Front matter (continued 2)

'The same. She's the daughter of Admiral Penrock—the old Salt Eagle of the fifties.'

The questioner disappeared and passed downstairs, and with the privilege of old friendship lifted the tapestry curtain and walked into the little room. Sir John and Lady Fairfax sat on either side their guest before the fire. The girl was eating as she talked.

'Come in, Sampson!' called his host, 'and speak to our little niece here. Marion, my dear, here is an old soldier who fought alongside your father before you were born.'

Marion, whose back was towards the newcomer, laid down her spiced cake and turned in her seat, prepared to see a burly, weather-worn figure. Instead, she was aware of a slight, pale-faced man, dressed with an elegance she had never before encountered, making a low bow. For a second she was startled, then gravely held out her fingers.

'I could not wait one other minute,' said the guest, his languid air falling away somewhat, 'before I had done myself the honour of paying my respects to the daughter of the bravest, loyalest gentleman it has ever been my fortune to know.'

The tears dimmed Marion's eyes, and she could not find a word to say, but she smiled up suddenly into the gaunt face; and the man standing there, who had seen two generations of beauty go by, felt a stirring in his dry old heart.

Here my lady broke in. 'Tut, tut, Colonel! I will not have my niece weep, even at your praise. But for yonder stupid rising still brewing trouble, we should have had my brother with us. Marion has just told us the story. Go on eating your cake, my dear. Take a chair, Colonel. So. Just as the coach was leaving Bagshot, who should come up but the King's Commissioner with a couple of officers behind him, riding hard for the west with urgent duty for my brother, who is magistrate in his parts. My niece, here, knows nothing of the mission but that it was of such urgency, with the Lord Chancellor's will behind it, that the Admiral must needs take another coach and ride back to Cornwall. The two officers escorted my niece here the rest of the way till noon to-day, when there was but the fields of Kensington to cross, and they were doubtless thinking of their dinner at St. James's. The coachman then lost his way, the dolt! and found himself in Chelsey. 'Tis only by good fortune my niece arrived in safety. But'—the lady pressed another kiss on the girl's cheek—'here she is! And she's going to stay a long, long time. Perhaps for years.'

Marion was aware of a vague echo, a vision of a youth on horseback on a windy ridge that smelt of the sea: all of it somewhere in another world and another life she had lived in the long ago. She sighed. For a few minutes the talk went on, the girl paying no heed. Then Lady Fairfax, gathering her lace shawl, rose and dropped a curtsey to Mr. Sampson.

'And now for bed,' said she. 'I will see you all anon.'

CHAPTER VI

A LADY-IN-WAITING

It is said that the unexpected generally happens, and the truth of this was borne home to Marion during her first week in Kensington. She had looked (not without a thrill of delight and fear blended) for an immediate plunge into the excitements of the capital. Instead, she found herself, partly by accident and partly by design, passing from hour to hour and day to day in a state of almost complete seclusion. The accident that led to this state of affairs was due to Lady Fairfax's being a favourite attendant of Her Majesty; Her Majesty elected to find herself ailing on the Wednesday—the day after Marion's arrival—and Lady Fairfax's presence seemed to be the one factor that made the Royal indisposition bearable. Aunt Constance could only spare rime for an embrace and a half-hour's gossip with her niece before her coach was announced to carry her to court. She came home late in the day with the news that change of air was prescribed by the royal physician, and on Friday the Queen's household must move to Hampton Court; and should that atmosphere not prove beneficial, they might go yet further, to Tunbridge or Bath. Lady Fairfax had risked the displeasure of her august mistress and prayed for leave of absence, only to learn that the arrivals of 'little nieces' from our duchy of Cornwall do not find a place in the calendar of events at Court. When our health is improved (it was hinted) we may perhaps find it agreeable to dispense somewhat with our lady-in-waiting. Until then—as Lady Fairfax allowed herself to say, the unfortunate aunt must 'grin and bide.'

So much for the 'accident' that led to Marion's seclusion. The 'design' was due to the cherished plans her aunt had formed—vaguely before her arrival, very actively on the night of her coming—for her niece's success. Lady Fairfax was delighted with her young guest. She was proud of this addition to her family treasures; a veritable jewel, she fondly said. But the jewel must be well set before being displayed to the public eye. To the inquirers visiting the house in Kensington or seeing her abroad, Lady Fairfax smilingly said that her niece had had a trying journey, and must have her beauty sleep—several days' beauty sleep, in fact (during which time it was decreed that my lady's tailor and sempstress should be hard driven). No word of this was hinted to Marion. She accepted the fact of her aunt's duties at Court as an ordinary event, and spent her time wandering about the great house and garden; noting the grandeur of the entertaining rooms, the numerous liveried servants, and the ordered stateliness of everyday life. Her windows looked out on Kensington Square, where she had glimpses of carriages coming and going, of chairmen setting down their burden at the gates, of men and women of such dress and deportment that Marion thought they must surely be the princes and princesses out of some fairy tale.

Kind Sir John Fairfax was concerned for the young lady under his roof. She seemed to him to be moping.

'Everything is for the best, on the whole,' declared his wife. 'I am truly grieved to leave her so much, but that would not be a loss if you would bear her company a little oftener. You forget the change this life is to the child. What is Garth? A wigwam in a forest. She must needs find her feet before she can run. And run she shall not till she be dressed. Romaine is altering a gown for everyday usage,' the lady went on, 'and then as soon as Her Majesty's malaise allows her to free me, we will have a few visitors some quiet night that I may see how she dances. Young Beckenham will not be sorry of the chance, and Sampson, I'll be bound, for all his languid airs, will be glad to make a leg again in a minuet. Then,' Lady Fairfax smiled demurely, 'in another week or two a ball in the honour of the coming of my niece to Kensington. And if you don't like the fuss and the pother of the ball coming on, dear lad, why, get you to Whitehall and talk secrets with my Lord Churchill.'

'You are riding this hobby of her gowns to death!' grumbled Sir John. 'It is bad for the girl. She'll think that nothing matters but fal-lals. And she is too much alone. Can't Her Majesty spare you an hour this evening to take her to a play? Need she be dressed for her first play?'

The lady neatly dropped a kiss on the end of her husband's nose. 'That's for that!' she smiled. 'You have given me an idea. Not to-night, but Monday (Her Majesty has promised me Monday) our little niece shall go to the play. She shall wear her white muslin frock and a rose in her hair; and not a woman in the theatre but will be sick at the thought of the pots on her dressing-table.'

Sir John looked at his wife in despair, then laughed outright.

'Upon my word, Connie,' said he, 'you'd have made a fine general. You lose no chances. You make every hummock into a bed for a culverin. I give it up!'

'But even you,' serenely concluded his companion, 'will agree that she cannot walk into Her Majesty's drawing-room in a muslin frock.'

To do Lady Fairfax justice, she had no intention of burdening Marion with fal-lals, for although in those days women wore most elaborate robes, it was not considered necessary to have a new one for each ball, play, or party they attended. Moreover fashion was a sleepy, slow-moving dame, only rising to bestir herself once in a decade—and not, as is her present habit, setting a new step every year, and making her followers miserable if they fall behind in the march. A ball dress was a veritable 'creation,' made with infinite pains and pride, every stitch carefully put in, the embroideries a triumph of patience and skill (and eyesight), as indeed was all the needlework of those leisurely days, before machine-made imitations undermined its value. Dresses were worn by their owners year after year, and very often a valued gown was personally bequeathed to the next generation.

Lady Fairfax had carefully hidden the slight disdain she had felt for Marion's belongings when her French sempstress, to whom she had sent an urgent call, came early on the second day after Marion's arrival. Indeed Marion's eyes had watched her aunt narrowly, and the kind-hearted woman had guessed her nervous shrinking when Madame Romaine lifted from her trunk the simple garment made by the Plymouth tailor.

'But, dear heart,' Lady Fairfax had allowed herself to remark, 'where is your mother's lilac embroidered gown? Did not your father give it to you?'

'He never thinks of dress,' faltered Marion, feeling that she and her father were being found blameworthy, 'and—I don't think he could bear to see even me wearing my mother's bodices.'

Lady Fairfax's eyes softened, and a memory came to her of the fair lady of Garth in that one winter when she flitted across the stage of London before she 'buried herself' in the west.

The Frenchwoman meanwhile was sniffing in the recesses of Marion's trunk. 'I have not smelt so great a sweetness, Mademoiselle, since I was a small little one—so—playing in the garden of my uncle in Avignon, a thousand years ago!'

'All my mother's things still smell sweet,' said Marion to her aunt. 'She made her own waters, and grew lavender and roses and all sorts of flowers specially for them. I cannot make them near so well. Mistress Trevannion says my mother was very beautiful, too. But Father will never talk of her, except,' added Marion disconsolately, 'to say I do not in the least resemble her.'

The eyes of mistress and sempstress met over the golden brown head. Marion at the moment was busying herself with another small trunk, and took from it a japanned box.

'I had almost forgotten this, Aunt Constance,' she said. 'Father gave it to me in the greatest hurry, just when Curnow was fastening the boxes. If I had not known his ways, I should have thought he had been angry. But it was just that he did not want me to ask any questions.'

She opened the box with a little gold key. Inside was a length of heavy embroidered silk, worked in cream and gold, on a cream ground, with a straying touch of blue and green. Pinned to the end of the length was a slip of paper.

'Your mother was working this for you, and talking of when you would be grown, just before she died,' ran the words. 'Wear it, my child.' Nothing more.

'That was a very sweet lady,' emphatically said the Frenchwoman as she examined the length, the other two standing silent a space.

'It is most beautiful,' said Lady Fairfax. Then she glanced at the script again, and in spite of Marion's solemn look she chuckled a little.

'"Wear it!" says my lord. "Wear it!" How? Pinned on the front of your bodice? I'll warrant my brother is firmly of the idea he has given you a gown. But there's something else in this trunk—another box——'

Marion fumbled with the lid, and presently disclosed a casket with a velvet lining. Curled in the folds of the velvet lay a necklace of turquoise and pearl.

Marion stood speechless.

'I shall never dare wear that!' she said at length.

Lady Fairfax, with a pleased smile, was turning the necklace about in the light.

'Your mother's too, I remember it. This settles the matter,' she added to the sempstress. 'Mademoiselle's gown shall be cream and gold, with a soupçon of the blue of these turquoises. Let it be designed'—she went off into a string of technicalities. 'You will get Master Bingon at once, my good Romaine, and the two of you set to work. I give you seven days and nights for a month's employment. Can you, and will you?'

Madame Romaine glanced at Marion's face. 'Solely for les beaux yeux of Mademoiselle,' she briefly replied. 'I cannot, but I will.'

'Good. And bid the little Simone come here for a spell. She can have the small chamber next to Mademoiselle, and stitch at her flounces and petticoats, and perhaps persuade Mademoiselle to wear her new stays.'

Marion laughed. 'I give up the battle from this moment, Aunt Constance. I will even wear the sort of stays you wish. But not,' she added firmly, 'as hard and tight as yours.'

Lady Fairfax complacently surveyed her own beautiful figure in the long mirror on the wall.

'La, la, Mademoiselle,' put in the Frenchwoman, 'il faut souffrir pour être belle.'

'Not that kind of suffering, Madame Romaine!' said Marion, with a touch of her father's dryness that made her aunt smile. 'Mademoiselle de Delauret wears hard stays, and she suffers greatly sometimes, but I have never seen any marked improvement in her looks. But who is this Simone who is coming to mount guard over me?'

Here the door opened and a page boy entered. He spoke to his mistress, who drew him out of earshot of the others.

'Master Beckenham again, my lady. Master Beckenham's compliments, and may he have the pleasure of waiting on your ladyship and inquiring after the health of Mistress Penrock?'

'Did I not tell you what to say should this happen?

'I said it, my lady, and Master——'

'Go and say it again.'

The page boy made a deep obeisance and withdrew.

Lady Fairfax, smiling at her own thoughts, rejoined her niece and the sempstress. Meanwhile Madame Romaine, whose delight at finding a receptive audience was great, was telling a story about some one called Simone, a protégée of hers whose services in her own house Lady Fairfax had just requested. Simone, it appeared, had been found many years ago on a doorstep in the city—in Crutched Friars—by the Frenchwoman on her way home from a client's house. The sempstress had been minded to pass by—there are always plenty of crying children in the gutters—but she had heard the child babbling in her own tongue. And the kind-hearted woman, whose country was her dear love, picked up the little one, and solely for the sake of la belle France, carried her home.

The child, emaciated, almost starved to death, had fallen into a fever and a severe illness from which she had barely escaped with her life, and not altogether, Madame Romaine sometimes feared, with her reason. She had babbled of strange things sometimes, but the memory of her childhood seemed to have fallen off, with all the hair from her head, during her illness. 'She is one of my most valued needlewomen,' declared the sempstress, 'which is why, I suppose, my lady demands her presence here, just as if she were but a chair to sit upon, and no good whatever to me!'

'You have others,' placidly said Lady Fairfax, busy with her powdering box at her dressing-table. 'And I have a certain liking for the little Simone. But of course, if you prefer it—I wish not to drive you hardly—send Alice Hepworthy—but spare us her history. Seven days and nights you have. 'Tis not wise to waste an hour talking of people who do not matter in the least. Marion, my dear,' Lady Fairfax swung round, 'take warning by Romaine, and if ever you find yourself chattering, think of her. She cares not what her subject may be, so long as her tongue may wag. You are an insufferable bore, my good Romaine, with your Simones and your gutters. Begone, you rogue, and let me see your progress soon.'

With a smile and a curtsey the Frenchwoman departed. She counted it one of her greatest privileges to be rated by Lady Fairfax.

Madame Romaine's little French needlewoman took up her abode in a small chamber that opened off Marion's, and when that young lady was not engaged with her aunt or uncle, or the stray visitors she was allowed to see before she was presented to London society, she found Simone Leblanc very pleasant company.

Simone, like Elise, had that instinct for dress which is the birthright of all Frenchwomen and the envy of their Anglo-Saxon sisters. Did Marion require a ribbon in her sunny hair, Simone knew by an unfailing instinct just where the knot should fall, found without a second's hesitation the one spot to place a rose. And when Marion, seeing herself stumble in these paths so easily tripped by the little French feet, was minded to voice her discontent with herself, Simone would reply with her rare smile: 'No, no! Mademoiselle deceives herself. Mademoiselle has great qualities. As for a little nothing like a bow or an ornament, Mademoiselle will surely see that it is one's métier, the placing of bows and ornaments.'

Marion liked the quiet, grave girl who sat so industriously hemming the flounces for her petticoats and otherwise filling the gaps her over-tried employer left neglected in the programme of Mademoiselle's dresses. Sometimes Marion would take a needle and help her, and they talked of London, Simone offering crumbs for Marion's hungering curiosity of the ways of this new world. Always when she entered the little chamber she would see the small brown head bent over a lapful of silk and muslins, the dainty hand stitching away, the face, with its look of settled gravity and absorption combined, turning at her entrance.

'If she were not so serious,' mused Marion on one or two occasions, 'that little Simone would be a beautiful girl.'

But beautiful or not, Simone wrought exactly the change Lady Fairfax had desired. Marion unconsciously studied the little sempstress's way of wearing her own simply made gowns: a new spectacle this, for Elise's dresses had never been simple. And the grave rebuke in the dark eyes when Marion, on seating herself, adjusted a skirt in an unbecoming way had the effect of subduing the young lady at once.

'I don't know what is the matter with me,' confessed Marion to her aunt. 'Simone makes me feel too large, too clumsy. I haven't got big feet'—she complacently surveyed her projected slipper—'but when Simone walks across a room I think I have. I did not think there was anything the matter with my arms till I saw Simone's glance if I placed them so. Am I very countrified, Aunt Constance?'

'My little lamb,' said that lady with a fond embrace, 'you are finding your feet. Never mind how big they are. They are very well.'

Simone had passed triumphantly the test of the shrewd, watching eyes of Lady Fairfax, who had long ago singled out the quiet girl as being the most deft of the Frenchwoman's assistants. And now, as she saw her coming and going about her niece's affairs, she decided that, considering her as a waiting woman, deftness was the least of her qualities. There was something in the ease of the girl's movements no matter in what company she found herself; something in the way she entered a thronged room on some errand, spoke to her young mistress and went out again; something in the restraint of her speech and the subtle charm of her low soft voice, that made Lady Fairfax congratulate herself again and again on the waiting woman she had found for her niece. And it was a matter of sincere regret in the entire household when Madame Romaine obdurate for once, insisted on her apprentice's return in order to help with the mass of work that was driving the sempstress into an untimely grave. As soon as the load was eased somewhat, Simone might be allowed to return; but in the meantime, excellent needlewomen were hard to find, while waiting women grew in every garden, so to speak. Thus Madame Romaine.

Simone's departure, Mrs. Martin, Lady Fairfax's woman was obliged to find time to divide her care between two mistresses, and visitors coming more and more to the house, Marion's empty hours were few.

True to her promise (being graciously allowed by Her Majesty) Lady Fairfax took her niece on the Monday night to see the play at the theatre near Blackfriars Bridge, Colonel Sampson being the only visitor in the box. When Marion had seated herself, and realised that the box was in full view of the body of the theatre filled with people of fashion, she shrank back in uttermost confusion. Her aunt, serenely surveying the house, nodding to acquaintances and smiling at the stiff backs of her honest enemies, was forgetful for the moment of her niece's predicament. But the gentleman at the rear of the box came to her rescue. Colonel Sampson, slipping round her chair, leisurely placed his elegantly garbed shoulder and elbow on the edge of the box, and leaning down to talk to her, sheltered her from the view of the gossiping folk in the body of the theatre. Marion vowed friendship for Colonel Sampson from that moment.

Then, when the curtain rose, and her companion returned to his own chair, Marion forgot the gay crowd, forgot past, present, and future. Leaning on the edge of the box, utterly unconscious of the fact that Lady Fairfax's 'little niece' in a white muslin dress and with a rose in her hair, was being fully as much regarded as the stage, she gave herself up to the pleasure of her first play. She did not know that her laugh rose here and there the first in the house; she was totally unaware of the horror in her face when the villain of the piece unmasked his villainy. When a duel came to be fought, and swords gleamed out, she half turned and grasped Sir John's sleeve, not daring to see the blades clash. And when the curtain fell, she needed the positive assurance of her uncle and Colonel Sampson (Lady Fairfax being at the door of the box, smilingly and inexorably keeping visitors without) that the men lying there on the stage were not really dead.

CHAPTER VII

SIMONE LEBLANC

Marion was silent in the carriage on her way home from the theatre, and absent-minded at supper. Her aunt presently thought it wise to switch off her thoughts into another channel.

'She will never sleep, that precious baby,' she said in an aside to Colonel Sampson, sitting at her right hand. 'She is living the acts all over again. I cannot blame her. I wept all night after my first play.'

Soon Marion's ears pricked at the sound of the word Garth; mentally she rubbed her eyes and sat up. Colonel Sampson was talking of her father—telling the sort of tales Marion had so often heard when her father and his old friends of the sea met at the friendly board, or when he had fallen back on the parson for audience. And as Mr. Sampson talked, it seemed to Marion that the bored gentleman of fashion completely disappeared and the stern, honest soldier came uppermost.

Marion listened with complacent pride to the hints the speaker gave of her father's bravery and lovable little deeds.

'He was ever prone to acts of generous folly,' the Admiral's sister put in at the end of one of the stories. 'And that reminds me, my dear,' turning to her niece, 'I haven't yet heard one hundredth part of your news from home——'

'You lead such a busy life, Aunt Constance,' put in Marion demurely, 'I don't see how you can ever think of little things like stories about Garth.'

'I lead a most unhappy life!' retorted the lady, 'and I hope when some one writes my memoirs he will be careful to add the fact that I bore my trials right sweetly. But I was going to say—give her some more of that jelly, John—I never had the right story of how your foolish father came to saddle himself with the little French girl.'

'Why,' said Marion, 'let me see now. Elise is the daughter of poor M. de Delauret, you know——'

Colonel Sampson leaned forward. 'Not the de Delauret who sailed in the Triomphe Noir to the East?'

'The same. I have heard my father talk of that very ship.'

'Strange, strange!' mused the old soldier, settling back in his chair. 'I never met the gentleman myself, but I was acquainted with Madame de Delauret in the old days, before she was married.'

Marion regarded the speaker with unfeigned interest. 'You knew Elise's mother! Do tell me about her, sir. I could never get Elise to talk about her.'

'But this is intolerable!' cried Lady Fairfax, tapping the table with her slim, jewelled fingers. 'Here I ask for a simple story, and you and my niece go off on a voyage of discovery together. John, my dear, shall we retire to my drawing-room for a dish of tea?'

'You see, Marion,' came her uncle's quiet voice from the head of the table, 'my lady there is accustomed to being (or thinking she is) the person of most importance, saving Her Majesty's presence, in any company.'

The country girl's eyes rested shyly on the lady's face. 'I'm sure no one has a greater right,' said she.

'That is a very admirable sentiment,' said Lady Fairfax gravely. 'The prisoner is dismissed with a reprimand. Now you may begin your story, leaving out the Triomphe Noir.'

In her simple, straightforward way Marion then told what she knew of her father's relationship with the Frenchman and his adoption of the orphan.

''Twas very noble of Tom to take on such a guardianship,' mused Lady Fairfax. 'But it was also very foolish. Only my brother would have been so blind.'

'How so, Aunt Constance?'

'Because, my dear, from what you say Elise is something of an heiress on her mother's side. Is not that so, Colonel?'

The gentleman assented. 'Madame de Delauret was the daughter of the Sieur d'Artois. Her father, it is true, gave his consent to her marriage with the "penniless Breton cadet," as they were pleased to describe de Delauret, but her family more or less discarded her. Now, however, through the demise of various other members of the family, Madame de Delauret's child must inherit the Artois estates.'

'I still don't see how Father was blind,' persisted Marion.

'Don't you, my dear child? It is this way. If Elise is her mother's heiress to that extent, she is a person of note, in a small way. She should be with the ladies of the d'Artois family. It is to be presumed their antagonism is now dead. D'ailleurs,' added the lady drily, 'if Elise is heiress 'twill be for her to pick and choose.'

'M. de Delauret's particular wish was to keep Elise away from French society,' replied Marion.

'But Elise cannot be hid all her life under my brother's greatcoats! She has, I am sure, had a right simple, honest, healthy upbringing. Now she should be brought out to take her place.'

'She ought to be a very charming young lady,' mused the Colonel. 'Of such a mother and such a father. I have ever heard the most noble stories of de Delauret.'

'Who is managing Elise's estates?' asked Sir John, looking up from his walnuts.

'I know very little about that, sir. My father's lawyer has dealings with M. de Delauret's lawyer in France and pays Elise her income, through Father, of course. But that brings to my mind—I had really forgotten—I seem to have forgotten such a lot about Garth since I came here,' penitently put in the young lady. 'The very day we came away Father had a letter from the French attorney, M. Lebrun. He is an old gentleman, it appears, and wishes to retire from his duties, and is shortly to leave everything in his son's hands. The young M. Lebrun I know nothing about. Neither Elise nor Victoire has ever seen him. But I gathered from Elise's manner she will not be sorry to have dealings with the son,' continued Marion. 'The old gentleman appears to affect her with a particular dislike. Be that as it may, old M. Lebrun is on his way to England, to visit us before he relinquishes his affairs. Father said 'twas rather unwise of him, as his health is very poor—some disease he has—I forget its name—a learned name.'

'Well,' said Lady Fairfax, 'let us hope the learned name will not silence M. Lebrun before he has arranged for the young lady to be taken to Paris.'

'Father has been thinking of a change, I know. Aunt Keziah scolded him a little, I think. You wouldn't believe,' smiled Marion, 'how Aunt Keziah and Elise hated each other.'

'I presume she was otherwise a general favourite?' Lady Fairfax had noted the entire absence of any personal feeling in her niece's recital of the young French girl's affairs.

'Well——' Marion faltered.

'You are much attached to her, I suppose.'

'I was—yes, I am,' said Marion stoutly. ''Twas just something she did that angered me.' She took refuge in a general attitude again. 'As for being a favourite—I think—'twas so—except for Roger. Roger could never abide her. Neither could Dick Hooper, his friend from Blundell's.'

'Roger?'

Marion raised her clear eyes to her aunt's face. 'Roger Trevannion, you know, at the Manor.'

There was a brief silence. Marion's brows were straightened a little. She seemed again to hear that sarcastic voice: 'So you are on his side, as well as Roger.' How distant it all appeared! She wondered what Roger was doing—was he allowing himself to get into any foolish scrapes?

Presently Lady Fairfax held up her finger to stop the conversation that had arisen between the gentlemen. 'Hark, d' ye hear?'

The windows were open, and the cry of the watch in the square was distinctly audible.

'Past ten o'clock, and a fine starlight night.'

'To your chamber at once,' she said to Marion. 'We will talk more of this little Elise later.'

As the days went on, Mrs. Martin found herself unable to cope with the double service that had been laid upon her. Moreover the approaching festivities planned in Marion's honour were casting shadows before.

'I think Martin is taking leave of her senses,' grumbled Lady Fairfax one morning. 'She brought me my best sarcenet petticoat to wear while I showed Hopkins how to make a new sauce.'

'Likely enough she is overworked,' remarked Sir John.

'It comes of allowing a servant to lead an idle life,' declared the lady. 'If she has two ribbons to tie instead of one, her face becomes that of a long stone image.'

'Her face generally resembles a good-tempered gargoyle,' smiled Marion.

''Tis a pity for a good-tempered gargoyle to become a long stone image,' remarked Sir John. 'Cannot you get that little Simone to return to us? Apart from the question of Martin, if your fear comes true, and Her Majesty goes to the wells at Tunbridge, Simone would be useful in your absence.'

'Hush!' cried his wife. 'A mightily kind fate has decreed that Her Majesty should continue to improve.'

'A mightily kind fate of that order,' drily put in Sir John, 'doubtless has its lap full of those famous powders of the court physician. Don't count on the kindness being lasting.'

'I always disliked Job's friends,' remarked Lady Fairfax. 'Very well, we will try to get Simone back. That is, if our baby does not object.'

'I like Simone,' said Marion heartily. 'It will be pleasant for me.'

The same day Lady Fairfax drove to the house of Madame Romaine, and not only silenced the Frenchwoman's protests with gold and fair words, but brought Simone back with her to Kensington. Simone did not attempt to hide the pleasure afforded her by the prospect of her new duties. A smile broke over her face when she was summoned to the visitor's presence, and learned her wishes. As Lady Fairfax noted the new expression of the grave features, and the light in the dark eyes, her firmly rooted belief that happiness is the greatest beautifier in the world threw out several new shoots. 'She shall go on being happy,' was her inward vow, 'Romaine or no Romaine.'

The sempstress herself saw the look on the girl's face. 'Mademoiselle Marion is the only one of her patrons whom Simone has consented to like,' she remarked, when the girl had left the room to find the necessary objects for her journey. 'She spends most of her time in her so nice little grey shell, that small snail of mine.'

'Tell me again where you found her,' said Lady Fairfax. 'Sir John was asking the other day.'

The two talked together till Simone reappeared with a modest parcel of her belongings.

Simone was more delighted to return to Kensington and the society of Marion than either Lady Fairfax or her mistress guessed. Ever since the first day when she had arrived to stitch Mademoiselle's flounces, a pleasure in Marion's society had come on her as a surprise: a new sensation. Hitherto Simone had been an incurious, detached watcher of the friendships of others. Now she found herself suddenly flung on to the stage. It had been somewhat of an upheaval, this first attachment of hers.

Marion had no idea of the depth of affection the quiet French girl felt for her. Simone's was a proud and reticent nature, and moreover she had early learned in the school of sorrow the secret of self-restraint. Marion wondered sometimes at the unusual warmth of the dark eyes that would meet her own, and she certainly felt for Simone an ever-growing regard; but a social barrier lay between the two, and Simone was not the one to overstep it.

Meanwhile, as was only natural, the mental atmosphere of her new home was creating in Marion fresh impressions, altering her standards. Her thoughts began to fly out and abroad, instead of roosting peacefully at home. Both Colonel Sampson, who was a constant visitor at the house, and her uncle were studious, thoughtful men; her aunt was a very accomplished woman; and it was a severe check to whatever self-importance Marion had had as mistress of Garth to find that sometimes during the whole course of a meal no subject would be discussed on which she had any knowledge at all. And wherever she went in her aunt's company, new forces were at work.

A week or two after her arrival in Kensington, she had her first glimpse of the city of London. Lady Fairfax wished to visit a tailor in Eastcheap concerning a new riding cloak for her charge. The coach was announced immediately after dinner, and aunt and niece set out for the drive across the fields, by way of Knightsbridge, to the village of Charing.

Marion's delight was unbounded. She had already been taken to Westminster, standing mute at her first glimpse of the Abbey and Houses. Another day she and her aunt had visited Chelsey, and she had seen the river again with its strings of barges and wherries and passenger boats: more people on the waterway than trod the road. She had written a long letter to her father about it, saying that when he came to London the two could sail down the river, so that he might show her London Bridge, and find the shop whence her school books had come.

The coach made its way up the Strand through the Temple Gate into the city. The crowds jostling each other and shouting; the officers of the Guards swaggering by, ready for a brawl if a man so much as jerked their elbows in passing; the flunkeys making way for their lord's coach; the chairmen reviling each other; the glimpses of men and women of the world of fashion in the narrow footway; all this was Romance incarnate to the simple country girl. Then when they reached Ludgate Hill, and the coach stopped for my lady to make a trifling purchase, Marion, alighting after her, stood stock still in amazement. Each shop had its own pictorial sign suspended by creaking chains over the doorway. By this device a populace for the most part incapable of reading was able to understand the nature of the trade pursued indoors. Marion, wishing to stand and read the riddle of these signs (of which the only remnant to this day exists in the barber's painted pole and the pawnbroker's three balls) was laughingly drawn onward by her aunt.

'My dear,' she said, 'you will have all the apprentices of the city rushing out upon you if you behave in this way.'

Indeed, the prentice boys, with their cry of 'What d'ye lack? What d'ye lack, Gentles? Buy, buy, buy!' were continually in and out of the doors of their shops, and one, spying from within Marion's face of wonderment, was only prevented from seizing an easy customer by the sight of Lady Fairfax's footman towering head and shoulders above the ladies.

From the shops on Ludgate Hill Marion's eyes turned upwards to the climbing walls and scaffolding of the new St. Paul's rising on the ashes of the old. And the country girl, whose love for the fields and lanes of Cornwall, the salt of the sea, and the song of birds in the dawn was one of the strongest forces in her life, began to understand more of that other love—the love of the English for the grey stone buildings of London. She had heard of sailors who had been bred in the sound of Bow Bells meeting with streaming eyes the spires of the city rising above the water when they sailed back after an outlandish voyage and anchored in London Pool. Already she felt that if she visited London again after a long lapse, she would claim it as her own. It was more than a city; something mysterious and eternal. The Great Fire had eaten its way into the very heart of its foundations, and here was St. Paul's rising again on the monstrous scar left by the flames.

In a dream she sat by her aunt's side, and rode down Eastcheap, past the little houses and shops, mostly standing gable-end on the street. It seemed quite fitting that the bells of Bow should be pealing then. In a dream she got out and stared at the new Royal Exchange, another great building fresh born of the Fire. She saw Sir Thomas Gresham's monument, and the huge grasshopper black with smoke which had come, a portent of the spirit of the founder of the Exchange, through all those days of devouring flames.

Then the houses of Lombard Street caught her eye, where Italy had joined hands with England, bringing gold and jewels for barter from a land at the height of her wealth to the barbarian island set about with fog.

Her aunt's voice sounded in her ear. 'This is the richest street in the land, Marion—all money lenders and goldsmiths and wealthy merchants.'

Marion sighed. 'I think London is very wonderful, Aunt Constance. May we not go to the Tower now?'

'Another time, my child, another time.'

As the days went by, several of these excursions took place, sometimes Colonel Sampson and sometimes Simone occupying the spare seat in the coach. Slowly Marion was drawn into the circle of her new life. She no longer felt, as in the first few days of her visit, that the present was a dream, a pageant passing her by; the present became very actively real, and her life on the Cornish hillside grew more and more remote.

CHAPTER VIII

HAUNTED COVE

For three days a thick sea fog had overhung the coast, and the village and harbour of Garth had been swathed from all sight in its grey folds.

It happened that on the afternoon of the third day Charity Borlase set out from her mother's cottage and made her way towards the harbour. Ever since her sweetheart Poole had been carried off to Bodmin gaol again, Charity had found her daily life very difficult to bear. There were plenty of other fisher lads minded to console her, their offers backed by her mother's patronage; but Charity was not a person who could easily change her affections. She kept as much as possible out of sight of the quay with its chaffing, gossiping groups. But there were times when indoor life seemed to be unbearable, and on those occasions she would take her restless unhappiness for company, and seeking the edge of the sea try to find the comfort there that was denied her in her home.

Although the mist was thick, Charity was seaman enough to know that it would soon be lifting, and taking her cloak she went quietly down towards the village. Then, acting on an idle fancy, she turned to her brother's boat that was moored close to the cottage, and began to row herself across the water to Polrennan, the little group of cottages that faced the more important village of Garth.

As she sculled the boat across, bearing upstream a little against the eddying tide, the fisher girl's eyes wandered up the estuary. In the mist she fancied she saw farther up the narrowing creek, on the Polrennanside, a slight figure wrapped in a hood and cloak, walking rapidly towards the river mouth. Standing in the stern, working her oar easily, Charity peered through the mist which was already rising and falling a little in the slight easterly breeze. Again came the glimpse of the shrouded figure, more easily seen this time, and the watcher nodded grimly as she recognised the trotting gait. She made a swift calculation; realised that if she drove her boat in straight to the shore she would run into the arms, so to speak, of the lonely walker. Charity quietly slipped down to the thwart, took a second oar, and noiselessly rowed upstream. She preferred to land higher up and be at liberty to watch unseen. That so far she herself was unseen she was fairly confident. Only some one as far-sighted as a sailor and, moreover, bred to the half-lights of the sea mists, could have descried her little boat from the farther bank.

As Charity rowed on, her face wore a scornful expression that gave way to a firm intentness of purpose. Although more educated than many of her class, curiosity and superstition had a large place in her mind. But more than curiosity impelled Charity to the course she now took. No one could live in Garth and not know the stories that ran to and fro concerning 'Mademoiselle,' who was disliked partly for her nationality and partly for herself. Charity, loyal and devoted to the Admiral and to her beloved Mistress Marion, and a degree or two removed from her kind, was perhaps the only woman in the village who had refused to share the gossip of the quay. But since the hurried departure of Victoire, for whom the fisher girl had a kind of superstitious dislike, even Charity had thought a good deal of the inmates of the house over the brow of the hill.

Victoire herself had told Mrs. Borlase, who was occasionally pressed into service in times of domestic stress at Garth House, that her old mother in Brittany had been suddenly found very ailing (all this with Victoire's handkerchief to her eyes); and Victoire, seized with contrition on realising that she had not seen her parent for ten years or so, had obtained permission from that kindest of all gentlemen, Monsieur the Admiral, to seek the couch of the sufferer and comfort her declining hours.

'I should think,' said Charity, when her mother had told this sad story, ''tis more likely than not the old lady have some gold under her bed.'

'Shame, Charity!' cried her mother (she was eating a piece of pie fresh from Victoire's hands). 'Do 'ee go and pray for a kinder heart.'

'How's her going across?' asked Charity.

'Why, there's her uncle yonder to Plymouth who sent her word, awaiting for un. A French sailor un be.'

'Queer they let un land,' mused Charity.

'And how so shouldn't un? And bearing a letter for the Admiral himself? A black heart you'm getting, my maid, and a black life you'll have. A'd have more pride nor letting yonder wastrel down to Bodmin lie in my thoughts, and honest men like——'

'Now, Mother,' said Charity, her eyes blazing, 'will 'ee be quiet now, Mother? No word of that will I hear.'

All this, and more, reverted to Charity's mind as she rowed up the stream, keeping her eye on the blurred figure every now and then revealed in the mist. At a little shingly beach she sprang ashore and moored her boat unseen.

If there was anything in the tales of the valley, Mademoiselle Elise would bear over the shoulder of the hill at the river mouth, out of sight, as she evidently thought, among the bushes, and drop into a gully a couple of miles to the east.

Just what she did in 'Haunted Cove' no one rightly knew, though folk failed not to hint. It was a foul spot, only fit for landing a boat in quiet weather. There were superstitious tales abroad concerning that creek, and although curious fishermen had watched a strange boat, in the fitful moonlight, make for the rocky mouth, and others had seen the French girl, or her woman, creep into the cove, nothing would tempt them into its wrack-strewn caverns. 'The devil had made his bed there,' they said, 'and 'twas best shunned.' As for Elise, only the love and duty they bore for the Admiral had kept them from denouncing her as a person not untouched by the dark powers. For those were days when anything the unlettered country folk failed to understand was put down to witchcraft or sorcery.

Charity set herself another course than that taken by the French girl, a hard road, only possible for strong limbs and a stout heart. She knew that with good fortune she would arrive at a furze-grown bank hard over the creek before Elise could have reached it from her own side.

Only when her journey was well afoot did Charity realise that she was acting against all the superstitions of Garth. But having set herself to it, she went on. Moreover, Charity could read and write; and it happened that her little Bible was in her pocket.

'I bean't afeared,' she said stoutly to herself, fingering the holy book. 'Once and for all I'll be knowing. For Mistress Marion's sake 'tis only right some one should be sure.'

Kind-hearted Jack had given her the little Bible, and talked of the day when they would stand together before the parson; and Charity, thus drawn to remembering happier days, became sorrowful again, and forgot for the moment the object of her walk.

She climbed the hill, and crossing a little copse of gnarled oaks, made for a gap in the hedge that gave on to the main riding track leading from the heights beyond down to Polrennan beach. She was scarcely through the gap before she heard the 'tlot-tlot' of a horse. The rider seemed to be making inland, climbing the slope from the waterside. Fearful of she knew not what, Charity shrank back into the hedge and would have regained the shelter of the wood; but it was too late. Horse and rider loomed up in the mist and a ringing voice hailed her.

'Charity! Is that you, Charity?'

'Why, Master Roger,' cried Charity, the colour flushing her face in the relief she felt. 'Good afternoon to you, sir.'

Any one else would have replied, in the custom of the village folk: 'Where be gooin'?' And for a moment Charity's heart was in her mouth. Then she remembered that to ask such direct questions was not the way of the quality.

''Tis rising, I think,' said Roger, idly noting the girl's confusion, and setting it down in his chivalrous way to maidenly shyness. 'And time, too, after three days.'

'Wind's to the east, sir,' replied the girl. 'I thought to-day her'd rise.'

Having dealt with the weather, Roger turned to personal affairs. 'How are you getting on, Charity?' he asked kindly, keeping his horse at a walk.

Not since Marion's departure had any sympathy been meted out to the forlorn girl, and tears rose to her eyes. 'Why, sir,' she stammered, 'so well as may be.'

Noting her downcast look, Roger beat about in his mind for something to say. His dark eyes rested very gently on the bowed head, but no words came to his aid.

'Well,' he said abruptly, gathering his reins,' I must be off. I'm going across to Farmer Penrose, who declares he has got some straying cattle of mine. Good day to you, Charity.'

The girl dropped a curtsey in silence as the horse moved on. Then with a sudden movement Roger wheeled round.

'Keep a cheerful heart, if you can,' he said abruptly. 'There's still a great hope that the lad will be freed. The Admiral is using all his influence with the Governor yonder.' And without waiting for a reply Roger turned and broke into a canter. 'Poor little maid!' he mused. ''Tis hard fortune for her.'

He rode on, keeping to the track, and presently, as the way opened out on to the rough headland, he cast a longing eye towards the Channel. A golden light was breaking through the mist. Somewhere beyond that haze the afternoon was bright and sunny, the sea rocking the boats in her tranquil embrace. Roger never allowed a chance of riding by the sea to escape him; but after a minute's thought he decided to bear on in his present course and return by the edge of the cliffs when the mist would in all probability be cleared away. To ride round the head of 'Haunted Cove'—he smiled at the words—in a mist, was to endanger the safe-going of his horse and perhaps his own life. More than one rash horseman, riding by night close in over the cliffs, had fallen foul of the boulders and overgrown chasms of the gully mouth, and paid with his life the price of his folly.

Meanwhile Charity kept on her way. Somewhere round the shoulder of the hill the French girl was bearing towards her mysterious journey's end. Charity set herself to the stiff climb with all good will, and succeeded in reaching the head of the creek, and completely hiding herself among the furze bushes that overgrew it, before the slight figure came round the corner of the headland.

Wrapped in her cloak Charity lay motionless on her rough couch. The shrubs, dense with moisture, freely besprinkled her, but she paid no heed. Presently the French girl came in sight. Charity smiled at her gait, so unlike the swinging tread of the country-born. When the tired-looking walker was for a few minutes hidden from sight behind an outstanding group of rocks that barred her view, Charity took the occasion to bend well over the dangerous declivity and look searchingly into the creek below. What she saw made her hastily reconsider her position.

She was too far away up there; she wanted to be able to hear as well as see, and, as she did not understand French, not until this moment had Charity thought hearing would have been of any avail. But that man sitting down there on a rock gazing out to sea was no Frenchman. Not a dozen miles away had he been born, and born with a crookedness of mind that had spoilt the lives of others as well as his own. He had betrayed his fellow smugglers to authority once too often, and been hounded from the parish, with a rope's end for a prize if ever he returned. Folk said he had gone to the Islands, and there continued his fast-and-loose game between the French and the English.

For all her sense of horror at the idea of Admiral Penrock's ward having dealings with such a person, Charity could but pay the man a tribute for his courage in seeking the cove. Then, working out the price his bravery must mean to the young lady now coming to the creek, Charity frowned and shook her head again. Much, much gold must have been offered that renegade to enter the neighbourhood of Garth; and why?

The man down there, watching alternately the headland path and the sea, now revealing shining lines in the mist, was unaware of the figure creeping from bush to bush down the cliff with the skill of one who had often had nothing but seagulls' eggs between herself and hunger. He rose as Elise stepped on to the shingly beach, and together the two passed to the mouth of the outer cavern. On a ledge just above that mouth crouched Charity Borlase. The sound of the voices rose clearly to her ears.

An hour passed. Elise, her face wearing the migraine look Marion would have understood, was pale and harassed as at last she rose and handed to the man a bag that jingled in his fingers. The last of their words as they stepped down to the beach just failed to reach the ears of Charity. She strained lower to catch the sound, and one branch of the bush she was holding snapped and fell.

The speakers looked up in a startled way, and Charity, forgetting for the moment her screen of bushes, feared she was undone. Holding her breath, she watched the eyes searching the cliff. To her relief, they went beyond her perch and rested. The two down there stood rooted to the spot. Charity, in growing wonder, twisted herself noiselessly round and discovered, standing on the rocks at the top of the creek, riding-crop in hand, Roger Trevannion. Charity was as securely hidden from his sight as from that of the others. She waited in a frightened apprehension. But Roger said no word. With a grim sort of smile he lifted his hat to Mademoiselle Elise and strode away.

Charity peered down again. The man was looking at his companion with a sullen, craven air, not without a gleam of malicious triumph; here was an added danger which meant more gold. But the look of fury and hatred on the girl's face made honest Charity's heart grow chill. She heard the words: 'He shall pay for this!' followed by others beyond her ken.

Five minutes afterwards Elise turned homewards. Not until the sailor had launched his boat, and hugging the land closely, sailed out of sight, did Charity rise, stiff and cramped, and climb the headland again.

That night she sat up long in her little attic room, and to the tune of the snores of her mother and brothers she wrote the longest letter it had ever fallen to her lot to indite. The task was a burden compared with which the climbing of the cliffs had been a baby's play. The dawn crept into her windows as she finished it, and not thinking it worth while then to sleep, she stole downstairs, kindled the fire, set the kettle on the crook and crept out of the cottage. She was going to test the loyalty of old Peter up at Garth House, to post her letter to Mistress Marion herself, and swear on her little Bible that he would say a word to none.

CHAPTER IX

A MORNING VISIT

Peter made the required vow, not dreaming how soon he would be tested. For just as he had made up his mind to create an occasion for going to Lostwithiel, and, acting on his credit as an old servant, to take the journey on his own responsibility, who should walk into the stable-yard but Admiral Penrock.

'Was that little Charity I saw going down the lane. Peter?' inquired the master.

'Like as not, sir.'

The Admiral prodded the groom's shoulder with his staff.

'Fie on thee, Peter! Are these tricks learned in London? Thinkst thou canst take Jack Poole's place?'

This idea never having occurred to grey-haired Peter, he was some time in apprehending it; then, with a sheepish grin, he accepted the visit of the fisher girl in the light his master chose to cast upon it. And not knowing that the end of Charity's letter was sticking out of his pocket, the old groom allowed himself to be poked by the Admiral again, and questioned adroitly as to the habits of the young lady. Not a syllable would Peter utter to break his word to pretty Charity, and in the end he rode off to Lostwithiel to seek a fresh bottle of lotion for the horses.

The Admiral stumped after him up the lane. He was intending to pay a morning visit to Roger Trevannion. The boundary wall between the two estates was crumbling in places, and the Admiral was minded to arrange with Roger to see to the matter on his behalf. The early sunlight lay slantingly across the tree-tops, and the old sailor, noting the freshness of the new green mantle that overspread the countryside, sighed to think that so fair a world could be so awry.

Ever since the day, now over a month old, when he had bidden Marion good-bye and driven back to the west, he had felt an irksomeness in his duties that was new to him. Had his office remained simply that of magistrate in his own parts, he would not have felt the burden. But the Lord Chief-Justice Jeffreys, in scouring the West Country, had learned that if there was one man in Cornwall whose loyalty to the Crown was to be relied upon, that man was Admiral Penrock of Garth. Consequently, when the spies of Jeffreys, still lurking in the county after their lord had returned to London, revealed one or two tracts in Cornwall which the hounds of the dreaded Judge had not thoroughly drawn, Jeffreys decided to make the Admiral master of that particular hunt. 'By fair means or foul,' ran his order, 'you will run the quarry to earth.' And the Admiral, who had a thorough dislike for meddling with affairs outside his own district, had been obliged to obey.

In various Cornish towns—Bodmin, Truro, St. Austell, Penzance—a number of soldiers were kept in readiness for his orders. His new duties carried him far and near. People who had never heard of him began to have reason for remembering his beetling brows, his thundering tones. The Admiral was in a fair way to become a dreaded person. In a magistrate 'twas all very well. But the old sailor carried a warm heart under his garb of authority, and there were times when that warm heart was chilled at the thought of the pain he had brought into many people's lives since Jeffreys had chosen to lay his commands upon him.

Another reason for disliking his new office had been the necessity for leaving Garth many days at a time without a master. He found himself in the position of a general who, while conducting wars abroad, neglects the enemy within his own frontiers.

Two facts, however, brought comfort to the Admiral: the absence of Marion during this time, and the recent departure of Victoire for her Breton home. Elise herself had never merited the complete distrust that underlay the old sailor's thoughts of Victoire. Since Keziah's uncomfortable revelations he had thought hard and watched shrewdly—when he was at liberty to watch. Had he possessed in his service a man of education and trustworthiness, untinged by the prejudice that coloured the judgment of the country folk, Garth would not have been left thus at the mercy of fortune. But no such man, Roger Trevannion excepted, had been within hail, and it was impossible without arousing suspicion to bring Roger from his own lands to act as overseer of the Penrock demesne. Consequently the Admiral had granted Victoire permission to cross the Channel without much troubling himself as to any hidden reason for her departure.

Victoire thus abroad, the old French attorney on his way to England, the Admiral experienced a sense of relief. He looked forward with the heartiest pleasure to the day when the attorney would arrive at Garth. Then he would consider his duty to his old friend accomplished. He had fathered Elise in her growing girlhood; she was now old enough to be given over to the care of her aunts. He had certainly done his utmost to train the girl to standards of thought which were native to the comrade of his fighting days. The fact that in some way Elise's nature had been warped to begin with, was beyond his control, and there he left the problem, vaguely attributing the crookedness to some strain on the mother's side. The Admiral had never seen Madame de Delauret. To contemplate the return of Marion, and the final departure of his ward and her maid from Garth, was to the Admiral something akin to watching in the darkness of the waning night for the daystar of the dawn. When he arrived at the Manor, Roger was in the farmyard at the back of the house, setting a dozen men to their day's work. He strode to meet his visitor with a look of pleased surprise.

'This is an honour, sir,' he said heartily, the golden lights showing in his brown eyes, 'and all the more for being paid so early. Will you come indoors for a tankard of ale? My mother will be pleased to see you in the house.'

'Nay,' said the Admiral, nodding to the farm men who were pulling their forelocks and chanting 'Marnin', Admur'l!' 'I have but just breakfasted. Those are fine horses yonder, Roger. You keep them well.'

The two moved out of earshot of the menservants.

'I saw Peter in the lane just now, but he said not you were coming,' remarked Roger.

The sailor's eyes twinkled. ''Tis a simple soul, that Peter. Did he say aught to you of a letter to my daughter, writ by Charity Borlase, that was in his pocket and had emptied all the bottles of lotion in the stables?'

As he spoke, the Admiral was casting a critical eye over a young cart-horse, the latest addition to the Manor stables, and he was unaware of Roger's slight start.

Roger had wondered more than once what could have been taking Charity up the hillside towards the headland that overlay Haunted Cove. In the revelation of the later afternoon he had remembered the chance encounter; Charity's embarrassment recurred to him.

At the sight he had had of Elise in close converse with the old traitor of Garth, Roger had experienced a momentary but severe shock. The idle talk of the village which, he knew very well, was more than half due to a deep-rooted hatred for foreigners, he had honestly tried to discount, putting away the versions that had reached his ears as gossiping women's tales. But he was too young, too human, not to be affected in his judgment by his personal attitude to Victoire and her young mistress. The only being to whom he had ever mentioned the matter had been Dick Hooper, his boyhood's friend. Young Dick had shrugged his shoulders. 'Wait a bit. Ill weeds grow for cutting. The girl's crooked, but the woman's wicked.' And so the subject had been passed by.

And now the distrust and dislike of close on ten years, and the memory of the persistent tales of the villagers, had suddenly made for Roger an inflammable track down which the spark of a strong suspicion raced. The burning revelation ran into words, right enough, clear as the flaming signs on the wall at Belshazzar's feast. 'Thou art tried in the balances and found wanting,' flickered the gleaming letters, as of old, and then died away. And Roger was left pondering as to the nature of the final word which must lie somewhere, at present unillumined. When and whence that final proof must appear, Roger could not guess; but he had read the riddle well enough to be profoundly uncomfortable as to its portent, and, more than all, as to its effects on the house of Garth.

A fatherless son, heir to an estate the control of which called for judgment and action, Roger had learned the weight of responsibility when most youths of his age and class had been conning Greek and Latin texts. And now his first thought had been as to his own share in the matter. What was his duty towards the Admiral and Marion? Marion. His heart had stirred at the passing thought of Marion, of her sweet wholesomeness, her contempt for double dealing, her outspoken truth. To think of her just then was like looking from a dark, secretly stirred pool to an open, sunswept stream.

What could have been Elise's business yonder? Could it be political? Something connected with denunciations of still hidden Monmouth men? Hardly so; rumours in the village had been years old before ever Monmouth landed at Lyme. And yet, these were days of distrust and treachery. Could some dark fate be hurling suspicion at the heads of the two people whom, next to his mother, he loved wholly?

Roger had ridden home in the company of unhappy thoughts, slowly resolving that he must trace the trouble to its source, and begin with the Admiral himself.

The chance mention of Charity, however, made Roger pause. Charity had been writing to Marion. Perhaps it would be well to see Charity first. His instinct was that whatever had been her business that afternoon, Charity was friend and not foe. On seeing the Admiral, his first thought had been to take advantage of his visit and unburden himself at once of the story. Now, in secret relief, he put the idea aside, determining first to learn what was Charity's part in the affair. So, while the Admiral was poking among his horses, Roger's thoughts ran; he turned gladly for the moment out of the shadow that had fallen across his path, not knowing that a small cloud, the size of a man's hand, lay on the far horizon.

Talking of farming matters, the two started on a leisurely survey of the Manor close, and presently came on the beech-topped hedge that was the northern boundary of the Garth lands. Leaning on the gate set in the hedge, they lingered some time. The conversation had fallen on the near prospect of a letter from Marion, on her life in Kensington; on the French attorney's visit, the contemplation of which, though neither knew the other's thought, brought to each a sense of comfort.

From the gate a little path ran down towards the house, making a diagonal course through the intervening pastures. The Admiral, about to light his second pipe, paused, tinder-box in hand, and stared across the fields. His face darkened.

'If I mistake not, yonder is one of Jeffreys' couriers. What fresh business is toward now? Could it not have waited my return to the house?'

'I thought your work in that direction was finished, sir.'

'So did I. So did I. You see what a price one pays, my lad, for being an honest man. I declare, I thought when my lord's last letter came, that I would go to sea again, that I did, stump and all, so as to be free of this scurvy business.'

'The man will hear you, sir,' ventured Roger.

'Let him! Let him! He's heartily welcome!' But none the less the old man struck his flint, and contented himself by roaring into the mouthpiece of his pipe.

Roger's eyes twinkled. In just such a way had the motherless bull-calf he had fed that morning growled with his head in the bucket, his mouth full. Roger stored up the incident to take a place in the pantomime rehearsal of her father's stray doings and sayings which Marion would be sure to demand on her return. The gold lights danced afresh in Roger's eyes as his little playmate rose before his mental vision.

The rider was now at speaking distance. He had the appearance of hard travelling, and as he came up, Roger's instant sympathy fell on the horse. When the messenger dismounted, saluted the Admiral, and proceeded to fumble for his letter, explaining that he had been sent on from the house, Roger stepped to the animal's side. 'Poor brute!' was his thought as he stroked the steaming flank, and cast a critical eye on the girth, having a mind to undo it for a time and make the man rest at the Manor.

'You have ridden fast,' said the Admiral in surly tones. 'Why shorten the life of a good horse?'

'My lord's orders, sir,' said the man. 'He can never abide the idea of wasting an hour when there's work to be done.'

'Did your lord require an answer?'

'He did not, sir.'

'Will you not ride down to the house and rest yourself and your animal?'

'I thank you greatly, sir,' said the man, passing his hand across his face, seared with the sweat and dust of his journey, 'but I am to be in Taunton ere nightfall.'

'In Taunton, on this brute?' cried Roger.

'I shall change horses at Bodmin,' said the messenger. As he spoke, he took the bridle. 'Can I cross the fields here to the Bodmin road?'

'I'll show you the way,' said Roger, and walking a few yards with the man, he pointed out, through a break in the inner hedge, the Bodmin road lying in the valley.

'Does your master pay you?' asked Roger abruptly.

'Aye, sir, well enough.'

''Tis a pity he can't pay the horse. A finer grey I never saw. It grieves me to see a brute wasted so. Here's a shilling. Promise you will give him a fair bucket of oats—or, if he sweats more, a bran mash and a warm belly cloth.'

The man's eyes softened. 'I promise. You're very good, sir.'

'Nay, nay. But it goes to my heart to see that horse wasted so. Good morning.'

Roger strode back to the gate where the Admiral was still standing. From the letter in his hand dangled the strings and seals of the Lord Chancellor. Roger paused and hung back a trifle, wondering were it best to leave him. Whatever might be the new business to hand, he could see the Admiral's wrath was gathering. His face purpled, the eyes growing round as a parrot's. For a second he appeared to be on the point of choking. Suddenly he dashed the letter to the ground, and swung round on Roger. Digging his staff into the turf, he spluttered in incomprehensible rage.

'I will not do it!' he roared. 'By the Lord Harry, I will not!'

Suddenly his fury fell away. He seated himself in the hedge and passed a hand over his face. 'Dick!' he said hoarsely. 'Poor lad!'

Roger stiffened. His eyebrows drew together, his mouth tightened. He stared down at the letter.

'Dick? Did you say Dick?'

'Ay, Dick Hooper. 'Tis there. An order to arrange for the arrest of the person of Richard Merrion Hooper, in the Parish of St. Brennion.'

Roger stared down at the written sheet, his face paling under the sunburn.

'Impossible!' he jerked out. 'Dick's a loyalist like yourself.'

'Nothing is impossible in these days.'

'What has he done?'

'That I am not told. Mayhap he has looked in pity at the creaking bones of a wretch hanging at the cross roads for Monmouth's sake.'

Roger turned, and leaning on the gate, buried his head on his arm. The tlot, tlot of a horse on the road below rose in the stillness of the morning. 'I could wish the brute had foundered and thrown his rider into the ditch—that highwaymen had seized him and his cursed letter,' ran the Admiral's thoughts, as, unconscious of his companion, he stared down the quiet slope. Far below showed the north front of Garth, the chimneys cutting the shining bar of the sea into irregular shapes. Only one window was visible through the trees of the garden—the window of the Admiral's study which, in an upper storey, ran the width of one wing, looking out on one hand on the Channel, and on the other to the rising land of the pastures. In the middle of the room stood the old sailor's beloved telescope, through which Roger had many times studied the rig of passing vessels. It happened that as the Admiral was staring out to sea, small thin fingers were swinging the telescope round to the north, and very soon the two men were plain to the eyes of Mademoiselle Elise, who was supposed by the housekeeper to be still in her bed.

The Admiral turned and saw the black head bent over the gate. He sighed, and rising to his feet picked up the letter.

Roger roused himself. His thoughts had been far away, scenes of his boyhood passing before his closed eyes: Dick's deep-notched oaken bench at Blundell's, which had been next his own; their twin escapades and truancies, punishments and advancements; the holidays Dick had spent at the Manor.

'I thought Dick was at Oxford,' he stumbled at length. Then recollecting: 'Nay, he is reading with a tutor to enter Oriel at Michaelmas.'

'A thousand pities he had not gone.'

Again fell the silence; then Roger's rather husky tones: 'Must you do this thing, sir?'

'I must.'

'And will you?'

The old Salt Eagle looked sorrowfully into the brown eyes facing him. He made a step down the slope.

'Would to God,' he blazed out suddenly, 'that Jeffreys had chosen another man!' Then, sobering: 'But I must. I cannot forget, after all, that my duty is not to serve Jeffreys, but Jeffreys' king. I shall drive out after dinner to Liskeard to see the officer there. But fear not, Roger, I shall do my utmost to get him freed.'

Roger was silent. He knew too well how unavailing, in the main, were such efforts.

'Is his father living?'

Roger nodded.

'And his mother? I forget.'

'She died while Dick was at Blundell's.'

'Thank God for that!' said the Admiral in low tones.

'May you not just inquire into the matter and report?' came Roger's husky tones. 'I had rather any one had gone but Dick.'

'Jeffreys prefers to make his inquiries behind bolt and bar.'

'Look here, sir,' said Roger, his face as hard as his voice. 'I——' he stopped abruptly, then a minute later, with a brief 'Good morning,' he swung round, and before the Admiral could speak, was striding up the slope.

The old seaman leaned heavily on his staff as he stumbled down the hillside, jerking his wooden leg over the uneven ground. 'I could pray for an ague to seize me,' ran his thoughts, 'an asp to sting me, a draught to sicken my stomach. Anything to keep me from this hateful task. Poor Dick! And poor Roger! 'Twas a hard blow.'

Half way down the slope the Admiral stopped short, arrested by an uneasy thought. For the first time since Jeffreys had laid his commands upon him he had failed in his duty, betrayed his trust, spoken to another of business of sworn secrecy. Completely forgetful of his obligations, and overborne by the weight of personal association, he had talked like an idle woman.

Hot on the heels of the first consideration ran a second. He had spoken freely of the arrest to the greatest friend of the condemned man. Could it be possible Roger would——? He had better walk back to the Manor, to make the boy promise secrecy. What would Roger do? A gleam ran across the old face. He turned and scanned the pastures. Roger was nowhere to be seen. A look of uncertainty was in the man's eyes as he stood, idly digging into a young gorse bush with his staff. His thoughts ranged themselves in two lines: dual personalities facing each other. On the one hand was the loyal seaman who would at any time have risked the gallows for a friend's sake; on the other the stern, justice-loving magistrate.

'You don't know what he may do,' came the one voice, 'and any way, you'd do the same yourself.'

'Go up and order him in the King's name to keep the matter secret,' came the reply. 'You can trust his given word.'

'Leave him alone,' retorted the first. ''Tis not for you to dictate what a man may do for his friend.'

'Duty! Duty!' cried the other.

'And Dick's an honest lad; you know he is guiltless. 'Tis but a foul whisper. He deserves a timely warning.'

'A magistrate has no ties. Duty! Duty!'

And so the mimic battle raged behind the eagle brows. In the end, not without a smile of grim humour, the Admiral offered a truce. He would not interfere with Roger. In any case, the lad might never have considered taking any step, and time would be wasted on the errand. His magisterial self the old seaman soothed by a promise of utmost haste. Instead of ordering the coach for after dinner, he would drive out at once, and eat from a hamper on the carriage seat. Having thus silenced the mental combatants, the Admiral kept his bargain to the letter. In a few minutes he was back at the house, giving orders to a flurried housekeeper.

Peter being absent on Charity's affairs, the Admiral was obliged to see to his change of garb himself. But here Elise proved herself uncommonly thoughtful. Hearing from Mrs. Curnow that the master was bound to Liskeard on urgent business, and would not be home till the morrow, and was in an uneasy temper because his man was out on an errand and he must fasten his own cloak and see to his pistols himself, Elise proceeded to the Admiral's room to offer such services as might be at her command. She found the door of the room ajar, and knew from neighbouring sounds that the Admiral was in the study. In his haste the sailor had thrown the fateful letter on the bed, with his work-a-day coat; the sharp eyes of Mademoiselle caught the red of the seals. A minute later she was out of the room again, her light step making no sound. When the Admiral was safely back in his bedchamber, she returned along the passage, her high heels clicking hard on the boards.

'I wanted to help you, if I might, sir,' came her voice at the door, and pleased at such thoughtfulness, the Admiral bade her enter. By that time the letter was in his pocket again.

As soon as the coach had left the courtyard, Elise stepped out, and crossing the pastures made her way towards the Manor Farm. A workman on the south fields was busy ditching, and from him, by dint of casual remarks, Elise learned that Master Roger had taken the fastest horse and ridden away some two hours ago.

Elise waited to hear no more. There was a light of triumph in her eyes as she trotted back to Garth. Presently an under groom was ordered to saddle Molly. Mademoiselle was bored by the inaction of life so lonely at Garth, and she was wishful to ride out to Bodmin and make a trifling purchase. She did not deem it necessary to add that it was her intention, while her escort was supping at the King's Head, to find means to send a few words to the Governor of Bodmin Gaol.

CHAPTER X

FOREBODING

It was the night of the ball in Kensington, and as if the heavens had conspired with Lady Fairfax to create a scene of loveliness, threatening clouds had passed with sunset to show a slip of a new moon and peeping stars. The dancing-rooms opened on to a long terrace at the south side of the house, and in the warm evening the windows were set wide. Just below the terrace lay my lady's rose bed, and near by a patch of mignonette and stock and heavy bushes of lavender joined their fragrance to the scent of the roses.

Lady Fairfax stepped out on to the terrace, seeking a minute's respite from her duties. The silver arc was just hovering above the trees, and Colonel Sampson, who had gone below for a lace scarf, emerged from the house in time to see his hostess gravely curtseying three times to the heavenly visitor. The rite performed, my lady received the shawl, and for a space the old friends walked along the terrace in silence. Through the open windows sounded low voices and laughter. The ball-room was thronged, and the two without could hear, close to the casement, the swish of brocaded robes on the shining oaken floor. From the raised gallery came the slow air of a minuet, the fiddlers' strains blending with the tones of the flute and the sweet tinkle of a harp.

The loiterers on the terrace had not taken many turns before Sir John Fairfax joined them.

'I may but stay a moment,' he said. 'The house should not be left thus.'

'The house is very well, dear lad,' said his wife serenely. 'My guests are never dull, for the reason that dull folk are never my guests. Are you playing cards below?'

'From what I see, no one has thought of anything save either dancing or watching the dance. But, my dear, I have news that will cause you some dismay.'

Lady Fairfax stopped in her walk. 'The Queen? I knew it!' she said grimly, as her husband nodded. 'Am I wanted this very hour?'

'To-morrow, to accompany Her Majesty to Tunbridge.'

Lady Fairfax walked on a pace or two, then stopped and looked upwards. 'Did I not curtsey humbly enough, fair maiden? Why such an ill reward?' She resumed her walk. 'La, la! 'tis an uncertain world. But I am mightily grateful to the powders for lasting so long as they did. I have been dreading this summons for a week past. Her Majesty has been looking vastly yellow again. But what am I to do with Marion?'

'Leave her with me?'

'Yes, Grandam, but what will you do with her?'

'Give her a few days' rest. She has had over much turmoil and excitement of late. She shall hem sheets and talk to Simone. I will see she takes the air. But I trust you may not be long away. My Lord Churchill is urging an expedition.'

'Secret, no doubt?'

'Ay, dear love—secret.'

'Should you be gone, I will take your place, Jack,' said Sampson. 'And I have not yet seen the little Simone, but from what I hear she is an excellent companion. Marion will not be lonesome.'

'I must go and see Martin a moment,' said Lady Fairfax, turning indoors. 'Pray excuse me, Colonel.'

The two men continued their walk.

'I wish the old Salt Eagle had been here to-night,' said Sampson, as his host paused outside one of the windows.

'But she was frightened out of her wits at first,' smiled the other. 'Her face was as white as yonder white roses in the bowl, when she stepped out for her first dance. Did you note it?'

'She is not nervous now. Look yonder!'

The two stood in the darkness without, watching. In the light of hundreds of candles beautiful women and richly clad men moved to and fro to the strains of the dance. Against the darkness of the panelled walls jewels flashed in a maze of colour, and behind the dancers, passing in and out of the doors, other figures filled in the brilliant pageant. All the youth and heyday of the Court were in Kensington this night. And stepping to and fro among them as she danced the minuet, Marion looked like a gold and white lily set amid tropical blooms. The spots of turquoise in her pearl necklace sought and found the blue-green touches in the embroideries of her dress. Trained along the wide cream skirt was a faint design of blue and gold. It was the only dress in the room so restrained in colour, and, surmounted by the white of bosom and neck, the warm paleness of the face and sudden glory of the hair, it drew from the eyes of both men and women an open or covert admiration.

The younger ladies became a trifle critical of their rich colours, their powder and rouge and patches—adornments which Marion had steadily refused; the matrons who were looking on recorded another instance of the faultless taste of Lady Fairfax: she had tuned the girl's appearance to the key-note of her personality. The men, knowing nothing of these subtleties, watching her serious face as she danced, her unlikeness to the women of London society, her quaint girlish dignity, felt the pleasure that novelty gives, and revelled in the new sensation.

Without knowing it, the 'little niece' was indeed a revelation to the dancers who shared her company that night. Having been brought up by the Admiral as simply as if she had been a boy, she was singularly free from self-consciousness; and not only was she outspoken and honest in her speech, but a vein of humour, clear gold, ran through her thoughts continually. Thus, as the night wore on, the gentlemen leading Marion to and fro in the dance, or sitting by her side in the rooms below, or walking by her on the terrace flags, found that their whispers of adulation, their extravagant utterances, which were commonplaces in the social intercourse of the day, were wasted on the young lady they had thought to please. Their choicest seeds fell on stony ground. Marion had never learned to simper and look coy in the face of outrageous flattery. She would listen for a while, amazed at such arrant foolishness, the twinkle in her eyes hidden under the long dark lashes about which the speakers failed not to wax so eloquent. Then the admiring ones, taking breath for a still higher flight, would see the grave, downward drooping lips suddenly betray her thoughts, her face break into an open merriment that shook the wind from their eloquence and tore into shreds their mounting self-conceit.

But Marion could not be human and not know the joy and intoxication of success. At the beginning of the evening, when her aunt's guests had been presented to her, and received her cold little fingers, she had felt outcast and forlorn, something to be hidden from the sight of all that beauty and grandeur. Then when the truth was borne home that she herself, and not any one of the Court damsels she envied, was the central figure; that each man there seemed to be a visitor merely to do her homage, first and throughout, Marion's mood changed. She had always loved to dance; the admiration in the eyes opposite as she came and went in the minuet set her own eyes all the brighter, and threw a lightness and glow into her being. She was sipping the wine of youth from a goblet of gold, and only later did she realise how sweet that first draught had been.

Just after supper she ran up stairs to ask Simone to cut a shred from her silk petticoat which an unwary foot had caught on the stairs. Her room was empty. As she went to the dressing-table for a pair of scissors, a letter caught her eye.

It was addressed in a laborious, unfamiliar hand. Wonderingly Marion broke the seal, and unfolded the sheet, looking first at the signature at the close of the letter.

'Little Charity! Of all persons in the world to have writ me! Can Jack have escaped again?'

Somewhat dazed at the suddenness with which the thought of Garth had leapt from some dim spot of memory direct to the immediate moment, Marion sat down and began to read Charity's letter. The writing was ungainly, in parts half illegible, the words ill spelt. Marion re-read several sentences before she began to grasp their meaning. It was something about Elise. Then she saw Roger's name. A chill of fear, the colder because it was shapeless, seized her, throttling the warm happiness that pulsed in her veins. She turned back to read the sentence again. Roger—what was this about Roger?

As she bent over the letter in the light of her dressing-table sconces, Lady Fairfax passed the door and looked in.

'Marion! Why are you up here?'

'There's a letter here from Charity,' said Marion absently, reading on as she spoke, 'and——'

Lady Fairfax crossed the room, and laid her hand on the girl's arm. 'My darling, you cannot behave thus. Listen: there is the music of the galliard which Londoners are dancing to-night in honour of my country maid. Do you not hear yonder Cornish air? They are waiting on you before they can begin. Who is your partner?'

Lady Fairfax gently took the letter from the girl's cold fingers, and bending down, pressed a kiss on her cheek.

'Captain Beckenham is my partner, Aunt Constance.'

The tone of the voice caught the ear of the older woman. She looked at the face reflected in the looking-glass.

'Come, come! What is this letter?'

''Tis something about Elise and—I like it not. But I had rather finish it, Aunt Constance.'

A grave rebuke flashed in and out of the lady's eyes.

'Elise can wait. She has waited thus long. And there are days and days to read it in. But to-night—this is your ball, and your guests are waiting on your pleasure. Where is the smiling face I saw ten minutes ago?'

Marion got up, and taking the scissors cut the fragment from her petticoat. True to her character, she made no outward show of the unhappiness that had seized her. 'Where is Simone?'

'Helping Martin.'

'Why so, Aunt Constance?' With mechanical fingers, Marion tidied a tress of her bright hair.

'I will tell you later, my child. Run downstairs now; and remember this is your special dance. I am following, but I must attend to the older folk in the card-room.'

Obediently Marion went downstairs. The ballroom, which had seemed all brightness and music a little time before, now appeared full of alien presences whose voices jarred upon her. She was scarcely aware of the low bow of her partner, of his extended hand; with an unaccustomed heaviness in her step she took her place at the head of the long line. Then glancing towards the musicians' gallery as the fiddlers struck up the country air, she saw the wrinkled face of old Zacchary behind the performers, his eyes, full of pride and tenderness, watching the 'little maid' who was his delight. A sudden vision of her father came upon her. She rallied. Her head rose a little. She threw a smile to Zacchary, and holding her fingers to her partner, went lightly down between the ranks, curtseying and turning and retracing her steps in the maze of the country dance. Once begun, the movement left her no time for thought. Only when Captain Beckenham led her to her seat and handed her her fan, did she realise how heavy lay her heart, what bitter drops had marred the wine and dulled the sparkling rim of the goblet. Presently Colonel Sampson strolled up.

'I should guess my lady has told you the news, Mistress Marion. 'Tis writ in your sober look.'

'What news?' cried the young gentleman, rising to his feet as the old soldier spoke.

'Why, here is Lady Fairfax summoned to attend Her Majesty to Tunbridge on the morrow.'

Marion remained silent as the two talked a little of the Royal invalid, content that her gravity, which in spite of her efforts was evidently noticeable, should be set down to that cause. The news of her aunt's departure seemed to lay another weight upon her spirits, but she realised that much as she loved her aunt, the heaviness of the thought that she must be thus parted from her was slight compared with that other unformed, unnamed burden that threatened her; she had not had time to learn the meaning of Charity's letter.

Captain Beckenham glanced down at the girl. Her fingers were playing with the handle of her fan; her mind seemed elsewhere.

'I could wish Her Majesty's illness had waited another day,' he said with a deep sigh. ''Tis a most unkind cloud to spread itself over the face of the sun, and leave the earth desolate and dark. And quite possibly I shall be bidden, either in Her Majesty's suite, or to follow.'

Marion looked up with one of her mocking smiles as the young guardsman, with a meaning look, and his hand flourishing, bowed low. But the older eyes watching saw that something was amiss. Mr. Sampson drew up a vacant chair, and rewarded beforehand by a look from Marion, succeeded in maintaining an easy conversation in which the girl's share was light.

Presently Lady Fairfax appeared in the ball-room, and immediately, it seemed, became the centre of a lively group. Marion, watching her aunt, felt suddenly ashamed. The one glance Lady Fairfax had bestowed upon her told more than spoken words. 'A hostess in a ball-room has no place for private feelings,' said those challenging eyes.

Marion mentally shook herself afresh; turned to a young man who was hovering near, and indicated with her fan an empty seat. The new-comer, more bronzed than his fellows, had just left his ship at Greenwich. Marion smiled on him, and threw out a few sea-going phrases; and the young sailor, who had coveted the honour of speaking to the daughter of the old Salt Eagle, was rewarded by hearing stories of him from the lady herself. The two passed out on to the terrace, and the music of the next dance went by unheeded.

Presently others came to claim her attention. Somehow the evening wore away, and such was Marion's will upon herself, that no one besides Colonel Sampson and Lady Fairfax had any suspicion that her heart belied her face. With her uncle and aunt she stood at the head of the staircase as the guests took their leave. Presently all were gone but Sampson.