as it was the very last turn they were to take. On this point Reginald was resolute, although he grudged sorely to shorten the happiest hour he had known for years. Oblivious of all the world, and absorbed in each other, they were approaching the gate, which suddenly burst open, and Geoffrey, singing, “Alice, where art thou?” appeared.

“I’ve been sent,” he shouted, “to know if you mean to roost in the pear-tree? Where are the pears?” he added imperiously. “Why, what’s all this? I do believe,” looking from one to the other, “that you two have buried the hatchet, come off the war-path, and smoked the pipe of peace!”

“Yes, wise and observant Geoffrey, you are right for once. We have been the victims of an unfortunate accident that has cost us both very dearly,” replied Reginald gravely.

“Hip, hip, hurrah!” cried Geoffrey, dancing a war-dance round them, concluding with three wild bounds into the air.

“I really must embrace you, my dear Regy. You know I’d twice as soon have you as Alice.” So saying he flung himself on Reginald à la Française.

“No no, my dear fellow, you really must excuse me,” pushing him back. “If you must kiss somebody, you may kiss Alice; and for your kind congratulations, conveyed, I presume, by those wild evolutions just now, receive my warmest thanks. Also,” he added more seriously, “for all your well-meant but unsuccessful endeavours to reconcile us, all the tête-à-tête rides and walks you contrived. Only you are not an old woman, you would make a superb chaperone.”

A less shrewd observer than Geoffrey could see that this assumed gaiety covered a deeper emotion Reginald could hardly conceal.

“Well, here, Alice, is a kiss for you, by your lord and master’s kind permission.”

“Imagine you have had it, it will do as well,” cried Alice, waving him away with both hands.

“All right,” replied Geoffrey, rather huffed. “Imagination is no doubt better than reality in this particular instance. I always knew if anyone could manage you, or get you along at all in double harness, it was our right honourable friend. But you must confess you jibbed frightfully at starting. Plenty of the whip, that’s what you all want.

Isn’t that so?”

“Geoffrey!” exclaimed Alice, “have you taken leave of your senses! If people were to see you whooping and springing about they would certainly think we kept a private lunatic asylum, and that you were one of our most dangerous patients. Do be cautious, the moon is at the full!”

Reginald having started off to fetch the pears, Geoffrey watched him out of sight, and then said: “Alice, my good girl, seriously and soberly, I never was so glad of anything in all my life. He is the best fellow I ever knew, and ten times too good for you.”

“No one knows that better than myself,” she replied meekly, to Geoffrey’s unbounded surprise.

“Good-night, Geoff; I’m going. Tell him to tell them; I couldn’t,” she added, vanishing through the gateway.

“Alice has gone, Rex,” said Geoffrey, “and you are to break it gently to the family. No one could eat pears now: leave them on the garden-seat and come along. You and Alice are the only pair they will think of to-night.”

In a few minutes they had rejoined the party in the pleasure-ground.

“Well, what has kept you? Have you brought the pears?” inquired Helen, languidly.

“No; but I have brought you a piece of good news instead. You can guess what it is, can you not?”

“I can, my dear Regy,” she replied, rising hastily—her active mind having grasped the truth in one second—and kissing him with effusion. “I know there is only one thing that could make you look so happy. Where is Alice?”

“This,” said Geoffrey with mock gravity, taking Reginald’s unwilling hand, “is Petruchio. Katharina has retired. In plain English, Alice was too bashful to return here, and desired me to accept your congratulations as her deputy. I’ve no doubt, Helen, that you and Miss Ferrars will find her in her room.”

Helen and Miss Ferrars were not long in acting on this hint, and found Alice sitting in the window-sill in the moonlight, leisurely unplaiting her long, golden-brown plaits. She received them with smiles and tears.

“I knew you would come,” she said, throwing herself into Helen’s arms; “you have always been our good genius. You have heard it all from him, have you not?” she whispered.

“Only a sketch—a mere outline,” Helen replied, seating herself. “I have a vague idea that you are going abroad, that I am to have charge of Maurice, and that we are all to meet at Looton at Christmas. The moment I saw Regy’s face I knew what had happened. Dear boy! it does one good to see him looking like himself once more.”

The three ladies remained talking together till the small hours, much to the detriment of Alice and Mary’s roses, and the tale of the lost letter was told and re-told, deplored and discussed, at least ten times over.

The next morning Reginald started for Looton, and within a week Sir R. and Lady Fairfax were among the fashionable departures for the Continent, and the party at Monkswood dispersed, to reunite at Christmas.