THE GALAXY. (continued 2)

There was an artistic and literary association to which Blanchet belonged, and amid which he passed most of his nights. It was not exactly a club, for it had neither definite rules nor even a distinct habitation. It was a little sect rather than a club. It was an association of men who believed each in himself, and all, at least for the present, in each other. Their essential condition of existence was scorn of the world's ways, politics, and theories of art. They held that man himself was a poor creature, unworthy of the artist's serious consideration. All that related to the well-being of that wretched animal in the way of political government they looked down upon with mere contempt. The science which professed to concern itself about his health, the social philosophy which would take any account of his moral improvement, were alike ridiculous in the eyes of this æsthetic school. If, however, any uninitiated person should imagine that in setting up art as the only serious business of life they were likely to accept any common definition of art, he would find himself as open to their scorn as if he had tried to improve a bad law or subscribed to the funds of some religious organization. Art with them was their own art. The enlightened parson, Thwackum, in "Tom Jones," observes that "When I mention religion I mean of course the Christian religion, and when I speak of the Protestant religion I mean the religion of the Church of England." It was in this spirit that the confraternity to which Mr. Blanchet belonged defined art. They only meant their own particular sect; out of that there was no salvation. Art, it is said, hath no enemy but the ignorant. These artists, however, were the enemies of all art but their own.

At the present these genial brothers regularly met of nights in the lodgings of one of them, who happened to have a large studio in the west central region of London, where so much of this unfashionable story happens to be cast. Victor Heron had many times been told of the genius that burned by night in that favored haunt, and had expressed a modest wish to be allowed to pass for an hour within its light. Mr. Blanchet was glad of the opportunity of introducing such a friend; for it somehow seemed as if the consideration of any member of the fraternity was enhanced among his brothers not a little by the fact that he could introduce into their midst some distinguished personage from the despised outer world. With them Victor Heron might very well pass for a distinguished public man, as in fact he already did, with no design of his own that way, in the eyes of Herbert Blanchet. To Victor the school was all composed of gifted and rising men, whom it was a pride to know or even to meet. To the school, on the other hand, Victor was a remarkable public man, a tremendous "swell," who had done some wondrous things in some far-off countries, and who, for all they knew at the time, might be regarded by the world as the prospective Prime Minister of England.

There was a peculiar principle of reciprocity tacitly recognized among these brothers in art. No one of them would admit that there was anything which his brother knew and he did not know. If one of them read an author for the first time, and came to meet his fellows proud of his freshly-acquired knowledge, he found no man among them who would admit that he had not from his birth upward been equally familiar with the author in question. It would be easy, surely, some one may say, to expose such pretension. Just so; of course it would. But when one brother had shown tonight that his friends had never read Schopenhauer, and in point of fact could not read him if they tried, who should guarantee that same brother against a similar exposure of his own harmless little false pretences to-morrow when he professed to know all about Euripides? It was not found convenient in this little circle to examine too closely into the pretensions of each other. Live and let live was the motto of the school so far as their esoteric professors were concerned.

There was indeed a legend that some malign person acquainted with the peculiarities of the school had once compelled them to invent a patron poet. It was done in this fashion: the malign person talked confidently and fluently to one of the order concerning a French poet, whom he described as a gifted apostle of a kindred school, and whom he was pleased to name De Patroque. The youth thus talked to was not to be outdone, or even to be instructed. He gave out that he had long had his eyes fixed reverently on the genius of the gifted De Patroque. He talked largely, not to say bouncingly, of the great De Patroque among his friends, who, not to be outdone in their turn, talked to him and to others of the new apostle. The fame of De Patroque grew and grew, until at last ill-natured persons affirmed that several essays on his genius, and fraternal hymns of honor, were composed for him by the admirers of his mythical career.

To this select circle Mr. Blanchet had for some time proposed to introduce his friend Victor Heron. On the very day when the first copies of the gorgeous poems were submitted to privileged eyes, Mr. Blanchet called on his friend. He found the friend a little put out by the unexpected lavishness of the manner in which the poetic enterprise had been carried on.

"This will be an awfully expensive business, I'm afraid," Heron said, in an embarrassed tone, for he felt that it was a sort of profanation to talk of money matters with a young poet. "I wish you had let me do this thing myself, Blanchet. I'd not have minded so far as I'm concerned. But I don't know about her, you see—she may not have much money. Then young ladies are generally so enthusiastic; she may not have thought of what the thing would cost."

"You need not think about that," Herbert said loftily. "Miss Grey will be a rich woman one of these days——"

"But I don't see that that much alters the matter, although I am decidedly glad to hear it for her own sake, if it will make her any happier than she is now—which I take it is not by any means certain. But I don't see throwing away her money without her knowing all about it any the more."

"Throwing away her money?" Herbert asked, in tones of lofty protest.

"Well, I don't mean that of course," the good-natured Heron hastened to explain in all sincerity. "You know very well, my dear Blanchet, what I think of your merits and your poems, and of all true poets. I know that it is an honor for any one, whether man or woman, to be allowed to help a poet to come out before the world and make a success. I only wish I had had a chance of doing such a thing for you; but this young lady, you know—I don't feel quite certain whether I ought to have spent her money so freely."

"I can reassure you, I think," the poet said, with chilling dignity. "I should never have allowed any one to do anything for me without having satisfied myself that it was done in the unstinting spirit of friendship, and by some one whom such kindness would not hurt."

"All right; I am glad to hear you say so, of course, but you won't wonder at my scruples, perhaps——"

"Your scruples, my dear fellow, do you infinite honor," Mr. Blanchet said, with a slight dash of irony in his tone, which Heron did not at the moment perceive, being in truth engrossed by some other thoughts. "But you may accept my assurance that there is no further occasion for them, and we will, if you please, change the subject."

Victor did not feel by any means well satisfied that there was no occasion for scruple, nor did he at all like his poetic friend's way of looking at the matter. But he reflected that Blanchet might after all have good warrant for what he had said, and that it was not for him to cavil at the generosity of a rich girl—if she were rich—toward a poor poet.

So they went along, the poet and his distinguished political friend, to the scene of the artistic and literary gathering, which the latter was so proud to see, and the former so proud to show.

We have all read in story about the effect of some little magic word, which once spoken makes that which was lovely before seem but loathly, and what was kindly wisdom sound like fatuous malignity. Was there some such ill-omened charm working all that night on Victor Heron? Nothing seemed to him like what he had expected. He was not impressed as he had felt sure he would be by the poets and other sons of genius. They did not seem to constitute an assembly of noble minds in whose midst he was to feel such reverence as the rude Gauls of history or legend felt in the presence of the Roman senators. The thoughts that he heard did not strike him as celestial in their origin. There was a good deal of disparagement and denunciation of absent authors and artists, which if the talkers had not been men of genius, Victor would certainly have thought ill-natured and spiteful. There seemed, at least, to his untutored mind, to be little more than a technical relish of art in all they said. It was not art they cared for, but only a clique and its tricks. A group of discontented spinsters girding at their younger sisters who were married could hardly have shown themselves more narrow-minded and malign. The effect on Victor was profoundly depressing. It was like that which might be wrought upon a youth, who after gazing in rapture on the performance of some queen of classic tragedy, is at his earnest desire taken to see her in her private life, and finds her slatternly of dress, mean of speech, wholly uninspired by her art, and only taking a genuine pleasure in disparagement or slander of her rivals.

If Victor had known the world better, he would have known that much, very much, of all this was but the mere affectation and nonsense of youth. These young men were as yet among the "odious race of the unappreciated." Yet a little, and some of them will make a success, and will have the credit of the world for what they do, and they will turn out good fellows, kindly, true, and even modest. Nothing makes some young men so insufferably conceited and aggressive as the idea that they are not successful, and that people know it. There are many of us mortals with whom prosperity only agrees. On the other hand, some of these youths will fail early, completely, and wholesomely in their artistic attempts, and will find out the fact for good, and will retire from the field altogether, and settle down to something else, and make a success, or at least a decent living, in some other way of life, and will forget all the worser teaching of their earlier days; and will look back without bitterness on the time when they tried to impress a dull world, and have no feeling of hatred for those who have done better, but will marry and bring up children, and be Philistines and happy. Youth has only one season—luckily for a good many of us, who are decent fellows enough as long as we are content to be ourselves, and can do without affectation.

CHAPTER XVII.

"UNDER BONNYBELL'S WINDOW-PANES."

But there was something more in Victor Heron's feeling of depression that night than came from the mere fact that he had found a few young artists not quite such heroic spirits as he thought they ought to be. It was the demeanor of Herbert Blanchet that especially spoiled the evening for him. In truth the head of the poet was not a strong one, and was very easily turned by any little stimulant of whatever kind. His volume of poems this night affected all his being. He felt sure that he was at last about to force himself upon the recognition of the world, and he made up his mind that Miss Grey was in love with him. He conveyed hints of his approaching good fortune to his companions; and he received at first with benign courtesy their compliments on the success that seemed to await him in life and love. But when some too forward person suggested that he could possibly guess at the name of the heiress whose heart and hand were to bless the lucky poet, then Blanchet became gravely and even severely dignified.

"You will excuse me, Mellifont," he said grandly, the brandy and soda having, as was the wont of any such liquor taken by our poor poet, gone straight upward to his head—"you will excuse me, I am sure, if I say this is not exactly a subject for jocularity; or even, permit me to add, for general conversation, although among friends. My distinguished friend, Mr. Heron, will, I am sure, exactly appreciate what I say. Things may not be so completely settled as to make it proper that they should be spoken of as if—as if in short they were settled; you will excuse me, Mellifont, my dear fellow—you will excuse me."

Victor Heron thought it time for him to go, and rose accordingly, and Mr. Blanchet insisted on accompanying him down the stairs and to the door of the house.

"I thought it right, you know," the over-dignified poet said, "to put a stop to that sort of thing. Men have no right to make such inferences. I should have no right myself to assume that things were settled in that sort of way. It is not just to others—to another at least. You appreciate my motives I am sure, Heron, my dear friend?"

"I don't know that I even quite understand what your friend was talking about," said Heron coldly. "But if it was about any lady, I should think such conjecturing highly improper and impertinent; and I should be rather inclined to put a stop to it even more quickly."

"Quite my idea—I am glad you entirely concur with me, and approve of the course I have taken. But of course you would do so. I knew I could count on your approval. By the way, you know Mellifont?"

"The man you talked to just now?"

"Yes, Mellifont—a very good fellow, though a little too fond of talking—I have had to reprove him more than once, I can tell you. But a very good fellow for all that, and one of the only true artists now alive. He is a composer—you must hear him play some bits from his opera. He is at work on an opera, you know—or perhaps you have not heard?"

"I have not heard—no. I am rather out of the way of such things, I fear," said Victor, beginning to feel, in spite of himself, a certain awe of a man who could compose an opera, and thinking that, after all, a certain allowance must be made for the genius of one who could do such things.

"Oh, you must hear some of it soon! We feel satisfied that it will sound the death knell of all the existing schools of music. They are all wrong, sir, from the first to the last, from Mozart to Wagner—all wrong except Mellifont."

Victor was for the moment really staggered by the genius of this great man.

"What is his opera to be called?" he asked, not venturing to hazard any compromising observation.

"'The Seven Deadly Sins.' It is to be in seven acts, and each act is to give an entirely new illustration of a deadly sin—which Mellifont will show to be the only true virtues of mankind. It will make a revolution, I can tell you."

Victor thought it could hardly fail to do that if it were at all successful in the object set out by its author.

"It is to have seven heroines," the poet went on, still at the door, and refusing to allow Victor to depart. "Lot's daughters—let me see—Messalina, Locusta; Jezebel I think, Theodora, and I believe, Mrs. Brownrigg. It will be a splendid thing."

It was not easy for Victor to get away, for the poet had to tell him of other great works of art that were in the contemplation of members of the school. At length Blanchet released him, thanking him grandly for the assistance he had lent to the bringing out of his book, but adding even more grandly some words that fell painfully on Victor's ear.

"I hope to be independent of publishers and drudgery before long; I fancy—I rather believe it depends upon myself, and I think I owe it to my own genius to raise myself above the necessity of drudgery. Then I could do something worthy of myself, and the few whose praise I value."

Victor escaped at last and walked away. He was in a very discontented mood, an unusual thing for him. He could not help believing that there must be, or at least might be, something in the idea which Blanchet so evidently wished people to receive. He feared that there must be something more than mere kindly patronage in Miss Grey's generosity toward Blanchet. The thought was strangely disagreeable to him. He could not think with patience of such a girl being in love with such a man. He was now disposed to exaggerate the demerits of the poet, and to believe anything mean of one who could take a girl's money and give out as an excuse for taking it that she was in love with him. "If I had a sister," he thought, "and any fellow were to give such hints about her, I wonder how I should like it, and I wonder how much of it I should stand!"

He felt sorry, very sorry, for Minola, and perhaps a little angry with her too for allowing to any man the chance of suggesting such things. The more he thought of her and all he had seen of her, the less she seemed fitted for such a lover as Mr. Blanchet. She had impressed Victor greatly by her manners, her fresh and frank character, and the simple, trusting generosity which was her transparent attribute. He began to look on the poet now as a mere fortune-hunter, who was fastening upon the girl because of the money which he expected her to have. He did not know how consuming a passion is the vanity of the small artistic mind—the mind which has art's ambition only and not art's inspiration. Mr. Blanchet was not a fortune-hunter in the ordinary sense. His poems were to him as yet much dearer than any fortune. He was drawn to Minola not because she had money, but because having money she was willing to spend some of it in bringing out his poems in a handsome edition.

Our hero's quixotic temper was thoroughly roused by the thought of some wrong which he fancied was about to be done to Minola. He was not one of those lucky beings who can let things alone. He never could let things alone. Had he had the gift of those who can, he would just then have been governor of some rising colony, and would have been in a fair way of promotion. He was tormented by the thought that there was something he ought to do to save Minola from some vaguely terrible fate, and by not being able to see what the something was which lay within his power to do. Before he had walked many yards he had worked himself into the idea that a plot of some sort was in preparation to entrap Minola into a marriage with one who, poet or not, was wholly unworthy of her.

His energetic spirit at length suggested something to be done. It was not, perhaps, a very practical or useful stroke of policy, but it was the only thing which occurred to him and the only thing which he did just then. He started off at full speed to walk under the windows of the house where Miss Grey was living. It was now fully midnight, and of course he had not the slightest idea of seeing Minola, and, indeed, would have been greatly embarrassed if he had seen her. But he started off, nevertheless, to walk under her windows with as eager a step and as steady a purpose as if he were really hastening to rescue her from some imminent danger. It was only a short walk from where he then was to Minola's lodgings; but Heron was so eager in his purpose that the way seemed miles, which he was covering with hasty strides.

When he reached the house where Minola lived, the aspect of the place was just such as, if he had been a lover, he might have expected or desired to find. The house was all in darkness save for one window. There was a looking-glass in that window, making it plain to the least observant of human creatures that it must be the window of a bedroom. How could a lover doubt that that must be the window of the room which was hers, and that she then watched the stars of midnight, and that she thought of love, and that her soul was, as Jean Paul puts it, in the blue ether? For the moment Victor Heron found himself wishing that he were a lover—were the lover of whom the lady, fancy-fixed in that one lighted room, might be thinking. But if it were Minola's room, he thought, she certainly had not him or any memory of him in her mind. It was a clear, soft midnight, and the moon that shone on the near roof of the British Museum seemed as poetic and as sad as though it fell on the ruins of the Parthenon. No practice in colonial administration can wholly squeeze the poetic and the romantic out of the breast of a young man of Heron's time of life. As he stood there his grievance seemed as far off as the moon herself, but not by any means so poetic and beautiful. He paced up and down, feeling very young and odd, and unlike his usual self. He was happy in a queer, boyish way that had a certain shamefaced sensation about it, as when a youth for the first time drinks suddenly of some sparkling wine, and feels his brain and senses all aflame with delicious ecstasy, and is afraid of the feeling although he delights in it.

It was a natural part of the half fantastic chivalry of his character that he should have felt a sort of satisfaction in thus for the moment being near Minola, as if by that means he were in some sort protecting her against danger. If at that time any softer and warmer feeling than mere friendship were mingling itself with Heron's sensations, he did not then know it. He thought of the girl as a sweet friend, new to him, indeed, but very dear, in whose happiness he felt deeply interested, and over whom he had taken it into his head that he had a right to watch. She seemed to be strangely alone in the world of London, and, indeed, to be at the same time not suited for anything in London but just such isolation. He never could think of her as mixing in the ordinary society of the metropolis. He could not think of her as one of the common crowd, following out mechanically the registered routine of the season's amusements, listening to the commonplace talk, and compliments, and cheap cynicism of the drawing-room and the five o'clock tea. To him she appeared as different from all that, and as poetically lifted above it, as if she were Hawthorne's Hilda, high up in her Roman tower, among her doves, and near to the blue sky. Except in the home of the Moneys, Heron had never seen Minola in anything that even looked like society; and there was a good deal of the odd and the fresh in that home which took it out of the range of the commonplace, and did not interfere with his poetic idealization of Minola. Her presence and her way of life appeared alike to him a poetic creation. So quiet, self-sufficing a life, alone in the midst of the crowd, such simple strength of purpose, such a tranquil choice of the kind of existence that suited her best, such generosity and such gracious, loving kindness—all this together made up a picture which had a natural fascination for a chivalrous young man, who had never before had time to allow the softer and more romantic elements of his nature any chance of expression. It may be that for the present Minola was to him but the first suggestion of an embodiment of all the vague, floating thoughts and visions of love and womanhood that must now and then cross the spiritual horizon of every young man, no matter how closely he may be occupied with colonial affairs and the condition of the colored races. The hero of a French story, whereof there is not otherwise over-much good to be said, speaks with a feeling as poetic as it is true when he says that in the nightingale's song he heard the story of the love that he ought to have known, but which had not yet come to him. Perhaps in the eyes and in the voice of Minola Victor Heron unconsciously found this story told for him.

However that might be, it is certain that Heron found a curious satisfaction this night in passing again and again before Minola's door, and making believe to himself as if he were guarding her against danger. He might have remained on guard in this way, heaven knows how long—for, as we know, he was not fond of early going to bed—but that he suddenly "was aware," as the old writers put it, of another watcher as well as himself. It was unmistakable. Another man came up and passed slowly once or twice under the same windows, and on the side of the street where Heron had put himself on guard. Then the new comer, observing, no doubt, that he was not alone, had crossed to the other side of the street, and Heron thought he was only a chance passer and was gone altogether. Presently, however, he crossed the road again, and stood a short distance away from Heron as if he were watching him. Now, though Victor Heron was not a lover, he had just as much objection as any lover could have to being seen by observant eyes when watching under a girl's window. The mere thought recalled him at once to chilling commonplace. He was for going away that moment; all the delight was gone out of his watching. But he was a little curious to know if the new comer were really only a casual stranger whom his movements had stirred into idle curiosity. So he went straightway down the street and passed the unwelcome intruder. He felt sure the face of the man was known to him, although he could not at first recall to mind the person's identity. He felt sure, too, by the way in which the man looked at him and then turned suddenly off, that the new comer had recognized him as well. This was tormenting for the moment, as he went on perplexing himself by trying to think who it was that he had seen in this unexpected and unwished-for way. He walked slowly, and looked back once or twice. He could not see his disturber any more. The man had either gone away or was, perhaps, standing in the shadow of a doorway. Suddenly an idea flashed upon Heron.

"Why, of course," he exclaimed, "it's he! I ought to have known! It's the man from Keeton—the hated rival."

By "hated rival," however, Heron did not mean a rival in love, but only in electioneering; for he now knew that it was Mr. Sheppard he had seen, and he remembered how Mr. Sheppard, when he met him in Minola's room, had seemed oddly sullen and unwilling to fraternize. This was the reason why Heron called him the hated rival. His own idea of a rival in an election contest was that of a person whom one ought to ask to dinner, and treat with especial courtesy and fair offer of friendship.

Suddenly, however, another idea had occurred to him.

"What on earth can he be doing there," he asked, "under her window? Can it be possible that he too is a lover?"

He too? Who then was the lover—the other lover? Heron did not believe, and would not admit, that Blanchet was a genuine lover at all. The whole theory of Victor's duty to watch under Minola's windows was based on the assumption that Blanchet was no true lover, but a cunning hunter of fortune. Why then ask, was Mr. Sheppard too a lover? Heron did not at the moment stop to ask himself any such question, but after awhile the absurdity of his words occurred to him, and he was a little amused and a good deal ashamed of his odd and hasty way of putting the question.

"Why shouldn't he be there as well as I?" he said. "Why should he be a lover any more than I?"

Then he began to assure himself that the hated rival must have been there only by chance; and it is doubtful whether if he had thought much longer over the question he would not have ended by convincing himself that nothing but the merest chance had brought him, too, under Minola's window panes.

It was, indeed, Minola's window under which he had been watching; and she too was watching, and never dreamed that he was so near. She looked from her window not long after he had gone, and saw the street all lonely, and felt lonely herself, and shuddered, thinking that life would ever be a dreary piece of work for her. It is a melancholy fact that all that time, and even long after she had gone in shuddering from the window, poor Sheppard was standing in a doorway at the opposite side of the street, and that she not only never saw him, but never thought of him. Her thoughts were of Victor Heron, and of her own folly and her own love—that love which seemed such folly, which was so hopeless, which she knew, or at least believed it was a sort of treason against friendship to indulge, although in absolute secret.

In Uhland's pretty poem called "Departure" a youth is going on his wanderings, and his comrades escort him a little on his way, and as they go along they pass beneath the windows of a pretty girl. The lad looks up, and would fain if he might have a rose from her hand, and yet tells himself that he would not have it—for to what end to have the rose when she whom he loved cared nothing for him, and the rose would only wither with him, and to no purpose? When he has gone the girl strains her eyes after him in grief, and wonders what the world is to be to her now that he she loved is going far away, and never knew of her love. A few timely words might have spared all the heart-ache, no doubt; but it will be a very different world from that which we have known when all the words that might have been timely are spoken in time, or even when the feelings that might prompt the timely words have learned their own meaning at the right moment to give it breath.

CHAPTER XVIII.

"COUNSEL BETRAYED."

The next morning Heron rose with a distinct purpose of doing something to put Minola on her guard. His purpose to do something was much more clear than his knowledge of what he had better do. Anyhow he thought he would go and see Minola, and say something to her. When he began to speak he would probably hit upon the thing to say. As he might have put it himself, Providence would pull him through somehow. The first thing was to get to speech of Minola. This, at least, ought not to be hard to compass.

His first idea was simply to go to her house and ask to see her. But when he was near the scene of his mounting guard the past night he began to think of the difficulties that would be put in his way if any one else were present. How, for example, could he possibly say what he specially wanted to say if Mary Blanchet were present, or were even coming and going in and out of the room, as she was almost sure to be? On the other hand, how could he formally ask for a private conversation with Minola without stirring all manner of absurd curiosity and conjecture? At the very least, Mary Blanchet would be sure to ask, when he had gone, what he had come to say; and that would, under the circumstances, be rather embarrassing for Minola. He gave up, therefore, the idea of seeing Miss Grey at her own house.

Another plan at once occurred to him. He knew how often Minola walked in Regent's Park—he would go and walk there about the time which she usually chose, and he would go again and again until he met her. So he started off for the Park, greatly relieved in mind to be doing anything. All the time there was a good deal of work on his account which he might and, if he were at all a sensible young man, would have been doing. The time that he was spending in trying to ward off from Minola a supposed danger might, if properly used, have procured him an interview with a Cabinet Minister, or paved the way for easy success at the future election for Keeton. There were twenty things which Mr. Money had often told him he must do if he would have the faintest hope of any success in anything; and all these things he was utterly neglecting because he chose to think that he was called on to give some advice to a girl who perhaps would repay him with but little thanks for his officious attempt at interference.

He walked slowly through the park, along the paths which he knew that she loved, and made for the canal. It was a soft, gray day, with no sky seen. The air was surcharged with moisture; but it was not raining, and the grass was only as if a heavy dew had settled on it. The soft breath that floated over the fields was warm and languid. Only three colors were to be seen all across the park: the green of the grass, the gray of the clouds, or of the one cloud rather, and the dull black of the tree-trunks. These colors indeed were softened, and shaded away, and blended into each other, with indefinable varieties of tone and delicate interchanges of effect. It was just the day to make a certain class of observer curse the stupid and foggy monotony of the English climate. It was the day, too, to gladden the heart of a certain refined class of artist with whom delicate effects of tone and shade are precious and familiar. Certainly it might be called a day of poetic atmosphere. To Victor, who had long been used to the unwinking steadiness of a tropical sun, there was something specially refreshing and delightful in the grass, the trees, and the cloud. He found himself yearning in heart for a life which would leave him more time and thought for the skies, the trees, and the air.

Suddenly the scene vanished from his eyes, and he only saw Minola Grey. He was now approaching the canal, and he saw her leaning over the bridge and looking into the water. It was early in the day—too early for the nursemaids and the children, and the ordinary walkers, and there was no one but Minola now in Heron's sight.

The girl, as she leaned on the railing of the bridge and looked into the water, might have been adopted by any artist as a model-figure of melancholy. If Victor had been less in a hurry with everything—if he had remained where he then was and looked at her unperceived for a few moments, Heaven knows what inspiration of ideas, what revealings about himself and her might have come into his mind. But Victor waited for nothing—seldom in life gave himself much time to think, and, in any case, would have had an instinctive objection to even a moment's unperceived watching of a meditating girl. He was so rejoiced at the readiness with which his desire to meet her had been gratified, that he thought he could hardly seize his chance too soon. In his eagerness he even forgot that the task he had undertaken was rather embarrassing, and that he had not yet made up his mind as to what he was going to say. He was by Minola's side in a moment.

She was so much surprised and startled that Victor was quite ashamed of having come upon her in such a sudden way. He had forgotten that all women have nerves, and get startled in ways unknown to men. At least, he assumed it must be for some reason of this kind that Minola seemed so much disturbed when he came up, but he certainly had not supposed that girls so clever and healthy as Miss Grey were usually troubled with nerves.

Minola recovered herself very soon, however, and got rid of all appearance of mere nervous embarrassment, although there was for a while a certain constraint in her manner.

"Have you been long here?" he asked.

"Not very long; at least it did not seem long. I like to be here at this time; there are so few people."

"Yes; I knew you were likely to be here about this time if you were coming at all to-day," he said; an awkward remark, as it suggested that he had come expressly to meet her.

"I come here at all manner of times," she said; "but I think I like this time the best."

"You are not going any further, I suppose?"

"No; I thought of turning back now, and going home."

"I'll walk a little way with you if you will allow me?"

Of course she had no objection to make. They had walked in that place often before, and it was a matter of certainty that as they did meet they would walk together. He need hardly have asked her if she would allow him to walk with her now.

So they turned and walked a little off the beaten track, and under the trees. When they had walked a certain distance in one direction Victor turned round and she turned with him, as if she were merely obeying his signal of command. It has already been said more than once that Mr. Heron always went on as if he were ever so much older than she, and belonging indeed to a different stage of life. He bore himself as a man of forty or thereabout might do with a young woman of Minola's age.

"How do you like Blanchet's book?" he asked abruptly.

"It is very beautiful, I suppose. It's a little too ornamental and fantastic perhaps for my taste; but I suppose that is in keeping with the style of the poems; and he is delighted with the book."

"It has cost a great deal of money—much more than it ought to have cost. I don't like the thing at all."

"But think of the joy given to the poet. It is surely not very dearly bought at the price. I never knew of a man so happy."

"Yes, yes; that is all very well for him——"

"It is very well for me too, Mr. Heron—to be able to do a kindness for any human creature. I dare say it has given me as much pleasure as it has given him, and made me quite as proud too—and is not that something to gain?"

"Still I can't help feeling uneasy about this thing. It has cost a heap of money—much more than I ever supposed it would—and I seem as if I had brought you into all the expense."

"How could that be, Mr. Heron? I expressly wished Mr. Blanchet to do as he pleased; and he understood me exactly as I wished him to do. You had nothing to do with it."

"Oh, yes! I had something to do with it; and then—excuse me—you are rather young perhaps——"

"Perhaps I can't be expected to know my own mind; or ought not to be trusted with the spending of my own money?"

"No, I didn't mean that; but you might not have known exactly what you were being let in for; and it is a good deal of money for a girl to pay."

"And in fact you don't think a girl ought to be allowed to spend her money without some wise person of the superior sex to guide her hand? Thank you very much, Mr. Heron, but I think I may have my own way in this at least. I have often told you that I left Keeton because I could not stand the control of wiser and better persons than myself. I am not at all a good girl, Mr. Heron; I never said I was. The counsels of the wise are sadly thrown away on me, I fear."

She spoke in a hard and ungenial tone, which he had not heard her use before. He could not help looking at her with an expression of wonder. She saw the expression and understood it.

"You are shocked at my want of sweet, feminine docility? I ought not to have any ideas of my own, I suppose?"

"No, I am not shocked, and I am not at all such a ridiculous person as you would seem to suppose, and I have none of the ideas you set down to me; but you don't seem quite like yourself, and you speak as if you were offended with me for something."

"Offended? Oh, no. How could I possibly be offended? I am very much obliged, on the contrary, for the trouble you take for one who seems to you quite unable to take care of herself."

Victor did not like her tone. There was something aggressive in it. He was not experienced enough in the ways of society to cry content to that which grieved his heart, and his thoughts therefore showed themselves pretty clearly in his face.

"I don't like Blanchet's taking all this money," he said, after a moment of silence. "I don't think a man ought to take such a helping hand as that from—well, from——"

"From a woman, you were going to say? Why not from a woman, Mr. Heron? Are we never to do a kind thing, we unfortunate creatures, because we are women and are young?"

"No, I don't say that; but there are things it may become a woman to do, and which it doesn't quite so well become a man to profit by. I don't think Blanchet——"

"Mr. Blanchet seems to have a higher idea of what a woman's friendship may be than you have, Mr. Heron. He does not see any degradation in allowing a woman to hold him out a helping hand when he wants one. I like his ideas better than yours. You say you would have done this little service for him if you had been allowed. Why should there be any greater degradation to him in having it done by me? At all events you can't wonder if I don't see it all at once."

"Of course if you are satisfied and pleased, there is nothing more to be said in the matter."

"I am satisfied and pleased. Why should I not be? I asked a friend to let me do something to help him, and he answered me just in the spirit in which I spoke. Of course I am glad to find that there is even one man who could take a friendly offer in a friendly way. There are not many such men, I suppose?"

Victor could not help smiling at her emphatic way of expressing her scorn of men.

"I do believe you have really turned yourself misanthropical by reading 'Le Misanthrope,'" he said.

"Well, why should there not be a woman Alceste? although I never knew any woman in real life more worthy to be classed with him than the men we meet in real life are. Miss Alceste, I think, would sound very prettily. I wish I could think myself entitled to bear such a name?"

"Or Miss Misanthrope," he suggested. "How would that do for a young lady's name?"

"Admirably, I think. That would get over all the difficulty too, and save foolish persons from thinking that one was setting up for another Alceste. I should like very much to be called Miss Misanthrope."

"If you go on as you are doing, you will soon be entitled to bear the name," said Victor gravely. "At the present moment I don't know that I should much object to that."

"No! I am glad that anything I am likely to do has a chance of pleasing you. But why should you not object just at present? Why not now as well as at any other time?"

"Because I should like you to be a little misanthropical just now, and a little distrustful—of men, that is to say, Miss Grey."

She colored slightly, although she had no idea of his meaning yet.

"I always thought you were full of trust in the whole human race, Mr. Heron; I thought you liked everybody and believed in everybody. Now you tell me to distrust all mankind."

"I didn't say that."

"No? Some particular person, then?"

"Some particular person, perhaps. At least I don't mean exactly that," Heron hastened to explain, his conscience smiting him at the thought that perhaps after all he might be suggesting unjust suspicions of an absent man who was a sort of friend. "I only mean that you are very generous and unselfish, and that there might be persons who might try to make use of your good nature, and whom perhaps you might not quite understand. I don't know whether I ought to speak about this at all."

"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I am sure; for I really don't know what you are speaking of or what mysterious danger is hanging over me. But I hope there is something of the kind, for I should so like to resemble a heroine of romance."

"There is not anything very romantic in prospect so far as I know," he said, now almost wishing he had said nothing, and yet feeling in his heart a serious fear that Minola might be led to put too much faith in Blanchet. "But if I might speak out freely, and without any fear of your misunderstanding me or being offended, there is something, Miss Grey, that I should very much like to say." He spoke in an uneasy and constrained way, forcing himself on to an ungracious task.

"You have been preaching distrust to me, Mr. Heron, and you have been finding fault generally with all women who trust anybody. To show you how your lessons are thrown away on me, I shall certainly trust you as much as you like, and I shall not misunderstand anything you say nor be offended by it." There was something of her old sweet frankness in her manner as she spoke these words, and Heron was warmed by it.

"Well," he said at last, "you are a girl, and young, and living almost alone, and people tell me you are going to have money. You have promised to excuse my blunt way of talking out, haven't you? I almost wish for your sake, as you like to live this kind of life, that you had just enough of money to live upon and no more; but I hear that that is not the case, or at all events is not to be. Well, the only thing is that people who I think are not true, and are not honest, and who are not worthy of you in any way whatever, may try to make you think that they are true, and sincere, and all the rest of it."

"Well, Mr. Heron, what if they do?"

"You may perhaps be persuaded to believe them."

"And even if I am, what matter is that? I had much rather be deceived in such things than know the truth, if the truth is to mean that people are all deceitful."

"I don't think you want to understand me," he said.

"Indeed I do; I only want to understand you; but I fail as yet. Why not speak out, Mr. Heron, like a man and a brother? If there is anything you want me to know, do please make me to know it in the clearest way."

She was growing impatient.

"You will have lovers," he said, driven to despair when it seemed as if she could not understand a mere hint of any kind; "of course you must know that you are attractive and all that—and if you come to have money, you will be besieged with fellows—with admirers I mean. Do be a little distrustful—of one at least; I don't like him and I wish you didn't—and I can't very well tell you why, only that he does not seem to me to be manly or even honest."

She colored a little, but she also smiled faintly, for she still did not understand him.

"I suppose I must know the man you mean, Mr. Heron; for I think he is the only man I ever heard you say anything against, and I have not forgotten. But what can have made you think that I needed any lecture about him? I don't suppose he ever thought about me in that way in his life, or would marry one of my birth and my bringing up even if I asked him. And in any case, Mr. Heron, I would not marry him even if he asked me. But what a shame it seems to arrange in advance for the refusing of a man who never showed the faintest intention of making an offer."

At first Heron did not quite understand her. Then he suddenly caught her meaning.

"Oh, that fellow? I didn't mean him. I never could have supposed that you were likely to be taken in by him."

"To do him justice, Mr. Heron, he never seems to have any thought of taking any one in. Such as he is he always shows himself, I think."

"Oh, I don't care about him——"

"Nor I, Mr. Heron, I assure you. But whom then do you care about—in that sense?"

"I distrust a man who takes a woman's money in a reckless and selfish way," Heron said impetuously. "That is a man I would not trust. Don't trust him, Miss Grey; believe me, he is a cad—I mean a selfish and deceitful fellow. I can't bear the thought of a girl like you being sacrificed—or sacrificing yourself as you might do perhaps—and I tell you that he is just the sort of man——"

"Are you speaking of Mr. Blanchet now, Mr. Heron?" Her tone was cold and clear. She was evidently hurt, but determined now to have the whole question out.

"Yes, I am speaking of Blanchet, of course—of whom else could I be speaking in such a way?"

"Mr. Blanchet is my friend, Mr. Heron; I thought he was a friend of yours as well."

"Well, I thought he was a manly, honest sort of fellow—I don't think so now," Victor went on impetuously, warming himself as he went into increasing strength of conviction. "I know you will hate me for telling you this, but I can't help that. I am as much interested in your happiness as if—as if you were my sister—and if you were my sister, I would just do the same."

It would indeed be idle to attempt to describe the course of the feelings that ran through Minola's breast as she listened to the words of this kind which he continued to pour out. But out of all that swept through her—out of shame, surprise, anger, grief, the one thought came uppermost, and survived, and guided her—the thought that she had only to leave Heron's appeal unanswered, and her secret was safe for ever.

She made up her mind, and was self-contained and composed to all appearance again.

"Let us not say any more about this, Mr. Heron; I am sure you mean it as a friend; and I never could allow myself to feel offended by anything said in friendship. I am sorry you have such an opinion of Mr. Blanchet; I have a much better opinion of him; I like him better than I like most men; but you know we have just agreed that I ought to be called 'Miss Misanthrope,' and I assure you I mean to do my very best to deserve the name. No—please don't say any more—I had rather not hear it indeed; and if you know anything of women, Mr. Heron, you must know that we never take advice on these matters. No; trust to my earning my name of Miss Misanthrope; but don't tell me of the demerits of this or that particular man. I had rather hate men in the general than in all the particular cases—and how long we must have talked about this nonsense, for here is the gate of the park; and Mary Blanchet will be thinking that I am lost!"

They almost always parted at this park gate. This time he felt that he must not attempt to go any further with her. She smiled and nodded to him with a manner of constrained friendliness, and went her way, and Heron's heart was deeply moved, for he feared that he had lost his friend.

CHAPTER XIX.

MR. ST. PAUL'S MYSTERY.

Two events occurring almost together affected a good deal some of the people of this story. The first was the death of Mrs. Saulsbury.

Miss Grey was at once invited by the lawyers who had the charge of her father's affairs to visit Keeton, in order to become fully acquainted with the new disposition of things in which she had so much interest. Thereupon Mr. Money announced that, as Miss Grey had no very close friend to look after her interests, he was resolved to put himself in the place of a parent or some near relation, and go with her and see that all her interests were properly cared for. Minola was unwilling to put him to so much trouble and loss of time, well knowing how absorbed in business he was; but he set all her remonstrances aside with blunt, good-humored kindness.

"Lucy is coming with us," he said, "if you don't think her in the way; it might be pleasant for you to have a companion."

"I should so much like to go with Nola," pleaded Lucy.

"Oh, I shall be delighted if Lucy will go," Minola said, not well knowing how to put into words her sense of all their kindness. It was really a great relief to her to have Lucy's companionship in such a visit. Mary Blanchet did not like to go back even for a few days to Keeton. The poetess objected to seeing ever again the place where she considered that art and she had been degraded by her servitude in the court-house. So the conditions of the visit were all settled.

But there arose suddenly some new conditions which Minola had never expected. The long looked-for vacancy at length occurred in the representation of Keeton. The sitting member announced his determination to resign his seat as soon as the necessary arrangements for such a step could be put into effect. It was imperative that Victor Heron should lose no time in throwing himself upon the vacant borough. Mr. Money and Lucy rattled up to Minola's door one breathless morning with the news. Lucy's eyes were positively dancing with excitement and delight.

"It seems to me that there's going to be a regular invasion of your borough, Miss Grey," Mr. Money said. "We're all going to be there. You see that you are under no manner of compliment to me. I must have gone down to Keeton in any case; it's one of the lucky things that don't often befall a busy man like me to be able to kill the two birds with the one stone. I must take care of our friend Heron as well as of you. He would be doing some ridiculous thing if there were no elder to look after him. He is as innocent of the dodges of an English election as you are of the ways of English lawyers. So we'll be all together; that will be very pleasant. Of course we'll not interfere with you. You shall be just as quiet as you like while we are doing our electioneering."

What could Minola say against all this arrangement, which seemed so satisfactory and so delightful to her friends? It was not pleasant for her to be brought thus into a sort of companionship with Victor Heron. But it would be far less pleasant, it would indeed be intolerable and not to be thought of, that she should in any way raise an objection or make a difficulty which might hint of the feelings that possessed her.

"After all, what does it matter?" she asked herself as Mr. Money was speaking. "I shall have to suffer this kind of thing in some way for half my life, I suppose. It is no one's fault but my own. Why should I disturb the arrangements of these kind people because of any weaknesses of mine? If women will be fools, at least they ought to try to hide their folly. This is as good practice for me as I could have."

So she told Mr. Money and Lucy that any arrangement that suited them would suit her, and that she would be ready to go the moment he gave the word. Then Mr. Money hastened away to look after other things, and Lucy remained behind "to help Nola with her preparations," as she insisted on putting it, but partly, as Minola felt only too sure, to talk with her about Victor Heron.

Since Heron had offered her his advice in the park, and she had put it aside, Minola and he had only met once or twice. Then he had attempted, the first time of their meeting, to renew his apologies, and she had put them lightly away, as she already had done the advice, and had given him to understand that she wished to hear no more of the matter. She had hoped that by assuming a manner of indifference she might lead him to forget the whole affair. But he did not understand her, and really believed that he had lost her friendship for ever by the manner in which he had spoken against Herbert Blanchet. He was troubled for her much more than for himself, believing, or at least fearing, that she had set her heart on a man unworthy of her. He kept away from her therefore, assuming that his society was no longer welcome, and resolute not to intrude on her.

Minola had hoped that the worst was over, and that he and she were likely to settle gradually and unnoticed by others into a condition of ordinary acquaintanceship. This melancholy hope, to her a cruel necessity in itself, but yet the best hope she could see now left for her, was likely to be disturbed for a while by this ill-omened visit to Keeton.

Minola was busy making her preparations for going to Keeton, and with a very heavy heart. Everything about the visit was now distressing to her. The occasion was mournful; she dreaded long talks and discussions with Mr. Saulsbury; she dreaded meeting old acquaintances in Keeton; she shrank from the responsibilities of various kinds that seemed to be thrust upon her. When she left Keeton she thought she had done with it for ever. Where was the free life she had arranged for herself? Nothing seemed to turn out as she had expected.

Meanwhile Mary Blanchet and Lucy Money were both delighted, and in their different ways, at the prospect of Minola's visit to Keeton. Mary saw her leader and patroness come back rich, and ready to be distinguished and to confer distinction. Lucy Money had the prospect of variety, of a holiday with Minola, whom she loved, and of being very often in the society of Victor Heron. Minola was, if anything, made additionally sad by the thought that it was not in her power to share their feelings, and the fear that she might seem a wet blanket sometimes on their happiness.

Lucy had been with her all the morning, helping her with Mary to make preparations for the journey. Minola was glad when it was found that some things were wanting, and Lucy and Mary offered to go out and buy them in Oxford street.

Minola was enjoying the sense of being alone, and was, at the same time, secretly accusing herself of want of friendship because she enjoyed it, when a card was brought to her, and she was told that the gentleman said he wanted to speak to her, if she pleased, "rather particular." The card was that of Mr. St. Paul. He had never visited Minola before, nor was she even aware that he knew where she lived. She was surprised, but she did not know of any reason why she might not see him. She hastened down to her sitting-room, and there she found Mr. St. Paul, as she had found Mr. Blanchet once before. Mr. St. Paul looked even a stranger figure in her room than Mr. Blanchet had done, she thought. He seemed far too tall for the place, and had a heedless, lounging, half-swaggering way, which appeared as if it were compounded of the old manner of the cavalry man and the newer habits of the western hunter. Nothing, however, could have been more easy, confident, and self-possessed than the way in which he came forward to greet Minola. If he had been visiting her every day for a month before, he could not have been more friendly and at his ease.

"How d'ye do, Miss Grey? Just in time to see you, I suppose, before you go? I've been down to Keeton already. I'm going down again—I mean to make my mark there somehow."

Minola thought, with a certain half-amused, half-abashed feeling, of the remarks she had heard concerning herself and Mr. St. Paul; but she did not show any embarrassment in her manner. Indeed, Mr. St. Paul was not a person to allow any one to feel much embarrassed in his presence. He was entirely easy, self-satisfied, and unaffected, and he had a way of pouring out his confidences as though he had known Minola from her birth upward.

"I hope you found a pleasant reception there?"

"Yes, well enough for that matter. I find my brother and his wife are not anything like so popular as I was given to understand that they were. I saw my brother in London—didn't I tell you?—before I went down to Keeton, you know."

"No, I did not know that you had seen him; I hope he was glad to see you, Mr. St. Paul?"

"Not he; I dare say he was very sorry I hadn't been wiped out by the Indians. Do you know what being wiped out means?"

"Yes, I think I could guess that much. I suppose it means being killed?"

"Of course. I mean to teach you all the slang of the West; I think a nice girl never looks so nice as when she is talking good expressive slang. Our British slang is all unmeaning stuff, you know; only consists in calling a thing by some short vulgar word—or some long and pompous word, the fun being in the pompousness; but the western slang is a sort of picture-writing, don't you know?—a kind of compressed metaphor, answering the purposes of an intellectual pemmican or charqui. Do you know what these things are, Miss Grey?"

"Oh, yes; compressed meats of some kind, I suppose. But I don't think I care about slang very much."

"You may be sure you will when you get over the defects of your Keeton bringing up. But what was I going to tell you? Let me see. Oh, yes, about my brother and his wife. The honest Keeton folks seem to have forgotten them. But I was speaking, too, about my going to see my brother in town. Oh, yes, I went to see him; he didn't want me, and he made no bones about letting me know it. He thinks I have disgraced the family; it was quite like the scene in the play—whose play is it?—I am sure I don't remember—where Lord Foppington's brother goes to see him, and is taken so coolly. I haven't read the play for more years than you have lived in the world, I dare say, but it all came back upon me in a moment. I felt like saying, 'Good-by, Foppington,' only that he would never have understood the allusion, and would think I meant to say he was a 'fop,' which he is not, bless him."

"Then your visit did not bring you any nearer to a reconciliation with your brother?"

"Not a bit of it—pushed us further asunder, I think. The odd thing was that I told him I wanted nothing from him, and that I had made money enough for myself in the West. You would have thought that would have fetched him, wouldn't you? Not the least in life, I give you my word." And Mr. St. Paul laughed good-humoredly at the idea.

"I am sorry to hear it," said Minola. "I think there are quarrels and spites enough in the world, without brothers joining in with all the rest."

"Bad form, isn't it—don't you think? But I don't suppose in real life brothers and sisters ever do care much for each other—do you think they do? I haven't known any such cases—have you?"

Minola could not contribute much from her own family history to demonstrate the affection and devotion of brothers, but she had no idea of agreeing in the truth of Mr. St. Paul's philosophic reflections for all that.

"I believe what you say is true enough as regards the brothers, but I can't admit it of the sisters."

"Come now, you don't really believe that nonsense, I know."

"Believe what nonsense? That sisters may be fond of their brothers sometimes?"

"No, I don't mean that; but that there is any real difference between men and women in these ways—that men are all bad and women all good, and that sort of thing. One's as bad as the other, Miss Grey. When you have lived as long in the world as I have you'll find it, I tell you. But I don't find much fault with either lot. I think they are both right enough all things considered, don't you know?"

"I am sure Mary Blanchet is devoted to her brother," Miss Grey said warmly.

"That little old maid? Well, now, do you know, I shouldn't wonder. That's just the sort of woman to be devoted to a brother, and, of course, he doesn't care twopence about her."

"Oh, for shame!" said Minola, not, however, feeling quite satisfied about the strength of Herbert Blanchet's affection for his sister, even while she felt bound, for Mary's sake, to utter her protest against his being set down as wholly undeserving.

"But, I say," Mr. St. Paul observed, "what a fool he is! I don't think I ever saw a more conceited cad and idiot."

"He is a very particular friend of mine, Mr. St. Paul," Miss Grey began. "At least, his sister is one of my oldest friends."

"Yes, yes; just so. The good old spinster is a friend of yours, and you try to like the cad brother on her account. All quite right, of course. I should say he was just the sort of fellow to borrow the poor old girl's money, if she had any."

"Oh, Mary has no money, and I am sure if she had she would be only too glad to give it to him."

"Very likely; anyhow he would be only too glad to take it, you may be sure. But I don't want to say anything against your friends, Miss Grey, if you don't like it. Only women generally do like it, you know—and then you may say anything you please, in your turn, against any of my friends or relatives. I shan't be offended one bit, I can assure you."

Minola had nothing to say, and therefore said nothing. Her new acquaintance did not allow any silence to spring up.

"Talking of friends," he said, "there is one of your friends who politely declines any helping hand of mine in the election business at Keeton, although I think I could do him a good turn with some of the fellows who are out of humor with my brother. Our quixotic young friend will have none of the help of brothers who quarrel with brothers, it seems. Easy to see that he never had a brother."

"Mr. Heron is a man of very sensitive nature, I believe," Minola said; "he will not do anything that he does not think exactly right, Mr. Money says."

"Yes, so I hear. Odd, is it not? Heron always was a confounded young fool, you know. He got into all his difficulties by bothering about things that oughtn't to have concerned him one red cent. Well, he won't have my disinterested assistance. There again he is a fool, for I could have done something for him, and Money knows it—it was partly on Money's account that I thought of taking up Heron's side of the affair, because, so far as I am concerned, anybody else would do me just as well so long as he opposed my brother's man."

"I can quite understand that Mr. Heron would not allow himself to be made a mere instrument to work out your quarrel with your brother. I think he was quite right."

The good-humored St. Paul laughed.

"All very fine, Miss Grey, and it does for a lady uncommonly well, no doubt; but if you want to get into Parliament, it won't do to be quite so squeamish. I am sure I should be only too happy to get the help of Cain against Abel or Abel against Cain if I could in such a case."

"Most men would, I dare say," Minola answered, with as much severity as she could assume under the possible penalty of Mr. St. Paul's laughter. "But I am glad that there are some men, or that there is one man, at least, who thinks there is some object in life higher than that of getting into Parliament."

"Oh, as far as that goes, I quite agree with you, Miss Grey; I shouldn't care twopence myself about a seat in Parliament—a confounded bore, I think. But if you go in for playing a game, why, you ought to play it, you know."

"But are there not rules in every game? Are there not such things as fair and unfair?"

"Of course, yes; but I fancy the strong players generally make the rules to suit their own ideas in the end. Anyhow, I never heard of any one playing at electioneering who would have hesitated for a moment about accepting the hand I offered to our quixotic young friend."

"I am glad he is quixotic," Minola said eagerly. "I like to think of a man who ventures to be a Quixote."

"Very sorry to hear it, Miss Grey, for I am afraid you won't like much to think about me. Yet, do you know, I came here to make a sort of quixotic offer about this very election."

"I am glad to hear it; the more quixotic it is the more I shall like it. To whom is the offer to be made? To Mr. Heron?"

"Oh, no, by Jove!—excuse me, Miss Grey—nothing of the sort. The offer is to be made to you."

"To me?" Minola was a little surprised, but she did not color or show any surprise. She knew very well that it was not an offer of himself Mr. St. Paul was about to make, but it amused her to think of the interpretation Mary Blanchet, if she could have been present, would at once have put on his words.

"Yes, indeed, Miss Grey, to you. I have it in my power to make you returning officer for Keeton. Do you understand what that means?"

"I know in a sort of way what a returning officer is; but I don't at all understand how I can do his office."

"I'll show you. You shall have the fate of Keeton as much in your hands as if you owned the whole concern—a deuced deal more, in fact, than if you owned the whole concern, in days of ballot like these. I believe you do own a good many of the houses there now, don't you?"

"I hardly know; but I know that if I do, I wish I didn't."

"Very well; just you try what you can get out of your influence over your tenants—that's all."

"Then how am I to become returning officer for Keeton?"

"That's quite another thing. That depends on me."

"On you, Mr. St. Paul?"

"On me. Just listen." St. Paul had been seated in his favorite attitude of careless indolence in a very low chair, so low that his long legs seemed as if they stretched half way across the room. His position, joined with an expression of self-satisfied lawlessness in his face, might have whimsically suggested a sort of resemblance to Milton's arch fiend "stretched out huge at length," in one of his less malign humors. He now jumped up and stood on the hearth-rug, with his back to the fireplace, his slightly stooping shoulders only seeming to make him look taller than otherwise, because they might set people wondering as to the height he would have reached if he had only stood erect and made the most of his inches. His blue eyes had quite a sparkle of excited interest in them, and his prematurely bald forehead looked oddly infantine over these eyes and that keen, fearless mouth.

"Look here, Miss Grey, it's all in your hands. You know both these fellows, don't you?"

"Both what fellows?"

"These fellows who want to get in for Keeton. You know them both. Now which of them do you want to win?"

"What can it matter which way my wishes go—if they went any way?"

"How like a woman! How very like a woman!" and he laughed.

"What is like a woman? I know when a man says anything is like a woman, he means to say that it is ridiculous."

"Well, that's true enough; that is about what we do mean in most cases. What I meant in this case was only that you would not answer my question. I put a plain direct question, to which you must have some answer to give, and you only asked me a question in return which had nothing to do with mine."

"Perhaps I have no answer to give. I may have the answer in my own mind, and yet not have it to give to any one else."

"Oh, but you may really give it to me! In strictest confidence I assure you; no living soul shall ever know from me. Come, Miss Grey, let me know the truth. It can't possibly do you any harm—or anybody harm for that matter, except the wrong man for I take it for granted that the man you don't favor must be the wrong man."

"But I don't know that I ought to have anything to do with such a matter——"

"Never mind these scruples; it's nothing; there's to be no treason in the business, nor any unfair play. It's only this; I couldn't get in for the borough myself, even if I tried my best, but I can send in the one of the two whom I prefer—or, in this case, whom you prefer. I can do this as certainly as anything in this uncertain world can be certain."

"But how could that be?"

"That it would not suit me to tell you just at present. I know a safe way, that's all. In the teeth of the ballot I can promise you that. Now, Miss Grey, who is to have the seat?"

"Are you really serious in this, Mr. St. Paul?"

"As serious as I ever was in my life about anything—a good deal more serious, I dare say, than I often was about graver things and more important men. Now then, Miss Grey, which of these two fellows is to sit for Keeton?"

"But why do you make this offer to me?" she asked, with some hesitation. "What have I to do with it?" There was something alarming to her in his odd proposition, about which he was evidently quite serious now.

"Why do I make the offer to you? Well, because I should like to please you, because you are a sort of woman I like—a regular good girl, I think, without any nonsense or affectation about you. Now that's the whole reason why I offer this to you. I don't care much myself either way, except to annoy my brother, and that can be done in fifty other ways without half the trouble to me. I was inclined to draw out of the whole affair, until I remembered that you knew both the fellows, and I thought you might have a wish for one of them to go in in preference to the other—they can't both go in, you see—and so I made up my mind to give you the chance of saying which it should be. Now then, Miss Grey, name your man."

He put his hands into his pockets, and coolly waited for an answer. He had not the appearance of being in the least amused at her perplexity. He took the whole affair in a calm, matter-of-fact way, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Minola was perplexed. She did not see what right he could have to control the coming contest in any way, and still less, what right she could have to influence him in doing so. The dilemma was one in which no previous experience could well guide her. She much wished she had Mr. Money at hand to give her a word of counsel.

"Come, Miss Grey, make up your mind—or rather tell me what you have already made up your mind to, for I am sure you have not been waiting until now to form an opinion. Which of these two men do you want to see in Parliament?"

There did not seem any particular reason why Minola or any girl might not say in plain words which of two candidates she would rather see successful.

Mr. St. Paul appeared to understand her difficulty, for he said in an encouraging way—

"After all, you know, if you had women's rights and all that sort of thing, you would have to give your vote for one or other of these fellows, and I dare say you would be expected to take the stump for your favorite candidate. So there really can't be any very serious objection to your telling me in confidence which of the two you want to win."

Minola could not see how there could be any objection on any moral principle she could think of just then—being in truth a little confused and puzzled—to her giving a voice to the wish she had formed about the election.

"It's not the speaking out of my wish that gives me any doubt," she said; "it is the condition under which you want me to speak. I seem to be doing something that I have no right to do—that is, Mr. St. Paul, if you are serious."

"I remember reading, long ago," he said, "some Arabian Nights' story, or something of the kind, about a king, I think it was, who was brought at night to some mysterious place and told to cut a rope there, and that something or other would happen, he did not know what or when. The thing seemed very simple, and yet he didn't quite like to do it without knowing why, and how, and all about it. It strikes me that you seem to be in the same sort of fix."

"So I am; just the same. Why can't you tell me what you are going to do?"

"I like that! That is my secret for the present."

"And your king—the king in your story—did he cut the rope at last?"

"I am afraid I have forgotten that; but I have no doubt he did, for he was a reasonable sort of creature, being a man, and I know that everything came right with him in the end."

"Very well; I accept the omen of your king, and I too will cut the rope without asking why. Of course I wish that Mr. Heron should be elected. He is a Liberal in politics. Why do you laugh when I say that, Mr. St. Paul?"

"Well, I didn't know that you cared much for that sort of thing, and women are generally supposed to be reactionaries all the world over, are they not? Well, anyhow, that's one reason, his being a Liberal. What next?"

"I don't know that any next is wanting. But of course I think Mr. Heron is a much cleverer man, and is likely to be much better able to get on in the House of Commons; and then he has his complaint to make against the government——"

"Yes; and then?"

"Then he is very much liked by people whom I like—and I like him very much myself." Minola spoke out with perfect frankness, believing that that was the best thing she could do, and not showing the least sign of embarrassment.

Mr. St. Paul laughed.

"You don't like the other fellow so well?" he said.

"I am sure he is a very good man——"

"That's enough; you need not say another word. We all can tell what a critic means when he speaks of some actor as a careful and painstaking performer. It's just the same when a woman says a man is very good. Then you pronounce for Heron?"

"I pronounce for Mr. Heron decidedly, if you call saying what I should like to happen pronouncing for any one."

"In this case it is of more effect than many other pronunciamentos. You have elected Heron, Miss Grey, if I am not much more out in my calculations than I have been this some time. All right, I am satisfied. If you have money to throw away, just back what's-his-name?—Sheppard—heavily, and you are sure to get rid of it."

"And you won't tell me what all this means?"

"Not I indeed: not likely. Good day, Miss Grey. You have elected your friend Heron, I can tell you. Odd, isn't it, that he should come to be elected after all by me?"

He bade her good day again, and strode and shambled out of the room and down stairs, leaving Minola much perplexed, and not quite pleased, and yet full of a secret wonder and pride at the possibility of her having helped to do Mr. Heron a service.

"I wonder what he would say if he knew of it?" she asked herself, and she could hardly think that he would be greatly delighted with the promise of such influence.

CHAPTER XX.

LOVE AND ELECTIONEERING.

The soul of Keeton, as a local orator expressed it, was stirred to its depths by the events which succeeded. The three estates of the town, whereof we have already spoken, were alike concerned in the election. Had it never occurred, there would have been enough in the death of Mrs. Saulsbury and the rearrangement of Mr. Grey's property to keep conversation up among the middle grade of Keeton folks. But business like that would not interest the park, and of course it had no interest for the working class of the town. The election, on the contrary, was of equal concern to park, semi-detached villa, and cottage, or even garret. A contest in Keeton was an absolute novelty, so far as the memory of living man could go back.

It may perhaps be said that the opinion of the class who alone concerned themselves about her affairs had been, on the whole, decidedly unfavorable to Minola. She had gone as a sort of rebel against legitimate authority out of Keeton, and had flung herself into the giddy vortex of London life. No one well knew what had become of her; and that with Keeton folks was another way of saying that she must have rushed upon destruction. Some persons held that she must have gone upon the stage. This idea became almost a certainty when a Keeton man, being in London on business, brought back with him from town a play-bill announcing a new opera bouffe in which one of the minor performers was named "Miss Mattie Grey." If the good Keeton man had only looked in a few other play-bills, he would have no doubt found Greys in abundance—Matties, Minnies, Nellies, and such like, Grey being rather a favorite name with young ladies in the profession. But he made no such investigation, and it was at once assumed that Mattie Grey was Minola Grey in disguise—a disguise as subtle as that of the famous knight, Sir Tristam, who, when he wanted to conceal his identity from all observers and place himself beyond all possibility of detection, called himself Sir Tramtrist.

When, however, it was found that Minola was to have her father's property after all, a certain change took place in the opinion of most persons who concerned themselves about the matter. It was assumed generally that Mr. Grey was far too good and Christian a man to have left his property to a girl who could be capable of acting in an opera bouffe. Then, when Miss Grey in person came to the town in the company of so distinguished a man as Mr. Money, even gossip started repentant at the sound itself had made, and began to deny that it had ever made any sound at all. Mr. Money was a sort of hero among the middle class everywhere. He was known to have fought his way up in life, and to be now very rich; and when Miss Grey came into the town in the company of Mr. Money and his daughter, the report went about forthwith that Minola Grey had got into the very best society in London, and that she was going to marry the eldest son of Mr. Money, and to be presented at court.

Mr. Money had taken a couple of floors of the best hotel to begin with. He had brought his carriage with him—a carriage in which he was hardly ever known to take a seat when in town. He had brought a sort of retinue of servants. He went deliberately about making what Mr. St. Paul would have called "a splurge." Mr. Money knew his Pappenheimers. He knew that he was well known to have sprung from nothing, but he also knew that the middle and lower classes of Keeton would have given him little thanks if he had tried to please them by exhibiting there a modesty becoming of his modest origin. He knew well enough that the more he put on display the more they would think of him and of his clients. Therefore he put on display like a garment—a garment to which he was little used, and in which he took no manner of delight. There was generally a little group of persons round the hotel doors at all hours of the day waiting to see Mr. Money and his friends go out or come in. At first Minola positively declined to go out at all, except at night; and the recent death of her father's widow gave her a fair excuse for remaining quietly indoors. Lucy delighted in the whole affair, and often declared that she felt as if she had been turned into a princess. When Mr. Heron came down he too seemed rather to enjoy it. At least he took it all as a matter of course. The experiences of colonial days, when the ruler of a colony, however small it may be, is a person of majestic proportions in his own sphere, enabled him to take Mr. Money's pomp quite seriously.

Meanwhile Mr. Augustus Sheppard had got his committee-rooms and his displays of various kinds, and was understood to be working hard. The election contest, so long looked for, had taken every one a little by surprise when it showed itself so near. It was natural that Mr. Sheppard and his friends should feel confident of the result. The retiring representative was now an old man. He had faithfully served out his time; he had always voted as his patrons wished him to do; he had never made a speech in the House of Commons; he had never, indeed, risen to his feet there at all, except once or twice to present a petition. The delights of a Parliamentary career were, therefore, this long time beginning to pall upon him. He had been notoriously anxious to get out of Parliament. He had been sent into the House of Commons by the late duke to keep the seat warm until the present duke should come of age. But the present duke succeeded to the peerage before he came of age, and therefore never had a chance of sitting in the House of Commons. The man in possession was allowed to remain there through years and years, until the present duke could be induced to return from abroad and take some interest in the political and other affairs of Keeton. His own son was yet too young for Parliament, and as the sitting member found himself getting too old and begged for release, there was nothing better to do than to get some safe and docile person to take on him the representation of the borough for some time to come. Those who knew Keeton could recommend no one more fitting in every desirable way than Mr. Augustus Sheppard.

The time was when Mr. Sheppard would only have had to present the orders of the reigning duke to the constituency of Keeton and to take his seat in the House of Commons accordingly as if by virtue of a sovereign patent in ancient days. But times had changed even in sleepy Keeton. The younger generation had almost forgotten their dukes, it was so long since a chief of the house had been among them. Even the women had grown comparatively indifferent to the influence of the name seeing that it had so long been only a name for them. There had been for many years no duchesses and their lady daughters to meet at flower-shows and charitable bazaars, by the delight of whose face, and the sound of whose feet, and the wind of whose tresses, as the poet has it, they could be made to feel happy and exalted. There once were brighter days when the coming and going of the ladies at the castle gave the women of Keeton a perpetual subject of talk, of thought, of hope, and of quarrel. Some of the readers of this story may perhaps have spent a little time in small towns on the banks of foreign—say of American—rivers which have a habit of freezing up as winter comes, and becoming useless for navigation; in fact being converted from rivers into great frozen roads, until spring unlocks the flowers and the streams again. Such travellers must have noticed what an unfailing topic of conversation such a river supplies to those who dwell on its banks. How soon will it freeze this season? On what precise day was it closed to navigation last year—the year before—the year before that? In what year did it freeze soonest? Do you remember that particular year when it froze so very soon, or did not freeze for such an unprecedented length of time? That was the same year that—no, not that year; it was the other year, don't you remember? Then follow contradictions and disputes, and the elders always remember the river having been regularly in the habit of performing some feat which now it never cares to repeat. The time of the frost melting and the river becoming really a river again is a matter just as fruitful of discussion. The stranger is often tempted to wonder what the people of that place would have to talk about at all if suddenly the river were to give up its trick of freezing, and were to remain always as fluent as our own monotonous Thames. There seems to him some reason to fear that the tongues of the people would become frozen as the river ceased to freeze.

Like the freezing and the melting of their river to those who lived on its bank was the annual visit of the ladies of the ducal family to the womankind of Keeton in Keeton's brighter days. Girls were growing up there now who had never seen a duchess. The arrival, the length of stay, the probable time of departure, the appearances in public whether more or less frequent than this time last year, the dresses worn by the gracious ladies, the persons spoken to by them, the persons only bowed to, the unhappy creatures who got neither speech nor salutation—it is a fact that there was a generation of women growing up in Keeton with whom these and such questions had never formed any part of the interest of their lives. They could not be expected to take much interest all at once, and as it were by instinct, in the political cause of the ducal family.