Front matter (continued 5)

'Diable!' he said. 'I shall be too late for anything. I have some power over men, but I am not a fire-engine—'

He made the descent rather more cautiously, though not much less rapidly, than he had done the rest of the journey, and pushed his way through the little wood to within a hundred yards or so of the mill. Then he stopped, peering forward to ascertain the exact state of things before he went on.

The mill was not one of those square, many-windowed blocks which remind one of children's toy-houses, but a group of irregular buildings of all sorts and sizes, built of grey stone and roofed with slate. There was a paved yard surrounded by outhouses, some mere sheds of wood and thatch, and it was round the outhouse nearest to the mill itself that the men were crowding. There was plenty of light now for Litvinoff to discern every detail of the scene before him, for two sheds were on fire and burning merrily in the frosty air. The door of a certain room where he remembered to have seen quantities of cotton waste and inflammable rubbish, and which opened directly on to the yard, had been battered in by the men, and, the hinges having given way, hung crookedly by its strained, bent, but still strong, lock. Some of the men were hurrying to and fro between this room and the outbuilding, carrying armfuls of wood and straw, and these men were for the most part silent. The shouting, of which there was a good deal, was done by those who were doing nothing else.

Count Litvinoff had not been the only one to hear that first yell, and to interpret it as the note of something unusual, for dark heads were moving along the brow of the hill on the other side, and dark figures were hurrying down the stone steps.

The situation was obvious, and it was obvious too that no time was to be lost, for the crowd was becoming wilder and wilder, drunk with the strong wine of excitement as well as with the more habitual beer. Rioting, like everything else, grows by what it feeds on, and the higher the flames went the higher rose the cries that accompanied them. There is always something exciting about a fire—in the breaking loose of the tremendous force which we keep mostly as our servant. The fire was still small enough to be quenched if its originators so chose, but they saw well enough that soon it would be beyond their control, and would be their master in the place where it had been their slave. And they, too, had broken from their old place to-night. They were no longer the humble dependants of a rich man. Their hand was against him, and against all his class, and the new sense of independent, self-chosen action was intoxicating them all, and had driven far from them all thought of forbearance or of fear. For there was danger to the men themselves in this hell they were making. The out-buildings and the mill formed a square, and, once kindled, all would burn rapidly; and, from the slight eminence where he stood, the onlooker, cool and free from the madness that surged in the brain of the actors, could see plainly that the incendiaries ran a very fair chance of being caught in their own trap, and of perishing like rats in a barn. The big iron gates were closed immovably, and the only exit was by a narrow door. If once a panic began, and the men lost their heads in trying to pass this door, there might be a tragedy more terrible than Litvinoff cared to contemplate. He knew that if once the fire began in the mill itself there would be no chance of saving it, or anything else, and he could see that the men were beginning to drag burning fragments from the out-buildings, and he knew that they would be dragged to that room with the broken-in door. He paused no longer. That door was the point d'appui of the defence, and for that door he made.

He came rapidly down the hill and along the path that led to the little gate by which alone entrance to the yard could be effected. In the confusion of hurrying figures no one noticed the one figure more which, in a few strides, crossed the yard and planted itself just inside that broken door. Count Litvinoff glanced behind him and by the lurid glare of the burning timber opposite he could see the pile of straw and faggots in the room ready for the horrible bonfire. Just inside the lintel of the door something lay on the floor, gleaming redly in the firelight. He picked it up; it was a light, bright, long-handled steel hatchet.

'Aha,' he said; 'this is a gift from the gods!'

As he faced the yard, a great noise of mingled cheers and shouts went up from the crowd. It was not because they had seen their solitary opponent, but because the attack on what they thought the undefended mill was about to begin in earnest. All the active members of the riot were making for the door, headed by half-a-dozen stalwart fellows dragging blazing timbers.

'Stop!' shouted Litvinoff, in a voice that rang above the confused shouting of the crowd like a trumpet call.

And stop they did—and for quite twenty seconds held their tongues, to boot. Then arose a storm of indignation and derision when they saw that only one man stood in the way. They could not see who he was, and they cared little. The leaders made a forward movement, when—

'Stop!' he cried again, and his tones rose clear above the yells of the rioters, and were heard by timorous listeners on the hillside. 'Stop, and clear out of this as quick as you can get! Get to your homes, you fools!'

'Clear out yourself,' said a ringleader, 'or we'll clear you out!' But the forward movement had stopped. A parley had begun, and Litvinoff always felt that a chance of speaking meant for him a chance of winning.

'Put out that fire, and get back to your homes!' he cried. 'I've come down here to save you from penal servitude, and I mean to do it. Not a man of you gets inside this door!'

By this time all the crowd had come up, and formed a semicircle in front of him, about fifteen yards off. They could see his face better than he could see theirs, for the light of the flames behind them fell full upon him. He was deadly pale, but he looked deadly determined too. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and a gleam still more dangerous from the bright blade of the axe which he had swung up on to his shoulder. Standing on the raised step of the door he looked tall and strong and bold.

Already the effect of this lion in the path made itself felt, for a faint cheer went up from the outside edge of the crowd, and a voice cried,—

'He's right. Let un be, lads—let un be, and go yer ways home.'

'All those of you who've got any sense left turn round and put out that fire. The work you've done to-night already is worth ten years in prison.'

'Then let's finish our work, lads, and earn our wages! Ten years' good feedin's better nor a month's clemmin',' shouted a burly young fellow of some six feet.

'Well said, Isaac Potts!' cried more than one. 'Dang his cheek! Heave him out of it!'

And some half-dozen rushed forward to suit the action to the word, foremost among them Isaac Potts. In the position Litvinoff had taken up, it was impossible for more than one man to attack him at a time. As the young mill hand, armed with a piece of wood still smouldering redly, sprang to lead the attack, a woman's voice—his sweetheart's—sounded shrilly from behind the crowd,—

'Keep back, Isaac—keep back; he'll brain thee for sure!'

The warning was unheeded, or, if the young man heard it, it only urged him on. He stopped an instant, hurled the wood at Litvinoff's head, and sprang forward to follow up his missile. The aim was not a good one. The brand only hit the door lintel, struck out a shower of sparks, and fell across the step. It was an unlucky miss for Isaac. Litvinoff planted one foot firmly, and gave his axe a swing. It came down crashing through collar-bone and shoulder blade, and almost severing the arm from the body. Isaac staggered back upon the men behind him, covering them with blood as he fell. There was a silence of a moment, which seemed long. The crowd drew a deep breath.

All the devil in Litvinoff's nature was roused now.

'Come on, you madmen!' he cried, as he recovered himself and brought his axe to the shoulder again. 'Come on! Get into this room now if you can!'

But the general ambition to get into that room was a little damped somehow, and the few who had been close on Isaac's heels fell back, and left him alone, all but one man, who stood glaring into Litvinoff's eyes. He held a heavy iron bar in his hand.

'Back you go, or down you go!' shouted Litvinoff, making a step towards him, and giving the axe a swing in the air.

The man did not wait for the blow. He retreated, and joined the crowd just as the girl who had shrieked that warning tore her way through to the place where her lover was lying, and bent over him.

Litvinoff brought his weapon to his side. Then he said quietly,—

'I told you none of you should get into this room, and none of you shall, by God! if I have to treat twenty of you to the same fare as this poor fellow. If you're sane men, pick him up and see to him, and perhaps nothing worse may come to you after all. Remember that every man who does not help to put that fire out breaks the law. For Heaven's sake be reasonable men. There are some here who know me. Do you think I care for this cursed mill? I came down here to save you. Help me to do it.'

The moderate party was a good deal stronger by this time; the axe had been a first-rate argument.

'Well done, sir!' 'Quite right, sir!' 'Hear, hear!' went up from the crowd, and two or three men came forward. Litvinoff resumed his defensive attitude, but they were not for attack. They busied themselves with their wounded friend.

'Is John Hatfield there?' called Litvinoff, seeing that he had prevailed. 'I want him. Hatfield, can't you manage to get a dozen of your friends to put out that fire? The best thing you can do is to knock down the sheds on each side, and then it will burn itself out and do no harm.'

'We will, sir,' Hatfield answered. 'You're right; this has been a mad night's work.'

All danger of further riot was at an end. The men who had been foremost in the work of destruction had made off as quickly as possible, and those who were left worked zealously under Hatfield's orders. The wounded man was carried off on a shutter to the nearest cottage. The fire was effectually put out with water from the reservoir. The men loafed off in twos and threes, and darkness and quiet settled down once more on Thornsett. Litvinoff and Hatfield remained till the last lingerer had left. Then Hatfield said,—

'Ah suppose this means the 'sizes for a goodish few o' us.'

'I hope not,' Litvinoff answered; 'I'll do my best for you—that is, I shall not know who was here to-night. But I advise you to clear out as early as you can to-morrow, and, if your friends who were in this business are wise, they'll do the same. Where have they taken that fellow I knocked over? I'd better go and see after him.'

They turned their back on the mill, and climbed the hill to the cottage, where the doctor who had been sent for was already busy with his patient.

'Is he going to live?' Litvinoff asked sharply.

'I think so,' was the answer; 'the greatest danger is loss of blood. He has been bleeding like a bull.'

'Oh, you must pull him through it, doctor,' said the Count. He slipped some gold into the hand of the woman who owned the cottage. 'Let him have everything the doctor orders, and you'll do all you can, I know. I'll be down to-morrow.'

He looked towards the girl who was crouching at the head of the bed as though he would have spoken to her, but seemed to think better of it, and rejoined Hatfield outside.

'I think he'll be all right,' he said, holding his hand out. 'Good-bye, Hatfield; don't forget what I said. Drop me a line to the Post Office, Charing Cross, London, to say where you are; and do let me beg of you, if it's only for your wife's sake, not to get mixed up in any more of this sort of thing. It must be on a much bigger scale before it'll be successful, my boy,' he ended, resuming his most frivolous manner, and turning away.

'I think I deserve a cigar,' he said to himself, as he started on the long return walk, by the road this time. And he lighted one accordingly.

About a quarter of a mile from Thornsett he met Roland Ferrier, who was walking quickly along, Gates by his side.

'Where have you come from?' the former asked abruptly. 'Here's Gates tells me the men are burning the mill, and I don't know what beside.'

'Oh, no, no,' the Count answered lightly; 'there's been a little orating and so forth, in which I have borne a distinguished part, but it's all over now. They wound up with a hymn or two, and went home to their wives. Come along back. I'll tell you all about it when we get in,' and, catching an arm of each, he wheeled them round and marched them back to Thornsett Edge.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AFTER THE FIRE.

EFORE daybreak next morning John Hatfield had taken Count Litvinoff's advice, and he and several others who had borne an active part in the night's work had shaken the dust of Thornsett off their feet and taken their departure in various directions. Had they not been quite so precipitate their leave-taking might have been more dignified and less secret, for Litvinoff's confidence in his own powers of diplomacy had been more than justified. When, somewhat to his chagrin, his eloquence failed to reconcile Roland Ferrier to the idea of taking no legal steps to punish the intending incendiaries—for, in spite of the way in which the Count had watered the story down, Roland had managed to get a pretty accurate idea of the truth—he made a hasty journey over to Aspinshaw. He found Miss Stanley in a state of great excitement about the events of the night before, of which she had heard a very much embroidered and highly-coloured version.

'Oh, Count Litvinoff,' she said, coming forward to meet him, 'I am so glad you have come. I have just sent two of the servants down to Thornsett to find out who was hurt. Mr Clarke, of Thorpe, has just been here, and told us that you saved so many lives last night.'

'Saved so many lives last night!' repeated Litvinoff. 'They must have been the lives of rats and mice, then.' And he gave her a plain and unvarnished account of the whole story, from the interview of the deputation with Roland to his own visit to the man he had cut down. He had the very rare faculty of telling the exact truth in a particularly exciting way—any adventure in which he had been personally engaged he always told from some point of view not his own—so that the hearer saw him playing his part in the scene rather than heard the chief adventurer recounting his adventures.

As he skilfully put before her the picture of the one man facing the infuriated crowd, he could see her eyes sparkle with sympathy, and could read interest and admiration in her face.

'And so you were not hurt, after all?' she said. 'I am so glad. But what of the men? Will they be punished? They've got themselves into trouble, I'm afraid, poor fellows.'

'Ah!' he answered, meeting her questioning glance with an earnest expression on his serious face. 'It was about them I came to speak to you. Our friend Ferrier is determined, not unnaturally perhaps, to resent and to punish last night's madness. I've done my utmost to reason him out of his resolve to be avenged on these poor fools, but he's not in a humour to listen to reason. It will need something stronger than that to induce him to let the men escape the natural consequences of their folly.'

'Oh, but Hatfield—surely he'd not punish him?'

'Well, I advised Hatfield to make himself scarce, and I hope he's done it. It's more on behalf of the other men that I'm here.'

'Why, what can I do in the matter?'

'Your word will have great weight with young Ferrier. I want you to go to him and ask him to let the affair rest just where it is,' he said bluntly.

Clare coloured painfully. 'I go to Mr Ferrier?' she repeated. 'Count Litvinoff, you must know that that is quite impossible.'

'I know that it is difficult, Miss Stanley, but I also know that it is not impossible.'

'It is out of the question for me—you ought to know,' she hesitated, 'to ask a favour of him.'

'It would be an unpleasant thing for you to do, and two months ago I would rather have cut my tongue out than have asked you. But I know now—I have had it from your own lips—that you are a convert to our great faith.'

She made a movement as though she would have spoken, but he went on hurriedly:

'You may remember that what impressed you most in my fellow-countryman Petrovitch's address was the self-abnegation which ran all through it. My countryman was right. Self-abnegation is the note of the Revolution! On the first day of this new year you honoured me by asking me what good you could do. I tell you now. You can save many of these men from prison, and their wives from harder fare than the prison's, by humbling your pride and asking what will not be refused. Forgive me if I speak plainly, but it is not for my own sake I would ask you to do anything now. It is for these men, and for the sake of the cause.'

There were a few moments of painful silence. Miss Stanley frowned at the hearthrug, and Count Litvinoff sat looking at her with the expression of one who has asked a question to which he knows there can be but one answer. The answer came.

'Very well,' she said, 'I will do what you wish, for the sake of these men,' she added, becoming unnecessarily explanatory.

'I knew you would,' he said.

'But,' she went on hurriedly, 'there is one other thing I can do. I can help to make this time a little less hard to them. Will you—'

He interrupted her.

'No, no, no; my part is played. Miss Stanley must deal with that other matter by herself.'

Two hours later Clare Stanley called at Thornsett Edge, and, after a brief conversation with Roland, passed on to the village, having done the work she had set herself to do. It was, perhaps, the most painful act of her whole life. But she had performed it successfully, and so it came about that none of the men were punished, and that poor Isaac, who was a pensioner on Miss Stanley for a good many months, was the only one to suffer from that wild night's work.

Clare felt a sense of elation when the disagreeable task was over. She seemed herself to be making progress; and, though that day's enterprise had been suggested by Litvinoff, she knew that it would never have been undertaken if she had not been present when the Cleon met to discuss Socialism.

She had now an opportunity of using a little of her newly-acquired wealth, and she availed herself of it. More than one family in the village owed its salvation to her timely help, and when a week later she left for London she left behind her a sum of money in the hands of Mr Gates, to be used for the ex-mill hands—and a very grateful remembrance of her pretty, gracious, kindly ways, and of her substantial favours, too, in the hearts of these same hands and their families.

So Mrs Stanley went to Yorkshire, and Clare to London, and Aspinshaw was left desolate. Thornsett Edge was advertised as 'To let,' and Roland and his aunt took up quiet housekeeping in Chelsea. Litvinoff, by way of practising the economy which was growing more and more necessary every day, took rooms in Maida Vale. The mill hands dispersed far and wide, and the mill, the heart of Thornsett, having ceased to beat, the whole place seemed to be dead, and, presently, to decay. No one would live in the village. It was too far from any other work, and the place took upon itself a haunted, ghostly air—as if forms in white might be expected to walk its deserted streets at midnight, or to show themselves through the broken, cobwebby panes of the windows which used to be so trim and bright and clean. It was a ghastly change for the houses that, poor as they were, had been, after all, homes to so many people for so many years.

When Alice Hatfield thought of her old home, she never thought of it but as she had last seen it—neat and cheerful with the plants in pots on the long window-ledge, and all the familiar furniture and household effects in their old places. It was pain to think of it even like that. It would have been agony to her could she have seen it naked and bare, with its well-known rooms cold and empty, its hearths grey and fireless.

And she thought of her home a good deal during the weeks when she lay ill in Mrs Toomey's upper room; for the illness that had come upon her on that Sunday when Mr Toomey had had tea with Petrovitch had been a longer and more serious affair than any one had fancied it would be. When she had first known that another life was bound up in her own, the knowledge had been almost maddening; now, the terror, the misery, and the fatigue which she had undergone when first she knew it, had themselves put an end to what had caused them, and Alice was free from the fear of the responsibility which had seemed so terrible to her. But she was not glad. She was amazed at the contradiction in her own heart, but as she lay thinking of all the past—of what she thought was her own wrong-doing, and of the home she had left—it seemed to her that what was lost to her was the only thing that could have reconciled her to her life, with all its bitter memories. If only Litvinoff's child had lain on her arm—if she could have lived in the hope of seeing it smile into her eyes—it seemed to her that she would not have wanted to die so much. And with this inexplicable weakness Mrs Toomey, strange to say, seemed to sympathise.

'There's no understanding women,' as Toomey was wont to remark.

All the expenses of Alice's illness were borne by Petrovitch, who bade Mrs Toomey spare no expense in making 'Mrs Litvinoff' as comfortable as might be. When at last Alice began to grow better he came to see her very often, brought her books and flowers, and was as tenderly thoughtful of her, as anxious to gratify her every possible wish, as a brother could have been.

'You are too good to me,' she said one day, looking at him with wet eyes as he stood by her sofa and put into her hand some delicate snowdrops. 'I do not deserve to have people so kind to me. Why is it?'

'I told you,' he answered gravely. 'I was once your husband's dearest friend, and I have a right to do all for you that I can. How did you like the book I sent you?'

Alice used to look forward to his coming. He always cheered her. He never spoke of her or of himself, but always of some matter impersonal and interesting. The books he lent her were the books that lead to talking; and as she grew stronger in body her mind strengthened too, and for the first time she tasted the delight of following and understanding the larger questions of life. Every one, even her lover, had always treated her somewhat as a child, and Petrovitch was the first person who ever seemed to think it worth while to explain things to her. She had not had the education which makes clear thinking easy; but she was young, and had still youth's faculty for learning quickly. Her growing interest in outside matters tended—as Petrovitch had meant it to do—to divert her mind from her own troubles; and when at last she was able to take up the easier and lighter work he had found for her, she was able to look at life

'With larger, other eyes.'

CHAPTER XXV.

AT MARLBOROUGH VILLA.

DEAR Clare, let me implore you to shut that book. You are becoming quite too dreadfully blue. I don't believe you take any interest in any of the things you used to like—even me,' ended Cora Quaid, with a pout. The two girls were sitting very snugly in Miss Quaid's special sanctum, where were enshrined her girlish treasures, her books, and the accessories of the art in which she hoped some day to rival Rosa Bonheur. Having had a picture admitted to the Academy the season before, she was more hopeful and consequently more industrious than ever. But on this afternoon she had not been painting. She had been sitting looking at her friend and thinking what a pretty picture she made with her sweet serious face and sombre crape draperies; but even the contemplation of one's prettiest friend will become fatiguing at last, when talking is one's very greatest pleasure. So Cora broke silence with the remark we have reported, and the silence she broke had been a very long one.

'You silly child,' Clare answered, laughing, and tossing her book on to the sofa, 'it isn't that at all. It is that I take an interest in all sorts of other things besides.'

'Mamma says,' remarked Miss Quaid, picking up the little red-covered pamphlet and looking at it with disfavour, 'that this book is not fit for any one to read.'

'I'm sorry Mrs Quaid doesn't like it,' Clare answered, 'because I like it so much. But perhaps I haven't studied it enough. I suppose your mamma has gone into it thoroughly.'

'Oh no, she wouldn't read it for the world.'

Clare felt Mrs Quaid's criticism to be less crushing than it might have been.

'One would have thought,' Cora went on, 'that "God and the State" would have been something very religious—something like Mr Gladstone, you know. A man oughtn't to call his book by a title that has nothing to say to the book itself. It's so misleading. Clare, I rather wonder Count Litvinoff should lend you such dreadful books.'

'I'm afraid Bakounin's not much like Mr Gladstone, dear, and I don't think I should care much about him if he were; but the title certainly has a great deal to do with the book. However, Bakounin has not converted me to his views. He is clever and trenchant, but—'

'I had done with that subject, my dear,' answered Miss Quaid, leaning over the arm of her easy-chair to look saucily into her friend's eyes, 'and had got to something much more interesting—the dashing Count, to wit.'

'He would be very much flattered to know that he inspires you with so much interest.'

'It is not I who am interested in him.'

'Who is interested in him?'

'Oh, neither of us—of course,' Cora answered; 'it is mamma and he who mutually attract each other. It is mamma he comes to see regularly three times a week. It is mamma who buries herself in his books and pamphlets. Seriously, Clare—how many of his books do you get through in a day?'

'I have read two of his books, and you have read one—"The Prophetic Vision," and you know how much we both liked that. As for the other—I suppose I'm not advanced enough, but it doesn't seem to me to be anything like so clearly written, nor so forcible. It seems wonderful that the same man should have written both.'

'Perhaps it was written since he has been in exile, and he was wretched and out of sorts. By the way, he doesn't seem wretched now. Now, Clare,' coming and sitting down on the rug at the other's feet and leaning her arms on the black dress, and turning her bright mignonne face upward, 'I think it is only due to our ancient friendship—which, you remember, was founded on the noble principle, halves and no secrets, that you should confide in me. What are you going to do with him? How are you going to serve him?'

'Well, dear, would it be best to grill him or to serve him on toast with caviare? How would it look on the menu? Nihiliste à la Révolution.'

'Count Litvinoff à la married man would be more humane, perhaps. I wonder how it feels to be adored by a lover who has passionate eyes and a long blond moustache, who has had no end of adventures, has as many lives as a cat, and seems to be rolling in gold, judging by the bouquets he brings to—mamma.'

'If you are very anxious to know,' said Clare, smiling and smoothing the rough head at her knee, 'you had better try to attract him; I don't fancy you would find it difficult.'

'You don't seem to have found it so. Really and truly, Clare; do you mean to be a countess? Shall you refuse him?'

'He has never asked me but one thing, and that I did not refuse.'

'What a teasing girl you are! Does that mean anything or nothing?'

'Whichever you like, sweetheart.'

'Well, he deserves a better fate than to be allowed to singe his wings at the flame of your prettiness. You always were a flirt, Clare; and I am afraid you have not improved.'

'I don't think I have ever flirted,' Clare answered, growing suddenly grave; 'but I know I have been foolish enough to wish people to like me and to be interested in me. But you don't know how contemptible all that sort of thing seems to me now. Fancy caring about the opinion of people when you don't care about the people themselves.'

'Well, any one can see he's over head and ears in love with you—you nice, pretty little woman.'

'I hope not,' Clare answered; 'for I am not in the least in love with him.'

'Then don't you think it's a little too bad of you to encourage him as you do—reading his books and all that?'

'I don't know what "all that" may be, but as for the books he lends me, they don't borrow their interest from him. Every book I read seems to draw up a curtain and let new light into my mind. You can't imagine how different everything is to me since I began to read and to try to think. All that I have learned lately is like a new religion to me.' All the flippancy was gone from her voice, and in her eyes shone a new light. 'And I read all I can because I want to understand well enough to teach other people what I feel to be true. And oh, Cora! I do so want to do something to help the poor and show them their position.'

'Yes; I quite agree with you that they ought to know their position and keep in it. The Catechism tells us that, you know. I should think you might employ half a dozen curates. Papa says there are lots out of work.'

'I don't think curates are quite what are wanted. There are curates enough and to spare. Besides,

"The millions suffer still and grieve, And what can helpers heal, With old world cures they half believe For woes they wholly feel?"'

'That sounds dreadful,' said Cora.

'Why, you used to be so fond of it!'

'Yes; but I didn't think it meant anything so wicked as that; and, what's more, I don't believe it does.'

'I haven't changed the words, Cora. I did not say they meant anything more than they have always meant. But, you see, too, don't you, what a ghastly mockery it is to send religious teaching to people who never had a good dinner in their lives? What a frightful system it is that allows all these horrors!'

'But, my dearest Clare, even if it is horrible, I don't see what you can do to alter it. Why, papa was saying only the other night that the social order was never so strong as now.'

'I'm in the humour for quoting, and I must keep on, I see,' said Clare, with a smile. 'Don't you remember?—

"Strong was its arm, each thew and bone Seemed puissant and alive; But, ah! its heart, its heart was stone, And so it could not thrive."'

'Clare,' said the other affectionately, putting her arms round her friend's waist, 'you really oughtn't to take up these ideas. Do you know mamma says it's not natural for girls of our age to take such dismal views of things? You'll make yourself quite miserable if you go on with these books.'

'I seem to have nothing but Matthew Arnold in my head this afternoon,—

"But now the old is out of date, The new is not yet born; And who can be alone elate, While the world lies forlorn?"'

'I don't see how anyone can be anything else but miserable at the thought of all the wretchedness there is in the world. The only thing to keep one from despairing over it would be to do something, even if it were ever so little, to help forward a better time. I dare say your father is right, and this present state is very strong, and perhaps none of us' (with whom was she classing herself?) 'will live to see what we are longing for! It would be rather nice,' she went on meditatively, 'to have that other verse on one's grave,—

"The day I lived in was not mine, Man gets no second day; In dreams I saw the future shine, But, ah! I could not stay."'

'This is too much,' cried Cora, jumping up. 'When it comes to choosing your own epitaph I think it's high time we gave the March winds a chance of blowing the cobwebs out of your brain. We'll have a run. Come along; the streets are deliciously dusty.'

Clare rose, smilingly obedient, and as she did so the room door opened slowly and admitted Mrs Quaid. She sank on to the sofa from which Miss Stanley had just risen.

'Such a fatiguing time I have had,' she said, with a long-drawn breath of relief, as she leaned back on the cushions and loosened her bonnet-strings. 'Mrs Paget was out, and of the ten ladies who are on our Educational Committee only two attended besides myself. Really, people have no energy. And then, my shopping took me so much longer than I expected—these new shades are so difficult to match—and at last, when I felt quite worn out, and was just going into Roper's for a glass of sherry and a biscuit, whoever do you think I ran across, treating two ragged children to buns?'

'Count Litvinoff?' from Cora.

'No—oh no. It was Mr Petrovitch, and when he saw me he hustled the poor little things out of the shop as though he were ashamed of them, and he stayed talking to me ever so long, and was quite delightful, and—Clare, my sweet, this will please you, you were so much taken with him—he is coming to see us this evening. Won't that be charming?'

'I am very glad,' said Claire simply, while Cora busied herself in loosening her mother's cloak, and waiting on her in various little ways. 'I seemed to learn so much from him the last time I heard him.'

'Yes, and a friend of his is coming as well—a deliciously savage-looking Austrian, named Hirsch—who was there too, and who seems quite like our friend's shadow, and, as Mr Vernon is coming also, we shall be quite a pleasant little party, all sympathising with each other's feelings, and that's the great thing, you know.'

'I wonder if Count Litvinoff will look in,' mused Cora, rubbing her mother's rich sable muff round and round the wrong way.

'Not to-night. He is lecturing at some East-end club. What a man he is; so devoted to the cause. It seems so sad that he should be so very extreme in his views. Force is such a terrible thing, and I very much fear that he believes in that more than in the power of love.'

'I think he does,' answered Clare, seeing herself appealed to.

'Ah, well; we must try to convert him,' Mrs Quaid said, smiling. 'I should imagine him to be a most reasonable person to talk to, and not difficult to convince. I like him so much. It is so seldom one meets a man with just his polish of manner and strength of mind. Cora, dear, I've had no lunch. Just ring and order some for me. I really feel quite faint.'

At eight o'clock that evening Petrovitch stood in the softly-lighted hall of Marlborough Villa. He felt more interested in the coming evening than he generally was on such occasions. Hirsch, who was with him, was very much surprised to find himself within the portals of one of those middle-class establishments against which he had always inveighed so bitterly. But Mrs Quaid's manner had overborne his determinations with its resistless flow of gush, and he had accepted her invitation from sheer inability to edge in a word of refusal. He had been in a state of mingled remorse and terror ever since, and only Petrovitch's strong representations to the effect that men who set themselves against Society should at least not fall below Society in the matter of keeping their word, had induced him to face the dreadful ordeal of meeting half-a-dozen well-dressed Social Reformers in a large and luxurious drawing-room.

It would be impossible for any human being to be quite as glad to see any other human being as Mrs Quaid appeared to be to see her two new friends. They came in together, and while Hirsch looked round on the handsome furniture with a savagely appraising glance, prompted equally by his Jewish blood and his Socialistic convictions, Petrovitch, having seen that Clare was present, delivered himself an unresisting prey to his hostess, knowing that to even her eloquence an end must come, and knowing, too, that sooner or later he would find himself beside the girl whom his paper on Socialism had seemed to impress so much, the first time he had ever been in that room. He had been in that room more than once since but never without seeing a very vivid vision of the fair face, shining eyes, and red lips, slightly parted in the interest of listening, the girlish figure bent forward the better to catch every word of his. It was not only the flattery of her undisguised interest in him which had painted for him this memory-picture, and had given him a constantly-recurring desire to see the original again. He was pretty well skilled by this time in reading the faces of his fellow-creatures, and when all the thanks and congratulations of the Cleon's visitors were ringing in his ears, he had known perfectly well that the only heart he had touched, the only mind that had followed his reasoning, and the only soul that understood him, were those of the dark-eyed girl at his side. And the look those dark eyes had given him when he said good-night, had haunted him ever since.

From the seat of honour on the sofa beside Mrs Quaid, Petrovitch looked, perhaps rather longingly, towards the other end of the room, where Hirsch and Vernon were talking to the two girls.

It was unworthy weakness, perhaps, in a Friend of Humanity, but he could not help straining his ears to try to catch what they were saying, and wondering what subject they could be discussing to bring such interest into Clare's face. This effort interfered somewhat with the lucidity of his replies, until Mr Quaid, who had hardly spoken before, brought him up short with the question,—

'What do you mean, now, by Socialism?' and the Socialist, with an imperceptible shrug of the shoulders and a sort of 'in for a penny in for a pound' feeling, gave up trying to do two things at once, and plunged heart and soul into explanations, knowing quite well neither of his hearers would understand them.

If there is any truth in the old adage his ears should have burned, for the group at the end of the room were discussing nothing less than himself.

An enthusiastic remark from Vernon and sympathetic rejoinders from Clare and Cora had sufficed to mitigate in the Austrian that sense of being trapped by the enemy with which he had entered the room, for he saw that these young people had, at anyrate, one thing in common with him—a great respect for and interest in his Russian friend. And knowing this, his tongue was loosed; and his love of his friend overcoming in some degree the difficulties presented to him by the English language, he began to tell tale after tale of Petrovitch's kindness, bravery, self-sacrifice, and nobility. His knowledge of English had improved in the last four months, and his hearers found it easy to understand him.

'I have only known him half a year,' he said at last; 'and in that time I know of him more good than of any other man in half a lifetime.'

'I've known him less time than that,' chimed in young Vernon; 'and even I can see that he's different to any one else. The only person I ever knew who was in the least like him is Count Litvinoff.'

'Thereby I see you know not well either the one or the other,' said Hirsch, with some return to his normal grumpiness.

'I don't agree with Mr Vernon,' put in Clare; 'the principles of Count Litvinoff and Mr Petrovitch may be the same, but it seems to me that the two men are utterly different.'

'Yes,' said Miss Quaid. 'Count Litvinoff has much more of the dash and "go" that one expects in a revolutionist. Mr Petrovitch is very solid, I should think; but Count Litvinoff is certainly more brilliant and sparkling.'

Hirsch smiled sardonically.

'Mademoiselle is happy in her epithets. Froth sparkles in the sunshine and the most precious metal is the most solid. I will tell you one thing of Petrovitch. When you can tell me such another of Litvinoff, I will say Mr Vernon is right—the two men are like.

'It was on your Christian festival of Christmas—in a Russian town, no matter to name it—there was a chase, and all the townspeople turned out of their doors for the pleasure-excitement of seeing it. The chased? Only a poor woman, on her way from Moscow to the Austrian frontier. Her crime? She was a Jewess. For this, men and boys, with savage dogs, with sticks, with stones, with all that their devilish brutality told them to use against her, hunted her down, shouting, deriding, exulting. And she fled from them, but slowly, for she was not young. And those who took no part in the bloody pursuing looked on, smiling, many of them, and those who smiled not, with interest; men who were well born, and had not the ignorant superstition for whose sake we can pardon any crime to the poor. Those who hunted her were men who knew not their right hand from their left—thanks to their priests—and those who looked on approving were men of your world—"cultured," how you say?

'The poor woman fled, and still more slowly; a stone had hit her hard, and she felt already at the sickness of death. At a corner a tarantass across the road barred her way. Its coachman had stopped for the pleasure of seeing the sport. A Jewess stoned to death! The excellent pastime!

'She looked around; no way of escape. The driver of the tarantass raised his whip. He, too, would taste the pleasures of cruelty. She threw her arms up, and called upon Jehovah, whom she worshipped. Before the lash could fall, from within the tarantass sprang a young man, and snatched from the driver's hand the whip. To let it fall on her with more force? Not so. To sweep it full across the faces of the foremost in the crowd. He caught the despised Jewess in his arms, and lifted her into his carriage. The crowd—cowards as well as bullies—drew back. He sprang upon the seat beside the driver, seized the reins, turned the horses, and to them, too, used the whip—so well, that he carried away from that Russian town the saved life of a woman. He took her to a place of safety, and when she was strong enough sent her to join her son in Vienna. She was my mother. She owed her salvation from a death shameful and agonising to—'

He stopped short suddenly and glanced expressively at the broad-shouldered figure at the other end of the room. Then he said,—

'Such is my friend. Your Count Litvinoff—would he so have acted?'

He looked at Vernon, but Clare answered quickly,—

'Indeed he would. Only a little while ago he risked his life, not to save life, but to save working men from injuring their own cause, by wild violence.'

Hirsch looked at her with mingled interest and disfavour.

'Possibly,' he said; 'it may be I misjudge him, but for me he is too brilliant.'

Cora looked at her friend, and smiled a smile which Clare interpreted easily enough as a reference to their conversation of that afternoon, and out of pure defiance she would probably have said something still more strong in Count Litvinoff's favour if the door had not opened at that moment to admit two very dear, very sweet, and completely unexpected friends of Mrs Quaid's. The advent of these two, who were dwellers in Gath, and brought in with them a breath of pure Philistine air, led to the rising and re-arrangement of seats, of which the children's game of 'General Post' is a sort of caricature.

Mrs Quaid being now completely occupied with the new arrivals, Petrovitch seized the golden opportunity, and when the room settled down again into repose, Clare found that he occupied the ottoman beside her, where Hirsch had been sitting before. Miss Quaid and young Vernon had gravitated towards the conservatory, for Cora was a great lover of flowers, and Eustace, while he liked the flowers well enough, liked her still better. Hirsch had been set going by one of Mr Quaid's broad-based questions, and Miss Stanley and Petrovitch were virtually alone. And yet, though each had wished often enough to see the other again, now that they were side by side it seemed to be not so easy to talk. It is always so difficult to chatter about trifles when one is anxious to talk seriously, and it is difficult, almost up to the point of impossibility, to plunge into reasonable conversation in a room full of inconsequent prattle. Added to this, Petrovitch felt an unaccustomed and unaccountable shyness, and to Clare it was somehow less easy to ask his advice than she had thought it would have been, and than it had been to ask Count Litvinoff's.

She was the first to speak.

'I find you have not yet converted Mrs Quaid to all your views, Mr Petrovitch,' she said. 'I fear you have not been making good use of your time.'

Petrovitch did not answer; he looked at her and smiled, but it was a smile that conveyed the idea that, even to have succeeded in converting Mrs Quaid, would not have been making the best use of his time.

'I might almost have said our views,' Clare went on, determined not to let slip the opportunity of asking his advice on the great question of her life, 'for I have been thinking a great deal of all you said last time I met you here.'

'I knew you would,' he said simply.

'And I have been reading a little too. I have borrowed some books of Count Litvinoff—one or two of his own. You know Count Litvinoff? You have read his books, of course?'

'Yes, I know them,' he said. 'The writer is happy if he has shown your eyes the truth—more happy, I fear, than you will be in seeing it.'

'Oh, I don't know that it has made me unhappy, quite. I am perplexed and bewildered; but, however that may be, I don't owe it to Count Litvinoff, but to you; and that is why I am going to ask you to help me to see my way a little more clearly. I did ask Count Litvinoff what he thought—but—at any rate, I want to know what you think I ought to do.'

'I do not know that in your position you can do much except spread the light by telling the truth to every one who will receive it.'

'But I think I can do more. Do you know, I am very rich? I have—oh, ever so much a year, and it is all my own now, to do just what I like with.'

His eyes fell on her black dress, then they met her frank gaze, and the two looked straight at each other as she went on.

'The money was made by other people's losses. I know that, and I feel that the money is not my own. The question is, how can I best use it?'

'You asked Count Litvinoff this? May I in turn ask how he answered?'

'He thought—he said—' Clare hesitated a moment—'he declined to give me advice,' she finished.

Clare started at a sudden angry light that came into the eyes of the man beside her. She felt she had been indiscreet and even guilty. For she remembered how Litvinoff had followed his refusal of counsel by telling her how that there were 'men, his friends, who, if they knew that she had asked him for this advice, and he had refused to give it, would say he had become traitor, and kill him like a rat.' Suppose Petrovitch were one of these men! Clare did not wait for him to speak, but answered the look.

'You are angry with him,' she said. 'I had no right to tell you that, but since I have given you my confidence I know you will respect it, and not let it influence your conduct towards him.'

'Your friend is safe as far as I am concerned,' Petrovitch answered, passing his hand over his long beard. 'Do not be alarmed for him. You take a deep interest in his welfare—is it not so?'

The question was asked earnestly, and not impertinently, and Clare felt no inclination to resent it. There was a short silence between them, and it was manifest to them that Mrs Quaid was holding the Philistines enthralled by her views on education. Miss Stanley answered slowly and softly,—

'You know my dear father is dead now. Our acquaintance with Count Litvinoff began with his saving my father's life at the risk of his own, and that is not the only good deed I have known him do, though that alone will make me always interested in him.'

Then she told of the part he had played in the unfortunate scene at the mill, and his conduct lost nothing in the telling. Insensibly led on by Petrovitch's well-managed prompting in monosyllables she went on to what had come after, and how she had been made the means of changing Roland Ferrier's determination to prosecute and punish the 'hands.'

'Yes,' said Petrovitch, when she had finished, 'I know right well that he is no coward and no fool; and as for his not advising you, I am not sure that he was not right. I, too, will not advise you. There is only one thing I could tell you to do, and that I will not tell you now. Wait, wait, and be patient, and study; and if after a while you still ask me for advice I will give it to you.'

'I know what you think,' she said impulsively. 'You think I'm young and foolish, and that I shall be changeable. You think I have taken up these beliefs without enough thought or understanding. If I could only tell you ... how altered everything seems, what a splendid new light seems to be breaking over everything. Do you think, what you said just now, that knowing the truth could make me unhappy? Oh no. It is knowledge without action that makes me sad.'

'No, no; that is not my thought,' he answered, in a voice that seemed to have caught a thrill from her own. 'Think a little longer. Whatever action you take will not lose strength because it is well thought, well considered. If you ever ask me again, I promise you I will not hesitate a moment to answer; but I would rather the answer came from you than from me.'

'That's one of your leading principles, isn't it? Independent thought.'

'Yes. How can people ever hope to act rightly, if they will persist in delegating other people to think for them?'

'But ordinary people can't thoroughly think out all subjects. One is obliged to take a great many of one's opinions at second-hand.'

'Well, but neither can one act in all directions—and where one has to act one should think first. As for taking opinions at second-hand, that is a thing you should never dare to do. If you are not able to think for yourself, you should have no opinions. Your English Clifford has told you that if you have no time to think you have no time to believe.'

'I am sure you are right. But I am sure, too, that to think for one's self means in most circles social ostracism; and it wants very strong convictions to make one face that.'

'Social ostracism,' answered the Socialist, with unutterable contempt in the gesture which accompanied his words; 'social ostracism, and by whom imposed? Look at the people around you.' Clare glanced nervously at Mrs Quaid. 'See how small are their aims, how trivial their interests, how great their love of ease, how small their love of truth; see what narrow minds they have, what blinded eyes; see all the good that would be in them crushed out by the very conventionalities which they uphold. How can we think it of any value, the opinion of such as these? Or if their condemnation should pain us, what a little thing is such a pain compared with the lifelong consciousness of having, from the fear of it, crushed out the spark of truth in our own souls? What a little thing compared with eternal truth is even life itself! We come out of the darkness, and into that darkness must return. Is it not better, seeing the little time that is ours, to know that we at least have listened to the wail of agony that ever goes up to the deaf heavens?—that we have done what we could in our little day to help forward a better time for those who shall come after us, than to know that we have had the good opinion of "respectable people"?'

'If one could only hope that one could help it forward!' sighed Clare.

'Hope? We know it. These things will be. It is a question of the little sooner or the little later. There is no standing still. He that is not with us is against us. But we shall triumph in the end. We know that all this misery, all this sin, all this selfishness, all this stupidity even, are the direct result of the social milieu. It is this knowledge that makes us the deadly enemies of the Capitalist system, and that is why we are hated by those who profit by it.'

He spoke in a low voice, full of suppressed excitement. When he ended the girl drew a long breath. He saw the white violets on her bosom rise and fall slowly twice before he spoke again. Then he said, with a smile,—

'If I have not given you advice, I have at least given you a sermon. You see I already look upon you as one of us, or I should not have dared to outrage conventionalities by speaking in earnest in a drawing-room.'

'Oh, my dear Mr Petrovitch,' exclaimed Mrs Quaid, who pausing out of breath from her exertions in the cause of education, had caught the last dozen words, 'you are really too severe! I hope all of us, at anyrate, always speak in earnest, though of course, some of us are more earnest than others. That delightful Count Litvinoff, now—so devoted, and yet so cheerful; I'm so sorry he has not come to-night.'

'He seems to be a universal favourite,' answered Petrovitch, who had risen on his hostess's approach, and now stood with his hand on the back of Clare's chair.

'Yes, and you who know him, of course know how well he deserves all our good opinions.' She glanced almost imperceptibly at Clare. Petrovitch noted the glance, and he fancied that Clare noted it too, and that it called up a faint blush into her face. But Mrs Quaid's drawing-room was discreetly lighted, and perhaps he was mistaken.

'I should never forgive myself,' the good lady went on, 'if I missed this beautiful opportunity of performing such a delightful task—bringing two such distinguished fellow-workers together. We must fix an early evening for you both to dine here. It will be charming.'

Petrovitch bowed.

As Hirsch and Petrovitch went away together, the Austrian said,—

'So, the lady who is always charmed will charm herself with making you meet him, bon grè, mal grè.'

'I will meet him,' the other answered, 'and that shortly. But not in that house.'

'Good,' grunted Hirsch; and the two men fell to smoking silently.

CHAPTER XXVI.

ALL A MISTAKE.

T took Richard Ferrier just three months to decide what course his future life should take. He was too old for the Army or Civil Service. The Church was equally out of the question, for a reason equally potent. Need we say that his first idea had been to earn his living by literature? In these days of extended education and cheap stationery, it always is the very first idea of any one whose ordinary source of income is suddenly cut short. Richard had always felt at college that he had a decided faculty for writing; but an uninterrupted stream of returned MS., 'declined, with thanks' by all sorts and conditions of editors, convinced him in less than three months that, if writing indeed were his vocation, it was one that he must forego until he could pay for the publishing of his own works, which was not exactly the view he had in wishing to adopt it.

He had no interest in the law, and he knew well enough that he had not talent to enable him to dispense with interest. Besides, his leanings had never been that way. The medical profession inspired him with far more interest. His favourite study had always been biology. He had enough money to live on sparingly till the necessary four years should have expired, and it seemed to him better to adopt a profession than to go in for trade in any form or shape. He had had enough of trade. He made a round of visits among special chums of his own, and during the time so occupied had thought long and seriously about his future, and, of all the ideas that came to him, that of being a doctor was the one with most attractions and fewest drawbacks. So early in March he entered himself as a student at Guy's, determined to throw himself heart and soul into his new career, and to let the dead past be. No return to the conditions of that past seemed possible to him, and, though he determined to think of it as little as he could, there were some things about it that haunted him disturbingly. But he hoped, among new friends and with new ambitions, to forget successfully. A man has his life to live, and life is not over at twenty-five, even when one has lost father, fortune, and heart's desire.

One windy, wild, bright March morning he was walking up to the hospital as usual from his lodgings in Kennington. He looked as cheerful as the morning itself as he strode along with an oak stick in his hand, and under his arm two or three shiny black note-books with red edges. Opposite St Thomas's Street he paused to watch for a favourable moment in which to effect a crossing; and before he had time to plunge into the chaos of vans, omnibuses, cabs, carriages, trucks, barrows and blasphemy, the touch of a hand on his arm made him turn sharply round. It was his foster-mother, with a basket on her arm, her attire several shades shabbier than he had been used to see it, and her worn face lighted up with pleasure at meeting him.

'Eh, but Ah'm glad to see thi face, my lad,' she said earnestly, as he turned and shook her hand heartily. 'I thowt as there was na more nor two pair o' shoulders like these, and I know'd it was thee or Rowley the minute Ah seed thee.'

The familiar North-country sing-song accent sent a momentary pain through the young man's heart as he answered,—

'I'm awfully glad to see you again; but what in the name of fortune are you doing here?'

'There's na fortune in't but bad fortune, lad,' she answered; 'tha know'd well enough when thee and Rowley fell out as Thornsett wouldn't be a home for any o' us for long.'

There was no reproach in her tone. Her speech was only a plain statement of fact.

'But what made you come to London?'

'T' master thowt as there'd be a big lot o' work to be gotten here, seeing as London be such a big place. Oh, but it is big, Master Dick. Ah'm getting a bit used to it now, but when first we came here the bigness and the din of it used to get into my head like, till times Ah felt a'most daft wi' it.'

By this time he had piloted her across, and they were walking side by side towards London Bridge, whither she told him she was bound.

'I'm afraid Hatfield found himself mistaken about the work; there are no mills in London,' said Richard.

'No, or if there be we never found them; but the master's had a bit o' luck, and he's getten took on at a place they call Dartford; m'appen you've heerd on it?'

'Well, I am glad to hear that. I hope all the hands have done as well.'

'No one's gladder nor me. Ah can't say for the lump o' the hands; but him, ever since he heerd as t' mill was to stop, he's not been t' say the same man as wor so fond of you and Rowley, and as used to go to chapel regular, and was allus the best o' husbands.'

'I hope he's not unkind to you?' said the young man anxiously.

'Nay; he's steady enow, and kind enow, but he's changed like. He willn't go to chapel no more, an' he says as he don't believe as our trouble's t' visitings o' a kind Providence.'

No more did Richard, but he forbore to say so; and she went on, the pent-up anxiety and sorrow of the last few weeks finding vent at last,—

'An' he's bitter set against Rowley. I wonder by hours and hours whether there's summat atween 'em as I don't know of. Sithee, Dick, if tha'll tell me one thing it'll do no harm nor no good to no one but me, and it'll set my mind at rest. Was there owt i' what folks set down i' Thornsett? Was it Rowley as stole our Alice?'

This point-blank question caught the young man right off his guard. His face gave the answer; his lips only stammered, 'How should I know? Besides, it can do no one any good now to know that.'

'Thi eyes is honester nor thi tongue,' Mrs Hatfield said, with a face full of trouble. 'Make thi tongue speak truth as well, lad, and tell me what tha knows. Tell me wheer shoo is.'

'If I had known you would have known too, long ago,' Richard answered.

'But tha hasn't told me a' tha knows e'en as 'tis.'

'I don't know anything,' Richard was beginning, when Mrs Hatfield clasped both her hands on his arm.

'Dick, Dick,' she said, 'tha's heerd o' her or tha's seen her. I've allus had a mother's heart for tha as well as for her, and now it's as if one o' my childer wouldn't help me to find t'other. What has tha heard? I see i' thi face 'twas Rowley. Eh, but I never thought the boy I nursed would ha' turned on them as loved him i' this fashion.'

The tears followed the words, which were not whispered, and the passers-by turned their heads wonderingly to look at the middle-aged countrywoman, with the basket, who was looking so earnestly and entreatingly into the face of the tall young medical student.

'Come in here,' he said, and led her into the waiting-room of the London Bridge Station, which was fortunately empty. She sat down and began to cry bitterly, while Richard stood helplessly looking at her.

'Don't cry,' he said; but she took no notice, and went on moaning to herself.

'Couldn't tha ha' stopped it?' she said, suddenly raising her tear-stained face. 'Tha couldst surely ha' stood i' the way o' such a sinful, cruel thing as that.'

'Good God, no!' cried Dick, losing control of his tongue at the sudden implication of himself in these charges; 'what could I do? I knew nothing of it till last October, and then I did the best I could.'

'And tha found out for sure. Tell me a' abaat it.'

'I'm not sure enough to tell any one anything,' he answered: 'but I was sure enough to throw away all my chances, because I felt I couldn't have anything more to do with a fellow who'd do such a beastly mean thing as that.'

He had no idea that he was not speaking the truth. He had by this time really convinced himself that he had been prompted in his quarrel by the highest moral considerations, and had taught himself to forget how other motives and influences had been at work, and how he had been forced to acknowledge this at the time.

'How did tha find it out?' Mrs Hatfield persisted: and Richard in desperation told her the whole story. It seemed to her as convincing as it had done to him.

The mother asked him innumerable questions about Alice—how had she looked, how had she spoken? It grieved him not to be able to give her pleasanter answers, but, rather to his surprise, her mind seemed to dwell less with sorrow on Alice's want and hard work, than with pleasure on the thought that her daughter had given up her lover, or, as she called it, returned to the narrow path. But why had she not returned to her mother? And that question Dick could not answer. All these questions and replies had taken some time, and the Dartford train had gone. Dick found out the time of the next train, and then came and sat down beside her, and did his best to cheer her, in which attempt his real affection for her assured him a measure of success. By the time the Dartford train was due she was calm again and reasonably cheerful. He led her to tell him of their life since they had come to London; how nearly everything had been turned into money; how the basket on her arm contained all that she had been able to keep; and how she was going down to join her husband, and to try to take root with him in a fresh soil. From her he heard for the first time of Count Litvinoff's visit to Thornsett, of the rioting of the mill hands, and, though she did not say so in so many words, he could see that she placed the two events in the relation of cause and effect. She told him, too, of Litvinoff's bravery, and of the fate of the luckless Isaac Potts; and Dick, though he couldn't help feeling interest and admiration at this recital, did not like the way in which Miss Stanley's name and Litvinoff's were coupled in Mrs Hatfield's account of the help, advice, and kindness shown to the hands before they dispersed from Thornsett. Her words suggested to him vague suspicions; but he couldn't think much just then, for it was time to take Mrs Hatfield's ticket and to see her off. This he did, and when he had seen her comfortably seated in a corner of a second-class carriage, he said good-bye to her, giving her at parting a very hearty hand-shake, and a sovereign, which he could ill afford.

'Good-bye, dear,' he said; 'you must write and tell me how you get on. Here's my address, and I hope with all my heart you will have good fortune.'

He drew back from the train as it began to move, and waved a farewell. She in turn waved her damp cotton handkerchief, and was borne out of sight.

As she disappeared Dick began to wonder what he should do with himself. The lecture he had been about to attend was hopelessly lost and there was nothing particular to be done till after lunch. Obedient to what would have been the instinct of most young men under such circumstances, his first thought was to take a ticket to Charing Cross, that being a more cheerful place for the consideration of any problem than the station where he found himself. In common with every other traveller on the South-Eastern Railway, he had long since arrived at the conclusion that London Bridge was the most unreasonably comfortless and altogether objectionable station in England—which is saying a good deal. He was just turning to go down to the booking office when—

'Great heavens, how wonderful!' he said. As he turned he found himself face to face with the girl whose mother had just left him. She was close to him, and had instinctively held out her hand, which he had clasped in greeting before he noticed that she was not alone. Her companion was evidently a gentleman. Her dress was much better than had been that of the girl for whom he had carried the brown-paper parcel five months ago. Richard noticed this with a pang of uneasiness as he said,—

'Why, Alice, I am very glad to see you; you're looking much better. Where are you off to? What are you doing?'

'Oh, dear, I'm so sorry, Mr Richard; I'm just going by this train to stay at Chislehurst with some friends of this gentleman's. Mr Petrovitch, Mr Ferrier.'

The men bowed—Petrovitch with easy courtesy, and Ferrier with a frigid reserve which would only allow him to raise his hat about an eighth of an inch—and as they did so the train steamed in.

'You must not miss this train,' said Petrovitch; 'there is not another for so long a time.'

'Good-bye, Mr Richard,' she said. 'When you see father or mother, tell them I'm well and happier, and have good friends.'

Ferrier had it on the tip of his tongue to tell her how he had just seen her mother, but Petrovitch, with an air of authority, cut short their farewells by hurrying her into the train.

'Good-bye,' said Richard, rather at a loss in this unexpected and bewilderingly brief meeting; 'couldn't you write to me? I'm at Guy's—Guy's Hospital, you know.'

'Stand back, sir,' said the guard, slamming the door with one hand and putting his whistle to his lips with the other, as the train gave a lurch and began to move off.

'Bon voyage, Mrs Litvinoff,' said Petrovitch, bringing a startled look and a vivid blush into Alice's face, and giving Richard the biggest surprise of his life. His blank astonishment was too evident for Petrovitch to ignore it. He looked at Richard inquiringly.

'Er—er, I beg your pardon,' stammered Ferrier, as soon as he could find words. 'You called that—a—lady Mrs Litvinoff?'

'I did, sir,' answered the other, with a rather angry flash of his deep-set eyes. 'I might have called her Countess Litvinoff, if you attach any importance to titles.'

'Good God!' said Richard, very slowly. He sat down on the wooden seat without another word.

'I wish you good-morning, sir,' said Petrovitch, making for the incline which leads off the platform.

Before he had made three paces young Ferrier had pulled himself together, and had overtaken him and laid a hand on his arm.

'Forgive me, sir—I am afraid you think me very strange and unmannerly—but I have a deeper interest in this matter than you can possibly imagine. I must beg you to allow me a few moments for explanation.'

'Certainly, sir; I shall be happy to walk your way,' answered the Russian, less stiffly.

No more was said till they got outside the station. It was not easy for Richard to know how to begin. He did not know how much this man knew of Alice, and he felt it would be unfair to tell her story, as far as he knew it, to one who seemed to know her only as a married woman. But, on the other hand, how much did he himself know of her story? He walked along beside Petrovitch for at least ten minutes before he could make up his mind how to begin. At length the other half-stopped and looked at him in a way that compelled speech of some kind.

'The reason I was so surprised when I heard you call that—lady Mrs Litvinoff, was that I have known her from a child, and did not know that she was married. I—I—also knew a Count Litvinoff in London a few months ago, and certainly did not know that he was married. The connection of the two names startled me. I must also tell you that it did more than startle me; it relieved me.'

'You are, then, very much interested in my friend?' said Petrovitch.

'Well,' said Richard, finding it desperately hard to break through his English reserve, and yet feeling that he could not in common fairness expect to get any information from one who called himself a 'friend' of Alice's without showing good reasons for asking for such information. 'Well, I am interested, very much interested, but not quite in the way that men generally are when they talk about being interested in a woman. Look here,' he said, stopping, and finding his powers of diplomacy absolutely failing him, falling back on the naked truth, 'that young woman has been the cause—the innocent cause, mind—of a complete separation between my brother and myself. I thought my brother had done her a great wrong. Can you tell me whether he did or not? His name is Roland Ferrier.'

'So far as I know Mrs Litvinoff's story,' said Petrovitch, speaking very deliberately, 'no wrong of any sort has ever been done her by any one of that name.'

'Ay, but,' said Richard, 'so far as you know; but do you know all? Do you know with whom she did go when she left her home?'

'I do.'

'It was not my brother?'

'It was not your brother.'

Richard had just said that he felt greatly relieved. If that statement was true, his looks certainly belied him.

'One question more,' he said. 'I want to know exactly how far wrong I have been. Do you know if my brother has had any communication at all with her since she left her home?—did he know where she was?'

'I believe that he has had no communication with her, and that he did not know where she was.'

'Can you tell me who this Litvinoff is, then? Is he the Count Michael Litvinoff that I know, or knew? If so, did he marry, and when did he marry her? and why did she leave him?—for she did leave some man; she told me so.'

'Ah,' said Petrovitch, 'you said one more question; that question I answered because I thought you were really concerned in knowing the answer. Forgive me, these other matters I think do not concern you.'

'Well,' Richard answered, 'I knew that girl when she was a baby, and I've always been fond of her, and I should naturally be glad to hear anything about her. I am glad to see her looking so much better, and better cared for than when I met her last.'

Petrovitch bent his head silently.

They had stopped by this time just opposite the Borough Market.

'I am sorry you will not tell me more about her; but since you have told me that my brother has not injured her in any way, I don't know that I have any right to ask you more. I must thank you for telling me what you have done, and ask you to excuse my seeming curiosity.'

Petrovitch bowed; young Ferrier did the same, and they parted—Petrovitch turned across the bridge, while Richard retraced his steps towards the station. He made his way to the telegraph office, and sent off this message:—'Richard Ferrier, Guy's Hospital, London, to Gates, The Hollies, Firth Vale.—Please wire me my brother's address at once if you know it.'

Then he crossed the station-yard, and ran down the steep stone steps which are part of the shortest cut to the hospital, and as he went he felt more wretched than he had ever been before. He had always believed in himself so intensely that an actual injury would have been less hard to bear than this sudden shattering of his faith in his own judgment. He had been so utterly mistaken—so wrong all round. Everything had seemed to point to his brother's guilt. Now everything seemed to have pointed to his innocence. If Richard's eyes had not been so blinded by—what? It was a moment for seeing things clearly, and Richard saw that his own passion and jealousy had perverted his view of all that had taken place in the autumn. That meeting in Spray's Buildings—of course it was the likeliest thing in the world that Roland really had seen Litvinoff, and at the thought of that sympathetic nobleman the young man ground his teeth. How completely he had been fooled! It must be the same Litvinoff—for had not Alice been present at his lecture in Soho? How had Alice met such a man? Oh, that might have happened in a thousand ways. Had Litvinoff really married her? Richard thought he had not. He remembered Litvinoff's moustache, and felt sure that he had not. Felt sure? How could he feel sure of anything, when here, where he had been so absolutely certain, he was proved to have been wrong?

What fearful blunders he had made—what a horrible muddle he had got everything into—what irretrievable mischief he had done! But, though he blamed himself deeply and bitterly, he still, not unnaturally, blamed Litvinoff with still more bitter earnestness. One thing only was clear to him. He must find Roland at once, tell him all the circumstances, and beg his pardon. It would be all right again between him and his brother, towards whom he now felt a rush of reactionary affection. But how about the mill hands, now scattered far and wide beyond recall—beyond the reach of his help—through this same mad folly of his? In an impulse to do something for at least one of those who had suffered through him, he turned off from the hospital and took a hansom to his rooms, where he unlocked his desk, and, taking a five-pound note from his slender stock of money, enclosed it in an envelope, which he addressed to Mrs Hatfield at the address she had given him, in a hand not his own. He would do more for them when he and his brother had begun to work the mill again. That would be one big result of his new knowledge. His medical studies would be at an end, and he would be once more Ferrier of Thornsett. But that was poor compensation for all the rest.

When Mr Gates' answering telegram came it was a wet blanket on Richard's longing to make his confession and talk things over with Roland—for it ran thus:—'Robert Gates, The Hollies, Firth Vale, to Richard Ferrier, Guy's Hospital.—Don't know his address—he is expected here in a few days. Has left Chelsea, and is making visits on his way here. Glad you want him. Letter follows.'

So he could not see Roland that day, after all, and there was nothing for it but to possess his soul in patience until he heard again from Gates. So he spent the evening with some congenial acquaintances who had diggings in Trinity Square, and managed to get through the night without being driven to distraction by his remorseful self-tormenting thoughts. But the next morning he remembered, with a start, for the first time, that, not content with believing his brother to be guilty of a disgraceful action, he had accused him of it to Clare Stanley, and, worse than that, to Alice's own mother. He felt he could never face Clare again after that, come what might. But the Hatfields? At least it would be only fair to make what reparation he could by undeceiving them. He would go down to Dartford that very day, and tell them how mistaken he had been. He went by the same train which had carried Mrs Hatfield thither on the preceding day.

Arrived at Dartford the Dismal, Richard betook himself to the address that had been given him, which, after some difficulty, he found to be one of a row of small, ill-favoured, squalid cottages a little way out of the town. There were a good many children about, who stared at him with open-eyed curiosity, and did dreadful things to their mouths with their grimy little fingers in the excitement of seeing a gentleman stop at No. 5 Earl's Terrace. The battered, blistered green door had no knocker. The handle of Richard's umbrella afforded an impromptu one, and, in answer to the spirited solo which he proceeded to execute with it, the door was opened, and by his foster-mother herself.

She looked very pale and worried, and had evidently been crying. She didn't seem surprised to see him; she was in that state of mind when nothing seems worth being surprised about.

'Come in, lad,' she said. 'Ah got thi kind token. Ah know'd 'twas thee as sent it, and m'appen Ah'll need it more nor tha thowt when tha sent it, for t' maister's giv' up his work an' gone off.'

She had set a chair for him, and as she finished this speech she sat down herself and looked hopelessly at him.

'Gone—gone! Left you! Why, he must be out of his mind.'

'His mind's right enough; it's his soul as Ah'm feared about, Dick. He's gone to have it out wi' Rowley, and get at the rights of it.'

'But where is Roland? Where's he gone to?'

'He's gone to Thornsett.'

'Why, Roland isn't there.'

'Thank God! God be praised, if it'll on'y please His good providence to keep 'em fra meetin'!'

'But how came he to go? How did it happen? Tell me all about it?'

It seemed that when her husband had met her at Dartford Station, she, pleased with having met Richard, had told him of the rencontre. That he had closely questioned her, and when at last he had learned every word that had passed between them, he had turned suddenly on her, and told her that this was the first time he had ever even thought of such a thing being possible as that Roland had been the cause of Alice's ruin, and that now he did know he would not lose a day in facing him with the accusation.

'Do you mean to say,' said Richard, 'that it's through me he thinks that Roland took her away?'

'I don't say it was thy fault, lad. I'm more to blame than thee. I should a-kept my clattering tongue quiet, and I should a-known my own man better after a' these years nor to think that if he had a-thowt it was Rowley he wouldna ha' faced him wi' it long sin'.'

'This is devilish pleasant!' said Richard, rising and taking a stride across the little room; but how did he go?'

It appeared he had started off with but a pound, or little more, in his pocket, intending to walk the greater part of the way, and only telling her that she wouldn't hear of him until she saw him back again.

'And what do you think will happen when they do meet?' he asked.

'Oh, Ah'm feared to think!' she said, wringing her hands and beginning to weep.

'I'll tell you what I'll do,' said Richard. 'I'll go straight down to Thornsett now, and keep a look-out for Hatfield. I'll stop any more mischief, any way. I think I can promise you that nothing much will happen if they do meet.'

She caught hold of his hand, and began to thank him.

'Oh, don't thank me!' he said; 'the whole sad business has been my fault from beginning to end. I found out yesterday, almost directly I left you, that Rowley was as innocent of doing any harm to Alice as I am, and I found out, too, that she is well and pretty happy, and, I heard, married. If it hadn't been for me, Hatfield wouldn't have gone off on this wild-goose chase. But I must get back now; my train goes in twenty minutes, and I want to catch the three o'clock train for Firth Vale.'

He caught the three o'clock train to Firth Vale, having managed, by a very hurried farewell, to escape the torrent of questions Mrs Hatfield would have liked to pour out. He felt that, all things considered, the less he said about the matter the better. He had been wrong too often, and too much.

CHAPTER XXVII.

MAKING IT UP.

HERE was rejoicing in the house of Robert Gates, as over a prodigal returned, when Richard Ferrier avowed that he had been mistaken all through in his quarrel with his brother, and that he was now only anxious to acknowledge his error, and to do his best to set things going again on the old footing. But he had some days to wait before he could make his confession.

Thornsett Edge had remained unoccupied, for there was some difficulty in letting a furnished house near a deserted village. People did not seem to care about the vicinity of all those empty shells of homes. So Roland had decided to occupy it again, and he was coming down there to get things ready for his aunt's reception, and was making a few visits to old friends on his way. He had written down to the old couple in charge to have the place ready, as he might come down any day.

Two days passed and he had not come, and Richard was getting tired of the constant inquiries and congratulations which assailed him at The Hollies. He thought he would go home, and be there to welcome Roland when he arrived. So he sent over his portmanteau, and took up his quarters in his old room at Thornsett Edge. He was in a very tender and remorseful frame of mind in those days. He wandered all over the old house, full filled of memories of the time when he and his brother played together there as children; of the time when, later, they thrashed each other as schoolboys, with right good will. There were haunting thoughts of the dissension that had grown up between them, and of the shadow that the knowledge of it had cast upon their father's deathbed. The necessity which he felt himself to be under of keeping a sharp look-out for John Hatfield, fortunately served as a kind of antidote to the rush of memories and associations which came over Richard, now that he was once again in his home.

He walked down to the village to seek out the few 'hands' who had clung like rooks to their old haunts, and there he saw sad sights and heard sad stories enough to have driven him mad had he not known that it would soon be in his power to set things in some degree right again. He resolved, and felt sure of Roland's co-operation in his scheme, to seek out as many of the old 'hands' as could be got word of, and to give each of them enough to get a home together again.

Of course he thought often of Miss Stanley; but the past months of unusual action and changed surroundings had altered his feeling for her, which was fortunate for him, since he had falsely accused his own brother to her—a meanness which he knew it to be quite impossible for such a woman as Clare ever to forget or forgive. He thought of her now without any of the old passion, as he might have thought of one who had died long before, or of one whom he had loved in some other life.

This did not prevent him from feeling furiously jealous of Litvinoff, to whom he seemed to have transferred all the anger that had burned in him against his brother, intensified by a galling consciousness of the complete success which Litvinoff had achieved in his attempt to deceive and mislead him. There should be a reckoning for that, Richard thought. He felt glad he had always mistrusted the man. It showed that his judgment was worth something sometimes, and this pleased his self-love.

On the third day came a telegram from Matlock, which said that Roland would be at home that evening. Richard roamed about the house in restless impatience all day. How should they meet? He should not dare to go to the door to greet his brother lest he should imagine that it was a renewal of hostilities, not a welcome home, that was intended. Richard had no eye for dramatic effects, nor any leaning thereto, but he charged the old people to say nothing of his presence, and to leave him to announce himself to his brother when he should think well.

His brother would have done exactly the same thing from absolutely opposite motives.

So when Roland walked up to his home in the teeth of the wild March wind the only welcome that met him was that of the old woman in charge, and this seemed to him to be so inconsequently effusive, and the good lady herself seemed so unreasonably radiant, that he was quite flattered. It was pleasant to him to be appreciated and admired, even by a 'person in charge.'

'The fire's i' the dining-room, Mr Roland,' she said; 'an' I'll dish ye up the supper in less nor half a minute, sir. It's a glad day for Thornsett as sees yer back agen.'

Mrs Brock's son had worked in the mill—a fact which made the anticipated reconciliation peculiarly interesting to her.

Richard from his ambush in his own room heard the greeting, heard the well-known voice giving orders about rugs and hat-boxes in the well-known tones. Then he heard doors open and close. After a while a savoury smell from the hot supper that was being carried in rose to his altitude. The dining-room door was opened, and shut several times. At last it was closed with a more decided touch, and in the noise of its closing was a settled sound as of a door that did not mean to open again just yet. Richard knew that the supper had been cleared away, and that Roland was most likely assisting digestion with tobacco and grog. This would be the time, he decided, to put in an appearance and to get through his proposed reconciliation. He went softly downstairs, and paused a moment with his hand on the dining-room door. The house was very still. As he stood there he heard a cinder fall from the fire in the dining-room, and the great hall clock at the foot of the stairs ticked louder than usual, as it seemed. He turned the handle and went in. Roland was sitting in the big arm-chair by the fire where their father had been used to sit. As the door opened he looked up with a sort of displeased curiosity to see who it was that had the assurance to enter unannounced. When he saw who it was he gave a start, and the expression of his face changed to something deeper and sterner.

He got up.

'I understood from Gates,' he said, 'that you renounced all claim to be in this house so long as half the possible rent was paid you. I mean to pay you your half. May I ask, then, what you want here?'

'I want to beg your pardon,' began Richard, his hand still on the lock—when his brother interrupted him with,—

'Hadn't you better close the door? I suppose you don't want all the world to hear anything you may have to say.'