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This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place.
Title: Good-Bye Sweetheart, an electronic edition
Author: Broughton, Rhoda, 1840-1920
Publisher: Richard Bentley and Son
Place published: London
Date: 1878
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 Illustration at the front of Broughton's "Good-bye Sweetheart""GOOD-BYE SWEETHEART!"A TALE. BY  RHODA BROUGHTON,AUTHOR OF 
"COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," "RED AS A ROSE IS SHE," ETC.,ETC. LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON,1878Table of contents for Broughton's "Good-bye Sweetheart" Table of contents for Broughton's "Good-bye Sweetheart"PART I.
"Being so very willful, you must go."MORNING."The sleepless Hours, who watch me as I lie,Curtained with star-enwoven canopiesFrom the broad moonlight of the sky,Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes,Waken me when their mother, the grey Dawn,Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.""GOODBYE, SWEETHEART!"
CHAPTER I.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.A kingly June day: the hay-smell drowning all other smells in every land of Christendom: battling even with the ingeniously ill odours of this little drainless Breton town. People who suffer from hay-fever are sneezing and blowing their noses; all the world else is opening its nostrils wide. The small salon of a small French boarding-house: a narrow room with a window at each end; and in this room we two sisters, the two Misses Herrick.Five minutes ago, the mistress of the establishment entered and closed the persiennes of one of our windows, to hinder the sun from abimer -ing the cretonne curtains, as she said. She was about to follow suit with the other, and only desisted on our eager and impassioned representations that not even a Breton sun can shine from all points of the compass at once. Through the one casement thus left us Lenore is leaning out; Lenore, our youngest-born, the show one of our family. On her elbows she is leaning, looking idly into the little grass-grown place , on which Mdlle. Leroux's pensiongives. Jemima—I am Jemima—is making a listless reconnoitre of the furniture. The little cheap prints on the walls, "La Religieuse défendue," "Le Guerrier pansé," "Napoleon I., Empereur des Français;" one long fern frond, and a single fox-glove in a wineglass on the mantelshelf; bare cold parquet to the feet. Jemima is twenty-eight years of age, and very good-natured; at least, so people say. I have often noticed that the eldest of many families are, physically speaking, failures. Jemima is, physically speaking, a failure."How one misses one's five-o'clock tea," says Lenore, looking back half over her shoulder to throw this and the succeeding remarks at me; "from ten-o'clock breakfast till six-o'clock dinner, what a dreary waste! How do you suppose the aborigines stave off the pangs of hunger, Jemima? Do they chew a quid of tobacco, or a piece of chalk, or what?"I reply, laconically, "Biscuits.""Does not your soul yearn for one of those open tarts with fresh strawberries we saw yesterday at the patissier's in the Rue de St. Malo? Mine does. I wish I had asked Frederic to bring me one.""And do you imagine," ask I, sardonically, "that you have reduced that poor man to such a pitch of imbecility as to induce him to carry about jam-tarts in his coat-pocket for you?"Lenore smiles: she has that very sweet smile which is, they say, the peculiar attribute of ill-tempered people. "I think," she answers, "that he is not far from being on a level with Miss Armstrong's lover, who allowed her to dress him up as a sheep, and lead him by a blue ribbon into a room full of company."Lenore's face is more round than oval; it is fresh as a bunch of roses gathered at sunrise—fresh, but not ruddy; her nose, though not in the least retroussé, belongs rather to the family of upward than that of downward tending noses; her eyes are grey, as are the eyes of nine-tenths of the Anglo-Saxon race; large, though not with the owlified largeness of a "Book of Beauty," wherein each eye is double the size of the prim purse mouth; in her two cheeks are two dimples that, when she is grave, one only suspects, but that, when she laughs or smiles, deepen into two little delicious pitfalls, to catch men's souls at unawares in."If Frederic were anybody but Frederic," say I, sinking into an arm-chair, and pulling out my knitting—like most failures I'm fond of work—"it would be considered rather risqué of us two innocents travelling about the Continent with a young man in our train, even though he is a clergyman.""If Frederic," replies Lenore, contemptuously turning back to her contemplation of the place , and replacing her grey gingham elbows on the sill, "were to be caught in the most flagitious situation one can imagine, that Simon Pure face of his would carry him triumphantly through. Who can connect the idea of immorality and spectacles? Talk of an angel, and you hear the rustle of wings; I hear Frederic's wings rustling through the Porte Saint Louis, and—oh! Jemima—Jemima, quick! come here?—who is it he has with him?"I jump up, as bidden—I always do what Lenore bids me, though I have the advantage, or rather disadvantage, of her by ten years—and look out. "An Englishman, evidently," I say, sagaciously, "by his beard; nobody but Englishmen and oysters wear beards now-a-days.""Is he going to bring him up here?" asks Lenore, craning her neck out to look round the balcony of the café next door. where, as usual, two fat men are smoking and drinking coffee. "No; I see him nodding; he is saying good-bye; how tiresome!" (with an accent of disappointment)."You are as bad as the young lady in Nixon's 'Cheshire Prophecy,'" say I, laughing: "'Mother, mother, I have seen a man!'"Frederic enters, alone, looking very hot in the rigorous black of a priestly coat that grazes his heel, and the rigorous black of a priestly waistcoat that almost salutes his chin."Enter a pretty cockatoo!" cries my sister, with an insolent laugh, pointing the insult by indicating with her forefinger the curly flourish of fine fair hair that surmounts the young man's forehead and blue spectacles. "Pretty cockatoo!""You should not make personal remarks, Miss Leonora," answers Frederic, blushing."My name is not 'Leonora,'" retorts she, with a pout; "don't lengthen my two charming soft French syllables into that great long English mouthful, 'Leonora!'"But Frederic is deeply diving into a pocket in the hinder part of his raiment. Thence he diffidently draws a little bonbonnière."I have brought you some chocolate, Miss Lenore; that—that is why I called to-day. I—I think I once heard you say that you liked it.""My dear cockatoo, I hate the sight of it!" replies she, gravely, with the utter and unconscious ingratitude of a Spoiled child. "I ate it every day and at every confectioner's in Rouen last week. Now, if it had been a strawberry tart-open fresh strawberries; but it is not—give it to Jemima.""Never mind her, Mr. West," say I, it being my pleasing life-task to mend the breaches made by Lenore in her adorers' feelings—I never having any breaches of my own to mend—"never mind her. But tell us who your new friend is; we have been on the qui vive ever since we saw you parting so tenderly under the arch.""Do you mean the man that came with me to-day as far as the Porte?" asks Frederic, who has sat down upon the music-stool, and is turning slowly round and round, in order to be able to follow with his spectacles Lenore into whatever part of the little room her measured walk may take her."But indeed he is no friend of mine," he adds, uneasily—"no friend at all; a mere acquaintance—a college acquaintance.""What is his name?" inquired I, nibbling a stick of Lenore's despised chocolate, and asking the question more for the sake of something to say than from any particular interest in the subject."Le Mesurier.""Hem! a good name, isn't it? And what is he doing here?""He is making a walking tour through Brittany with a friend; the friend has gone for two or three days to stay at the Marquis de Roubillon's chateau near Dol, and Le Mesurier is to wait for him here.""Where is he staying at?""The Hôtel de la Poste.""And why did not you bring him up here with you, pray?" asks Lenore, joining in the conversation, and throwing herself indolently on the little hard horsehair sofa as she speaks."Because he would not come," answers Frederic, quickly, and I think I detect a grain of malicious triumph in his voice.Lenore reddens. "I dare say you never gave him the chance.""On the contrary, I said to him, 'I am going to make a call on some ladies at Mdlle. Leroux's pension ; will you come too? I do not doubt that they would be very happy to make your acquaintance.' And he said—stay, let me think, I know he worded it very strongly—'Good God! No! one has enough of women in England.'""Interesting misogynist!" says Lenore, ironically. "What a sweet—what a holy task it would be to bring him to a healthier frame of mind!""I don't really think he would suit you, Miss Lenore," says Frederic, nervously, making the music-stool squeak painfully, as he fidgets upon it; "he has a way of saying more coolly impertinent things to ladies, in a quiet way, than any man I ever came across."Lenore jumps up into a sitting posture, and a mischievous tormenting look flashes into her laughing grey eyes."My dear Frederic! how you excite me! After hearing nothing but how charming I am, from you and such as you, how refreshing to be told impertinent plain truths, in a quiet way too—I like the quiet way; there's something sly and contraband about it—by a handsome woman-hater (I'm sure he must be handsome) in a reddish beard!""He is a man of anything but a good character," says Frederic, lowering his voice, as if the subject he was broaching were one not fit for ladies' ears—"at least, he was not at Oxford."Lenore springs to her feet."Frederic!' she says, impressively, "you have decided me: I will see him!""I don't quite see how, Lenore," say I, still nibbling. "Magniificently as you always affect to despise the shackles of conventionality, you can hardly force your acquaintance upon a poor man who has distinctly declined it."Lenore's two hands are clasped behind her back, as she stands before us. Suddenly she stretches out one of them to Frederic."I don't rare," she says, with a little emphatic stamp; "I bet you half-a-crown that before nightfall I have seen him?""You know I never bet, Miss Lenore.""Oh, no! of course not," drawing herself up very stiffly, and affecting to button a high double-breasted waistcoat; "sacred calling—injurious example to flock, etcetera, etcetera.""Never mind her," say I, recurring to my usual formula of soothing. "Don't you know that ever since that unlucky attack of croup she had when she was a child, when the doctor said she was not to be contradicted, and was to do whatever she liked, that Lenore has never been fit to speak to?""If you see Le Mesurier," says Frederic, not heeding my blandishments, and getting rather pink with exasperation "it will be against his will.""Very likely, but I shall see him!""He is always bored by the society of respectable women: he never makes any secret of it.""What an uncharitable innuendo for a clergyman to make! Every amiable trait you mention heightens my interest in him! Well, I shall see him!""Good-bye, Miss Herrick," cries Frederic, vaulting off his stool (which at parting gives one last valedictory squeak) and picking up his soft dumpling hat—"good-bye, Miss Lenore!""Good-bye, sweetheart, good bye!" replies Lenore, rhetorically. "If you are going to the Hôtel de la Poste—do not, however, put yourself out of the way on my account—but if you are going there, you may tell our mutual friend to expect me about four."Two minutes later the front-door closes on Mr. West, and I hear my sister running downstairs, and calling "Stéphanie—Stéphanie!" at the top of her fresh, gay voice. Stéphanie is the Breton femme de chamber .CHAPTER II.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.LENORE'S bed-room: over the papered walls, a design of blue pea-flowers and giant asters, straggling quaintly, yet prettily; a small bed in a little recess, curtained off; a washhand basin as big as a broth-bowl, and a ewer as big as a cream-jug; a minute, dim looking-glass, hung exactly where it is impossible to get anything more than a suggestion of one's own face in it. Before this glass two women are standing, Lenore and Stéphanie; the first is looking at herself, the second is looking at the first. Lenore is no longer an English lady; she is a Breton peasant. Her waist is girt about with a heavy, black woollen petticoat, gathered into so many great folds at the back and sides, as to make her look as wide-hipped as the weather-beaten countrywoman beside her; a gay little purple shawl-handkerchief pinned over her broad chest. Lenore is a fine woman, not a chicken-breasted pretty slip of a girl; and on her head (from which the chignon has disappeared) she is struggling with dubious success to arrange a head-dress similar to that worn by her companion."Oh, que mademoiselle est adroite! " cries
the latter, with the awful mendacity of a Frenchwoman, when any
contest between truth and civility is concerned; standing, with her hands on the broad hips that nature or her petticoat plaits have given her, looking on."Mademoiselle is not adroite at all," cries Lenore impatiently, recklessly mingling together the Gallic and Anglo-Saxon tongues. "Au contraire , she is very maladroit; coiffezmoi, Steéphanie, je vous en prie ," sitting down on a chair, and letting her handsome awkward hands fall idle into her lap.A Breton cap off is one thing—it is merely a straight piece of well-stiffened muslin or net; on, it is quite a different matter. Stéphanie having, for the space of about two minutes, arranged and pinned and tied, bursts into a cascade of shrill French laughter."Mon Dieu! but Mademoiselle has a droll air! Mademoiselle will pardon her; but, Dame , it makes one pâmer de rire"Lenore rises, and putting her face close to the dark mirror, with its disfiguring side-lights, surveys her changed countenance with eager solemnity. A little border of nut-brown hair, emerging from the crisp white muslin; the broad stiff lappets, turned up and back, and secured with a pin on the crown, making a huge loop at each side of the head. Why describe what every one knows—that most piquant of headgears that the wise Breton peasantry have not yet abandoned in favour of the mock lace and tawdry cheap flowers of our own lower orders?"Je suis belle, n'est ce pas?" she asks, a little doubtfully, peeping over her own shoulder at the grave round beauty of her anxious peach face."Oh, Mademoiselle est belle à ravir; ça va à merveille; on ne peut mieux," &c., &c."But my hands are too white," breaks in Lenore, stemming the torrent of encomium. "What will you sell me your nice red fingers for half-an-hour for? Except on the stage, too, I suppose a peasant-woman does not wear rings" (slipping them off on the washhand-stand—dressing-table there is none). "Well" (with a parting glance), "I think I am unrecognisable, am I not, Stéphanie? I should not know myself if I met myself in a shop-window."As she passes the salon-door, Lenore peeps in. "Do you know me, Jemima?" Jemima gives a great start, and her knitting rolls down unheeded on the parquet:"Why, Lenore, child, what have you been doing to yourself? What a fright you look! Where are you going?""To the Hôtel de la Poste," answers Lenore, shutting the door briskly, and running downstairs very quickly to avoid questions or remonstrances.It is but a five minutes' walk from Mademoiselle Leroux's to the Hôtel de la Poste; but in five minutes there is plenty of time for courage to ooze out at fingers' ends. Lenore's feet, which at first, despite her heavy peasant boots, bore her along quickly enough, subside into a very lagging walk. Her bravery is considerably cooled by the time she reaches her destination. An old shabby diligence is standing in the street; on a bench, beside the hotel-door, three men in blue blouses are sitting drinking cider; in the doorway a disengaged garçon, with a napkin under his arm."Est ce que e'est ici l'Hôtel de la Poste?" asks Lenore, almost timidly, her question being rendered rather superfluous by the fact of the hotel bearing its name in yard-long letters on its front."Oui, Madame. Madame est Anglaise?" with a surprised glance at her dress."Yes, Madame is English. Is there much company here now?""Ca commence, Madame.""Are there any of my compatriots staying here!""There are several, Madame—a crowd in fact.""Did any of them arrive to-day?""Two English messieurs arrived by the voiture from Caulnes. If Madame wishes she can see their malles, qu'on va monter " pointing inwards to a heap of portmanteaux and hat-boxes. Madame enters and inspects them."And where is this monsieur?" she asks, pointing with her linger to a small and rather battered portmanteau, bearing the name of "Paul Le Mesurier, Esq.," in large white letters upon it."That monsieur is in the salle: he has commanded some cognac and a siphon."As he speaks a second garçon emerges from the unseen, bearing a small tray with the identical refreshments indicated upon it. By a sudden impulse Lenore runs forward to meet him."Would it be permitted," she asks, colouring furiously, "for her to take that into the salle?""Mais oui, Madame, si ça vous convient."They both stare at her; one laughs. If she had been by herself, now at this last moment, she would have set down the tray and fled; but retreat is cut off by the first garçon politely throwing open the salle door. With trembling knees and a galloping heart, Miss Lenore enters.A long room, and long table laid for any number of people; bottles of vin ordinaire , napkins, covered dishes full of emptiness, toothpick stands, pots of mangey hydrangeas and geraniums down the middle; a little clergyman with falling shoulders that would not have disgraced a woman or a champagne bottle—Frederic in fact—studying an Indicateur in one of the windows; another gentleman at the table, with the back of his head, and a suspicion of a lion-coloured beard, emerging from the sheets of Galignani .As noiselessly as her great clodhopping boots will permit, Miss Herrick approaches the latter and deposits his cognac at his elbow. But in so doing her hand trembles so much that she knocks down a fork and spoon, which fall with a clink on the floor. As she stoops to pick them up, and as he lifts his eyes, rather irritated at the noise, their glances meet. In Lenore's there is a mixture of expressions: shame, defiance, and above all, and before all, disappointment; for, after all, this interesting woman-hating roué is not handsome: by no one but the mother who bore him could he ever have been thought even good-looking. In the stranger's look there is nothing but extreme surprise—nay, astonishment. Glad, despite herself, to have got off so cheaply, Lenore is beating a hasty retreat, when Le Mesurier's voice overtakes her."I say! Marie! Julie! Manon! Hi! What the deuce is the French for 'Hi?' Call her back, "West! I have tried all the names I know; they are generally all Maries, but she won't answer to that.""Do you want anything?" asks Frederic, looking up innocently from his Indicateur with that beamingly benevolent look that spectacles always give. But his friend, excited by the pursuit of a pretty face, has precipitated himself towards the door, which is left ajar; and passing quickly through it finds himself face to face with the object of his search, who, not having had presence of mind to take refuge in flight, is standing there with her empty tray—red, guilty, and beautiful."West! West! What's the French for 'What is your name?' Do they grow them like this here? Because, if so, we had better import a few. Comment vous appellez-vous, ma chère? " trying to take her hand."What do you mean?" cries the girl in very good English, snatching it away, totally forgetting her assumed character. and looking daggers at the insolent wretch who has dared to call her "Ma chère""Are you English?" asks Le Mesurier, aghast, recoiling a step or two, and his mouth opening in horror as the thought of the admiring familiarities he has just been giving utterance to dart across his brain.At the sound—hardly credited—of a too well-known voice, Mr. West has thrown down his Indicateur , and come running to the scene of action."Miss Lenore!"She looks up at him—a dare-devil light in her eyes—resolute, now that the dénouement has come, to brave it out."Did Monsieur call?""Miss Lenore, are you mad?"She stretches out her hand to him: "Who was right? I have won my half-crown; pay it me!"Le Mesurier turns from one to the other in blank astonishment: "I say, West, what is it all about? what is the joke"You had better ask this lady.""There is no joke, none," says the girl, looking at him hardily, but growing crimson. "I came here to see you. I put on this dress to avoid being recognised; I have failed that is all.""To see me! I am sure I am immensely flattered" (looking excessively surprised, and biting his lips hard to repress a broad smile); "but are you sure that you are not mistaking me for some one else?""It was not that I cared in the least to see you," she says, frowning, and tears of shame rushing to her eyes."Of course not! of course not!" bowing."But when I say that I will do a thing, however foolish, I always do it.""An excellent rule to go through life with," replies he gravely, still fighting with a laugh; "but there are difficulties sometimes in the way of putting it into practice, are not there?""Miss Lenore, Miss Lenore," says Frederic, the veins in his forehead swelling, and all his little pink features working with nervous vexation, "will you allow me to see you home? If we walk very fast—it is not an hour when there are many people about—perhaps you will not be recognised.""I don't in the least care if I am recognised," answers Lenore, stoutly. "I have done nothing to be ashamed of."As she passes out Le Mesurier holds open the door and bows formally and solemnly; and through the Place Duguesclin and the Fossé, Miss Herrick carries the recollection of a rather ugly tanned face, in which she conjectures the contempt that does not appear—carries away with her also the pleasant consciousness of having made an utter and unlady-like fool of herself, without the poor consolation of having done it amusingly."Girl of the Period!" says Paul to himself, thrusting his hands into his coat-pockets as he watches her departure) through the lowered Venetian blind. "Alter all, the Saturday does not over-colour. From all such 'Good Lord deliver us!'"CHAPTER III.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.AT our pension we dine at six; it is a small and select establishment; at present it contains only two families—la famille Lange , and la famille Erreeck . We are la famille Erreck . La famille Lange is French, as may be imagined from its name. It consists of a mother, son, and daughter. The mother is a handsome, black-haired widow, mourning jovially for the four-months-dead M. Lange, in uncovered head and huge jet rosary. Madlle. Péeroline deplores her papa, in white muslin, lilac ribbons, and a wonderful mop of little frizzed curls and rolls. M. César is a youth with an eyeglass, which is for ever dropping out of his right eye—a youth tall of stature, and spotted like the pard. We are all dining together as sociably as their total ignorance of our tongue, and our very partial acquaintance with theirs, will permit. Through the open window, in the still yellow evening, we hear plainly the clump of sabots in the place , the voices—as often as not English or Irish, for Dinan, as is well known, swarms with both—of the passers-by.There are but few disadvantageous circumstances in this world that have not also their advantageous side; and the fact of our being the only people in the house that understand the English tongue enables my sister and me to impart our opinions concerning the company and the viands to each other with a freedom which, to a stranger entering unacquainted with the posture of affairs, would seem startlingly candid."I wish they would let us have our potatoes with our bifteck , as they call it, instead of afterwards and separate, as a side-dish," say I, grumblingly, being hopelessly John-Bullish in my culinary tastes."Look at this nasty fellow!" rejoins Lenore, with a disgusted intonation, directing my attention to her neighbour, M. César, who, with his napkin tucked under his chin, is holding the bone of his mutton cutlet in his hand, and gnawing it. "Do you suppose, Mima, that French gentlemen worry their food in such a cannibalish fashion, or is it a manner and custom confined to bourgeois like these?"My reply is strangled in its birth by the unconscious Madame Lange, who, interrupting for a moment her succulent employment of chasing the gravy round her tilted plate with a crust, inquires, with some volubility, whether "Mademoiselle has made a promenade to-day? Doubtlessly Mademoiselle has already visited Fontaine des Eaux, and Lehon, and the Saint Esprit—an object, in fact, truly remarkable?"My French never was my strong point, even in school days; and the waste of many immense years that have elapsed since my education was completed has not tended to make it stronger. I answer slowly, "Non—pas—aujourd'hui—trés—chaud; " and look piteously across to my junior for succour. But Lenore is still disdainfully eyeing the innocent M. César and his mutton bone."Mademoiselle is right; there has been a chaáleur épouvantable; in truth, she herself has been trés souffrante all day; she has had mal au cœur . My children, however, César and i Péroline, have been to play at the croquet, with the Demoiselles Smeet and the Demoiselles Ammeelton. César loves the croquet; is it not so, my friend?""Mais oui , Maman."I try to say in French that croquet is the best game that ever was invented for bringing the two sexes together—a trite and pedantic remark at best—and, failing to make myself understood, relapse into silence, feeling rather small, and resolving henceforth for evermore to cleave to the vulgar tongue. Lenore laughs malignantly, but does not help me. M. César, having eaten a huge strawberry mash, and more white-heart cherries than the rest of the company put together, pushes back his chair, and requests to be permitted to retire to make his toilette for a promenade à cheval .On the occasion of M. César's making a promenade à cheval we are all expected to group ourselves at the salon windows to watch him, as, in lavender gloves and cream-coloured trousers, he caracoles a little, a very little—for M. César knows that discretion is the better part of valour—under our admiring eyes. His mamma meanwhile is wont to retire into a corner of the room, cover her face with her handkerchief and cry.As he passes by her now she catches his hand: "Great God! César, take care that that wicked animal does not overturn thee!""Fear not, mamma," replies César, doughtily; "I will be careful.""Imagine an Englishman contemplating the possibility of parting company with his horse while ambling along the King's highway!" says Lenore, scornfully. "Hush!" (with heightened colour and brightened eyes), "is not that the hall-door bell?"She runs to the window and looks out."It is Frederic, of course, isn't it?" I ask, finishing my last cherry."Yes.""Anybody with him?""Anybody with him! Of course not! Who should there be?" replies my sister tartly, from which, being a person of very superior intelligence, I conclude that Lenore expected somebody. "We go up to the salon to receive our guest, and Lenore, contrary to her usual custom, runs to meet him with outstretched hand, and without any of her usual insults to his hair, his gait, or his physique generally."Well, Frederic!" she cries, eagerly, and, as it seems to me, expectantly."Well, Miss Lenore!" replies Frederic, growing purple to the ears, as he always docs when his idol flings him a brace of careless words."Don't say 'Well, Miss Lenore!'" retorts my sister, angrily—"it does irritate one so. Have you nothing to say?—nothing to tell me?""Nothing to tell you?" echoes Frederic bewildered, and again lapsing into his former offence. "Why, it is such a very short time since we parted, that it is not likely I can have very much to relate."Lenore turns away with an ill-tempered movement of head and shoulder, and, walking to the window, looks out. M. Céesar is kissing his lavender gloves repeatedly. Madame Lange is screaming out shrill cautions to her son, not to be too audacious. Mdlle. Léroux—an adorable old creature, in yellow cap and luxuriant grey beard—is waving her pocket-handkerchief, and crying, "Au revoir! M. César, au revoir!" Lenore does not appear to perceive any of them."I Suppose," says Mr. "West, addressing me, but glancing timidly towards the window, "that you have heard of Miss Lenore's adventure? I am really in hopes that we shall be able to keep it quite quiet—quite quiet. Le Mesurier fortunately knows no one here, and we luckily met no one but Mr. Stevens on our way home, and I don't think he saw us.""If he did see us," says ray sister, turning round her face again, ornamented with a rather grim smile, "I would not give much for your character in Dinan by to-morrow, Frederic. You will be affiché all over the town as having been parading about, in broad daylight, arm-in-arm with a bonne . I asked you to give me your arm on purpose. Do you know, Mima" (beginning to laugh), "we came toddling along so affectionately, like a pair of cits out on a Sunday afternoon?""You forget that I saw you coming through the Porte," reply I, with severity; "and indeed, Lenore, when next you take it into your head to play a practical joke, I sincerely hope that it may be a more amusing and less unladylike one.""Why did you tell us your friend was handsome?" asks Lenore, abruptly, without paying the slightest attention to me."I did not say so, Miss Leonora; you said so yourself!""I said so myself! Why, how could I? I had seen nothing but the back of his neck.""You said you were sure he must be handsome.""Well, the wisest of us are liable to error," replies my sister, leaning her folded arms on the back of my chair, and gazing calmly over my head at Mr. West. "In that case I certainly erred egregiously: he is hideous—laid à faire peur, as Mdlle. Péroline humorously remarked of you the other day.""In that case, Miss Leonora," replies Frederic, worked up into something like spirit, as I am glad to perceive, by her rudeness, "there does not seem to be very much love lost between you!"Lenore blushes angrily. "Has he been expressing his disapprobation of me to you?" she asks, quickly. "Is it the last new thing in manners to abuse people to their most intimate friends? If so, commend me to the mannerless sansculottes .""I wish you would not get into the habit, Lenore, of larding your conversation with French phrases: it reminds one so much of the Journal des Demoiselles ."This I say in the weak effort to turn the conversation into a new channel: meanwhile I endeavour to signal "Danger!" to Mr. West, cough, and wave the white flag; but as he is not looking at or thinking of me, it is all vain."I don't think he had any idea that I was so much atta—, so intimate, I mean, with you and Miss Jemima, as I am;" replies Frederic, earnestly. "Indeed, Miss Lenore, I must do him that justice.""Who cares whether he has justice done him or not?" cries Lenore, impatiently. "What did he say? what did he say""It really would not at all amuse you, Miss Lenore," (nervously kneading his soft hat); "on the contrary, I am afraid it would make you very angry.""You may as well tell me at once," says my sister, composedly sitting down on an arm-chair and folding her hands in her lap, "because you shall never leave this room alive if you don't!""Well, since you insist upon it—please, Miss Jemima," (turning piteously to me) "please, Miss Jemima, bear witness that it is not my fault—that Miss Lenore has brought it on herself—he said (I daresay he did not mean it) that—that—he could not have believed that any English lady could have lowered herself to such an extent as to do such a thing!''The blush on Lenore's face grows painful—spreads even to her soft creamy throat."Oh, indeed! Anything more?""He said," pursues Frederic, deceived by the apparent quietness with which his hearer takes the unflattering comments made upon her, "that if he had ever caught his sister playing such a trick, he would never have spoken to her again as long as she lived.""Oh, indeed! what a loss for her! Anything more?""He said he did not doubt that you were very good fun, if one went in for that sort of thing, but that you were not his style.""Not his style! am I not?" cries Lenore, rising suddenly from her chair, quivering from head to foot with passion; "and what is his style, pray? Whatever it is, thank God that I am not like it. Frederic, I wonder that you are not ashamed to insult me by repeating such speeches! Jemima" (turning eagerly to me), "you can have no conception how ugly he is; I only wish you could see him. Little eyes like a pig's, and a huge nose, and such a villanous expression! "What a fool I am to care what he says! I don't care—it amuses me immensely—ha, ha! Wretch! I wish he was dead."And to prove how little she cares, she bursts into a tempest of tears, rushes out of the room, and bangs the guiltless door behind her."There, Mr. West," say I, not without a certain sombre triumph, "perhaps you will pay some attention to me next time." And I rise with dignity, and shaking out my brownholland tail, prepare to follow and comfort my afflicted relative. As I reach the door I canon against Madame Lange."Péroline, Péroline! where are thou, dear friend? Come, and try thy new body. Pardon, Mademoiselle, a thousand pardons!"CHAPTER IV.WHAT LENORE SAYS."To the day of my death I shall always hate Stéphanie!" says Lenore, lamentably, sitting leaning her elbows on the little round table in the middle of her bedroom, having broken off suddenly in the writing of a letter, to thrust her hands in among her crisp untidy hair, and give way to a fit of angry despondence. "If I had not seen her going clacking about the house in that linsey petticoat and that vile cap" (nodding her head to where the unlucky garments are lying on her bed), "it never would have entered my head to make a mountebank of myself.""If I were you," I reply severely, in answer to this jeremiad, "I should buy the whole suit from her, lay it up by me, and look at it whenever I next felt inclined to make a fool of myself.""It would not do badly for a fancy ball," says Lenore, with a
sudden change of tone, from the lachrymose to the lively, rising
briskly from her chair, and walking towards the bed; "much more
piquant than the everlasting Fires and Waters, Nights and Days, Louis
Quartorzes, and Marie Stuarts, that one is so sick of; I never yet
knew a very ugly woman go to a fancy ball that she did not go as Mary
Queen of Scots." An austere silence on my part. "I have a good mind to
try" (with considerable cheerfulness of tone). "I must get
Stéphanie to give me lessons in the art of arranging the cap. Let me see; how did it go? It looked quite simple.'' Still silence on my part. "One thing is certain, one would he quite unique; one would not run the risk of meeting one's double.""I should not have thought," say I, stiffly, unwilling that the wholesome lesson my sister has learned should so soon be forgotten—"I should not have thought that your associations with that costume were so pleasant that you would be in any hurry to put it on again."She covers her face with her hands: "How brutal of you to remind me of it, just when I had succeeded in diverting my thoughts from it for a moment!" I say nothing. "You know, Jemima, I had meant it to be just a spirited little freak; and it all fell so flat, so tame. Pah! it is a thing that one could not think of without blushing, if one were in a dark room by one's self, with the shutters shut.""I should think not.""Shall I ever forget," cries Lenore, drawing away her hands from her crimson face, and clasping them together—"shall I ever forget my feelings, as Frederic and I sneaked out together, with our tails between our legs, and he held open the door so ceremoniously for us? If he had had any good feeling he would have laughed, would not he, Mima? If he had not been a monster he would have tried to look as if he thought it a good joke, but he did not; he was as grave—as grave as I am now, which is putting it as strongly as I possibly can.""Frederic told you that he hated respectable women," say I, gravely; "so that his want of cordiality was, at least, an indirect compliment." She stands with her eyes moodily downcast, but does not answer. "He evidently thought you respectable," I said cheerfully—" evidently; that, at least, is a comfort, is not it? I don't see how he found it out; it must have been intuition."Neither does this thrust move her to speech. I begin a fresh sentence: "Frederic said——""Frederic!" interrupts Lenore, impatiently stamping, and relieved at having found another object beside herself to vent her rage on. "Little Marplot! If he had never been born, or if he had not been there, or if he had had sense enough to hold his tongue, it would have all gone off well enough, as I meant it. I should have seen Mr. Le Mesurier—not, heaven knows" (with great contempt), "that he is the least wortlworth seeing—and he ——" She pauses."Well, what about him?"She draws in her breath, and her eyes flash spitefully: "If a wish could have killed him at that moment, as he stood there bowing and sneering, and saying that he was afraid there must be some mistake—he knew as well as I did that there was no mistake—he would have been as dead as a doornail now!" She stops, breathes hard, and clenches, and again unclenches, her hand. "'I'm sure I'm immensely flattered. What is the joke, West? An excellent plan, no doubt."I hear her muttering over to herself these, as I conjecture, fragmentary speeches of her new acquaintance, while her cheeks grow ever more and more hotly red."Console yourself," I say, with vicarious philosophy. "I imagine that he did not hear your name; you were so thoroughly disguised by your dress that he probably would not recognise you if he met you; and the world is wide—we shall hardly be so unlucky as to happen upon him again.""Do you think not?" answers Lenore, with hardly so much exhilaration of tone as might have been expected. "I don't know about that.Brittany is not so very large, and everybody goes to see the same places. His route will be pretty sure to be the same as ours—Morlaix, Quimper, Auray.""We must hope to be either a few days before or a few days behind him at each place. There is no use in anticipating evils." A rather demurring silence. "Our great difficulty," I continue, cheerfully, " will be to avoid him as long as he remains here; but we must find out from Frederic every day in which direction he means to walk or drive, and take care to walk or drive in the opposite one.""I shall do nothing of the kind," cries Lenore, quickly. "You may please yourself. One's life would not be worth having if it were spent in dodging a person about a tiny place like this. As to meeting or not meeting, we must trust to chance; and, for ray part, I should rather enjoy it than otherwise.""In that case," reply I sarcastically, "I would call again at the Hôtel de la Poste. Next time I would go as a garçon; it would be still more spirited.""He could not have looked more scandalised than he did even if I had," replies Lenore, bursting into a short vexed laugh. "After all"—brightening up a little—"when I think of the things I might have done, and did not, the enormity of the thing I did dwindles surprisingly." I shake my head dissentingly. "I only wish I could have the chance of letting him know how direly disappointed I was in him," says Lenore viciously. "I wonder shall I ever?""I sincerely hope not.""If I do you may be sure I will not lose it," she says, with an angry emphasis. "I know nothing that would give me such pure, such lively pleasure."This is on the day following Lenore's escapade. In the evening old Mademoiselle Léroux gives a little party, accord-ing to her lights. When we enter the salon , about half-past seven, we find most of the company already assembled. The piano is open (it is generally locked), and Mademoiselle Péroline, with her hair newly frizzed, and her muslin flounces mightily goffered, is executing a surprising fantasia, wherein the air loses itself perpetually in variations that seem to have nothing to say to it, and reappears anon, when least expected, like a train out of the Box Tunnel. Mademoiselle Léroux, in a fresh burst of yellow ribbons, is in the act of shutting the one open window. A youth with an unearthly deep voice, in bright purple kid gloves and a vivid green tie, is turning over the leaves for Péroline. Round the table are sitting five young girls, sisters—English, certainly; insolvent, probably. They are of the usual type of British dowdy—red cheeks, hearty laughs, big flat waists. Among them—Jack among the maids—sits M. César; his eye-glass is in his eye, and a piece of tapestry-work in his hand; an English couple, and a French gentleman in drab thread gloves, whose name never transpires, complete the gathering. Lenore, whom I have had great difficulty in inducing to appear at all—Lenore, who, if she is in a company not congenial to her, or if she has nothing to say, maintains that absolute silence which is unluckily tabooed in society—throws herself, after the first salutations and presentations have been gone through, into a corner of the sofa, and keeps her head bent dumbly over her work. I draw a chair next to M. César and the moderator lamp, and ask him halting and ungrammatical French questions about his Berlin-wools. The fantasia comes to an end."Are you fond of music, M. César?" I ask, having exhausted the subject of the wools."Yes, mademoiselle I love it passionately.""Do you play or sing yourself?""No, mademoiselle; I draw.""César sketches from the nature," says his mother, coming up, laying her fat "white hands on her son's shoulders, and smiling in her plump débonnair widowhood over his head. "My child, show to Mdlle. Erreeck that pretty little drawing that thou madest yesterday when thou wentest on horseback with thy uncle to Corseul.""But, mamma, it is but a bagatelle!" replies César with proud humility. His modesty being overcome, the sketchbook is produced."Is it not of a surprising resemblance?" asks his parent, proudly smiling, and leaning forward in order to feast her eyes."Monsieur has not yet perhaps quite finished it," I say, hardly able to contain my laughter, as I examine, with admiring gravity, the woolly trees, little niggling black shades, and houses utterly out of the perpendicular. M. César's mode of treating foliage is singularly wormy . Then, seeing that I have not said what was expected of me, I added: "A thousand thanks, monsieur! It is indeed a charming talent!""But it is nothing!" rejoins César, with a bow and a deprecatory wave of the hand.At this moment Stéphanie enters, bearing a tray, and thereon weak tea and sponge-cakes, supposed to be à l'Anglaise . As she hands these delicacies to me she stoops over me, and says, in a confidential half-whisper:"There are two messieurs downstairs, come to make a visit to mademoiselle.""Two messieurs!" cry I, surprised; while the five Misses Brown prick the attentive ear—rarer than green peas in January are resident men at Dinan—"and who are they Stéphanie?""One, mademoiselle, is the little gentleman who comes nearly every day—the little ministre Anglais with the spectacles—and the other, never, mademoiselle, have I seen him before; he is a tall, a very tall, gentleman, with a great red beard."I look involuntarily across at my sister; her head is raised, her work is dropped—she is listening."Very well," I say, with a sigh of impatience; "if Mademoiselle Leroux will have the goodness to permit it, ask them to walk up here."As I speak I lay down the chip I am plaiting on the table, and cross over to Lenore."Stéphanie tells me—" I begin."I know," she answers briefly—"I heard.""And don't you think," continue I, with doubtful suggestion, "that it would be better for you to be out of the way while they are here? They cannot stay long, and it can hardly be pleasant for you to meet that man.""It is neither pleasant nor unpleasant," she answers, doggedly. "I shall not stir; not for the world would I give him the satisfaction of thinking that I was ashamed to face him."In two minutes more they have entered—Frederic first, shyly smiling, small and priestly; and behind him a large, grave, and unpriestly stranger. When first the brightness of the lit room smites his eyes, when first the smell of hot tea and cakes assails his nose, when first the clack of the many women's tongues—French and English—attacks his ears, he shows an involuntary inclination to turn and flee, but, overcoming the temptation, advances, with the air of a martyr, to where we are sitting. Glad of the opportunity of gratifying my curiosity afforded by Frederic's tremulous and deprecatory presentation, I look up at him. So this is Le Mesurier! Surely, surely, I should never have known him from my sister's angry description. His eyes are not large certainly, but I have very frequently seen smaller. His nose, on the contrary, is certainly not small, but I have very often seen larger. As for the villanous expression she mentioned, if it is anywhere it must be about his mouth, which is lying perdu under great plenty of tawny hair. He looks at me with the cursory superficial glance with which men always regard me; looks at me because I am standing opposite to him—because he has just been introduced to me—not in the least because he thinks mo worth looking at, which indeed I am not. Lenore bows also, and, but for her utter unsmilingness and her extreme redness, there would be nothing differing in this from any ordinary introduction."In what country is it the mode to pay morning calls by moonlight?" I hear her brusquely ask in a low voice of Mr. West, who has seated himself on the sofa beside her."Indeed, Miss Lenore" (leaning his two hands on the top of his green umbrella, and beaming wistfully at her through the blue haze of his spectacles), "we did not mean to have come in at all. I sent up a message to ask whether your sister would be good enough to come down and speak to mo for a minute; but you know I am not a great adept in French, and I suppose the maid must have mistaken my meaning.""You might easily have corrected the blunder without coming up," retorts my sister, ungraciously."Do you think so?" asks Frederic, humbly. "Perhaps; but indeed it would have been difficult, you see; old Made-moiselle Leroux overheard something of it, and she came down herself—and—I am sure she meant it most hospitably—but she, I may say, almost drove us up before her.""And he! " (glancing irefully in Mr. Le Mesurier's direction, who, in bitter misery, and looking unspeakably cross, is trying to make Madame Lange understand that he does not comprehend one word of what she is saying to him). "And he! what brings "him here? It is execrable taste, and I have a good mind to tell him so.""Pray, pray don't!" cries Frederic, eagerly; "if anybody were to blame, it was I. I asked him whether he would mind walking with me as far as the Porte St. Louis, and he said 'Oh, no, not in the least.' He wanted to have a cigar, and it was the same to him to walk in this direction as in any other; all he stipulated for was that he should not have to go in ." Lenore is still working; she gives her thread a vicious tug, which snaps it. "Indeed, Miss Lenore, he had no more thought of seeking your acquaintance than you of seeking his."This mode of expression is unlucky, as he feels as soon as it is out of his mouth; but Lenore, fortunately, does not seem to perceive it."He had no intention, then, of paying us the honour of a visit?" cries Lenore, looking not much appeased by the information, but, on the contrary, rather more exasperated than before."Not the least," replies Frederic, earnestly; "you may reassure yourself on that head—nothing was further from his thoughts.""He has, then, a second time been forced into our company against his will," retorts the girl, with angry eyes."He is not fond of society," replies Frederic, evasively; "he says himself that he is totally unfit for it.""There, at least, I have the happiness entirely to agree with him," cries she, drily.Mr. Le Mesurier has at length succeeded in making Madame Lange understand that hers are to him dark sayings."Monsieur does not comprehend? A thousand pardons; it is unfortunate, but I talk not the English. Péroline, my friend, thou hast learned the English when thou wast at school; come hither and talk to Monsieur."But Péroline shakes all her crêpéd head."But no, mamma; Monsieur would but laugh at me!""Have you given your message, West?" asks Le Mesurier abruptly, joining his friend, and looking nearly as much goaded to madness by the women's shrill clatter as a mad hull by red cloth—"because, if so, I should say we had better not intrude on these ladies any longer."Thus reminded, Frederic comes over to impart his errand to me; and Le Mesurier, having parried by dumb show all old Mademoiselle Leroux's offers of chair, sponge-cakes, eau sucré , remains standing silently by Lenore."What is this message?" she presently asks, abruptly, not raising her eyes from her work, and seeming to address her question rather to the air than to her neighbour."Something about a boat, I believe," replies he formally, his careless glance wandering away from her to West, and his foot beginning to tap an impatient tattoo on the floor."What about it?" still more brusquely."Some fellow here of the name of Panache, or something like that, has lent him one, and he invites you and your sister to have a row up the river to Lehon in it to morrow.""Oh! I should have thought that errand might have kept till the morning?""So should I," he answers drily; "so I told him."A little silence."Does he want you to go, too?" she asks, moved by some sudden impulse, lifting her eyes and looking at him, hardily yet shamefacedly."Me!" (with surprise)—"not that I am aware of.""Oh!" dropping her eyes again."Why do you ask?""I had no particular motive" (nonchalantly). "I never have a motive for any of my actions.""Take a tea-kettle; light our own fire—there must be plenty of sticks in those great chestnut-woods—have tea. "What do you say, Lenore?" cry I, anxious to interrupt a téte-à-tête that must "be so distressing to my sister."Charming!" answers Lenore, ironically. "A fire that one lights one's self never lights; the kettle invariably topples over, and the water of the Rance tastes of old iron. But what are such trifling drawbacks? Let us go, by all means!"CHAPTER V.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.A STEEP path, and steps cut on the hill's rough face, from the blinding white highroad to the water's edge. A beautiful brown river washing the feet of the granite height, on which Dinan sits like a queen; Dinan's walls, and towers, and spires looking down upon its lovely Rance: the Rance, that a little lower down will go stealing under the worn stone arches of the old bridge, and a little higher up came flowing beneath the great viaduct, that, with its ten giant arches, strides across the valley. At the landing-place, a little narrow four-oar, with a sharp nose, is lying, and around it four people talking."Of course, if you wish it, Lenore, we must go," I say, resigned but gloomy, as I stand beneath a huge buff sunshade which casts a becoming yellow light on my interesting face, clad in a dust-coloured gown, and girt about the waist with a leathern bag—the impersonation of travelling Englishwomen. "But if we all get in, we shall inevitably swamp it.""It is only intended for three really —two to row and one to steer," says Frederic, setting down a very large basket, under which he has been staggering along all the way from Mdlle. Leroux's. "But I thought that, perhaps, if Miss Jemima did not mind, one of us—the one that is lightest—Miss Jemima, for instance, might sit at the bottom of the boat, on shawls and cloaks, and so forth, in the bows.""It reminds one rather of Raphael's cartoon of 'The Miraculous Draught of Fishes,' does not it?" says Le Mesurier (for he is the fourth person), laughing as he jumps into the little skiff, and deposits in it an immense stone jug of claret-cup. "The proportion in size between the Apostles and their boat is something like the present case, Miss Herrick, if you are to sit in the bows, I'm afraid it will have to be upon the claret-cup.""Frederic!" cries Lenore, from the lowest step, on which she is sitting, lifting up calmly commanding eyes and a little round cleft chin towards him; "suppose you solve the difficulty! Suppose you walk; it is charming along the towing path; no wind, no flies, no nothing!""Of course, if you wish, Miss Lenore," looking rather blank, and still panting from the effects of his wrestle with the basket, "but—""You can add some more butterflies to your collection," continues my sister in a wheedling voice. "I daresay you have got your green gauze scissors in your pocket.—Do you know" (bringing the whole battery of her dimples to bear upon Mr. Le Mesurier), "he catches butterflies with a pair of green gauze scissors, and sticks pins in their poor fat bodies; how he reconciles it to his conscience and his bishop I don't know, but I suppose, like fishing, it is a form of cruelty purely clerical.""It is rather hard to turn poor "West out of his own boat, isn't it?" replies Le Mesurier, looking down on my sister more collectedly than men are in the habit of looking; nor, indeed, am I able to detect one grain of admiration or approbation in his cold blue eyes. He looks at her much as he looked at me. "I say, "West, you weigh, I regret to say, at least five stone less than I do; you take my place. I really and truly don't care a straw about it ."This last sentence, emphatically spoken, is intended for an aside, but I, who have a happy knack of overhearing things that I am not meant to overhear, catch it. Frederic's piece of information about his friend, "the society of respectable women always bores him—he makes no secret of it," recurs to my mind. He is doing his best to shirk two eminently respectable women at the present moment."Lenore!" cry I—reddening, as I feel, under my yellow umbrella—"let us row ourselves; we have, at all events, got the mainstay of the entertainment—the tea-kettle and the claret-cup." But Lenore frowns and turns away."Perhaps, after all, I had better walk," says Frederic, uncertainly, glancing with uneasiness towards my sister's averted head. "Perhaps, after all, it is the best arrangement.""Just as you please, of course," replies Le Mesurier, looking rather disappointed, while a little smile of contempt plays about his mouth and the half-inch of tanned cheek that his beard leaves visible. Lenore rises."As soon as this amiable contention as to who should show most alacrity in trying to avoid us is ended, perhaps some one will help me in," she says rather sharply, and with a certain elevation in air of nose and chin. Le Mesurier gives her his hand: he does not rush forward to do so, as most men would in her case: does not tumble over his own legs in his precipitancy, like poor Frederic: only he is standing nearest her, and therefore he gives it her."Put your foot exactly in the middle; walk steadily; go to the stern; you had better steer?" he says, shortly and rather austerely.Half an hour afterwards, Frederic and his green umbrella are tramping disconsolately along the towing-path, and we are being sculled up-stream by an unwilling gentleman, upon whom we have forced ourselves, and who is longing to be rid of us. The sun pours down in broad golden rain upon the blinding bright river. Through the viaduct's great arches, towering up against the June sky, we see Heaven's sapphire eyes looking. The air is astir with the winged families that live only a day, but whose one clay is all joy. The sombre chestnut woods, that darkly clothe the steep slopes, run down to the river's side, as if hastening to drink; white-capped women are kneeling by the edge, washing linen, and beating it viciously on stones with wooden shovels; no wonder that there are jagged holes in one's cotton gowns when they come home from the laundress. Long blue dragonflies sail slow and kingly among the flags and flowering rushes that grow along the river—that grow again, the same, only wrong way up, in the vivid clear reflections. "We are each of us rather silent, partly because we are hot, partly because we are none of us in a very good temper. Lenore leans over the side, and drags her bare right hand through the water, making our little cockleshell lurch unpleasantly."You had better sit straight, Miss Herrick; it takes very little to destroy the equilibrium of this sort of boat," says Mr. Le Mesurier, rather drily. Lenore does not appear to hear; she only leans a little further over, and admires her own slim fingers, that look unnaturally, lucidly white seen through the watery veil."For Heaven's sake, sit straight!" cries he a second timed, but much more energetically, as the gunwale of the boat comes almost on a level with the water. Lenore draws herself slowly up."Were you speaking to me?" she asks, with provoking coolness; "how could I tell? You said, 'Sit straight, Miss Herrick.' I am not Miss Herrick!""Miss Lenore, then. I will call you what you please, only for Heaven's sake sit still.""I wonder you ever go in a boat if you are so nervous," says my sister tartly."I am not nervous , as you call it, when I am with people who behave rationally," replies he coldly; "but I know that a mere touch will upset a boat of this kind, and I also know that if it did upset, one of you two would infallibly drown, for I could not possibly save you both.""One of us? Which of us?" cries my sister, and I see a mischievous devil come into her eyes as she begins to laugh, and to rock violently from side to side; "I must see which.""Lenore! Lenore!" cry I in an agony, clutching the sides of the boat, "stop, for Heaven's sake! I beg, I implore. Lenore! Lenore!"But all in vain. Lenore only laughs and rocks the more. Mr. Le Mesurier says nothing, nor can I see the expression of his face, as I am sitting behind him; he only turns the boat's head towards shore, and half a dozen vigorous strokes of the oar brings us swish through a great company of stiff bulrushes to land. Mr. Le Mesurier jumps out."Miss Herrick," he says gravely, "I shall be delighted to row you home this evening; but as I cannot answer for your life for five minutes, as long as your sister is in the boat, I should be very much obliged if you would get out now.""Perhaps I was foolish," reply I, grasping my umbrella, and scrambling out on the oxeyed bank, "but I have such a horror of drowning!"CHAPTER VI.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."Now, Miss Lenore, I am quite at your service," says Le Mesurier, resuming his scat, taking the oars again, and pushing out into mid-stream. Lenore hangs her head, and dries her fingers with her pocket-handkerchief, but does not answer. "It was no doubt very spirited of you, trying to upset the boat because your sister asked you not," continues he sarcastically; "but as she did not seem to see it in the same light, I thought that the kindest thing I could do was to land her.""Jemima is a coward," replies Lenore, pouting; "the only kind of boat she likes is a great broad-bottomed tub, that one might play leap-frog in without upsetting.""I should think it would be the pleasantest kind of craft to go out boating with you in," rejoins he with rather a grim smile; "but now, as I said before, I am quite at your service; upset me as soon as ever the spirit moves you.""You give me carte blanche?""Carte blanche!""But if I did upset the boat," says Lenore, half laughing, half vexed—"I don't say that I am going—but if I did , your first care ought to be to pull me out.""Ought it?""Oughtn't it?""I don't know what it ought to be," replies Paul, pulling leisurely along through the shining flood; "I know what it would be.""What?""To pull myself out.""You are like a man I heard of, who said one day to another man out hunting, 'Don't look behind, there are two women in the ditch; and if you look, you'll have to stop and pick them out.'""I was the man."Lenore laughs. "You would let me drown then?""Undoubtedly.""Well, you are the only man in the world who could sit there and tell me so to my face," cries the girl, angry scintillations flashing from her superb eyes, and the ever-ready colour rushing headlong to her cheeks."If you were to upset the boat," replies Paul, calmly, looking with intense disapprobation at his beautiful com-panion, "I should know that it was your deliberate intention to commit suicide, and I hope I have better manners than to run counter to any lady's plainly-expressed wishes.""I have a great mind to try," answers Lenore, looking down into the clear brown depths, where her own image lies, tremulous and shimmering, and then into Le Mesurier's impassive face."Do, by all means; only let me pull you a hundred yards farther on. It is five or six feet deeper under those poplars.""After all, I think I won't," says Lenore naively, her anger subsiding, as soon as she sees that it neither alarms nor awes, nor even very much amuses him. "I don't know how it is with other people, but with me, the mere fact of being given leave to do a thing, takes away all desire to do it.""From the little I know of your character, I should imagine that you did not often wait to be given leave.""Not very often," replies the girl, gravely, looking away beyond him, to where, on the Rance's right bank, Lehon Abbey lifts its roofless Avails and grey arches to the sky. "Once, long ago, when I was little, I was very, very ill—I'm not over-strong now, though you would not think it to look at me—and the doctor said I was to have whatever I asked for, for fear of bringing on a fit of coughing if I screamed; and the consequence was that if ever I wanted anything I always threatened to "break a blood-vessel, and straightway got it.""I should think that that threat had lost its efficacy now," says Paul, looking incredulously at the girl's full womanly figure, and at the plump though slender dimpled hand, that droops over the boat side—at the round cream-white column of her proud throat"No, it has not," she answers, shaking her head; "theprestige of my delicacy still remains, though the fact no longer exists, and I of course am careful to keep up a tradition which tends so much to my own interest, as it enables me to have my own way in everything.""What a very bad thing for you!" says Le Mesurier, brusquely. "If I were your sister, I should set up a rival blood-vessel.""It would be no use," answers Lenore, laughing, and swinging her broad straw hat to and fro. "Jemima is one of those hopelessly healthy people who will live on, without an ache or a pain, to a hundred, and then tumble downstairs or get run over by an omnibus, natural means having proved utterly inadequate to kill her."They are slowly sliding past Lehon, past the ivied bridge, past the steps down to the waters, wherein the Lehon monks used to bathe their holy sleek bodies in the bygone summers, in the quick stream: pious Sybarites, who reconciled God and Mammon as never anyone has done since then."It would have been very different if papa had lived," continues Lenore, beginning to dabble again, unremonstrated with this time. "He used to make us get up at five o'clock on winter mornings to go out walking by starlight with him; used to make us stand in a row before him, with our hands behind our backs, to repeat the Catechism; and if we stumbled in our 'Duty to our Neighbour' or 'I desire,'—Jemima always stuck fast in 'I desire'—made us hold out our hands to be caned.""What a thousand pities that he died!" says Paul, almost involuntarily resting on his oars, and staring straight from under his tilted hat at his vis-à-vis face, his keen eyes undazzled by all the pretty tints and harmonious hues that feast them."Do you think so?" cries Lenore, looking up from the contemplation of her own face in the water. "Now, on the contrary, I think it was such a mercy that he did; I never feel tempted to question the wisdom of Providence's decrees in that particular instance.""What a truly filial sentiment!""Don't look so shocked," answers the girl, beginning to laugh again. "I was but five years old when he died, and the only very clearly-defined association that I have with him is the biting his hand one day, and being shut up in the black-hole because I would not say I was sorry. I was not sorry; I never was sorry; I am not sorry now.""All the same, I still regret that he died.""Why?""Every woman needs some one to keep her in order," replies he, gravely, as if giving utterance to a sentence against which there can be no appeal. "Until she has got a husband—her natural and legitimate master—she ought to have a father.""Natural and legitimate master!" repeats Lenore, scornfully, drawing up her long throat. "Did I hear aright? That would be the subjection of mind to matter, instead of matter to mind.""I can't say that I agree with you" (very drily)."There is not that man living that could keep me in order; I would break his heart, and his spirit, and everything breakable about him, first.""I have no doubt that you would try.""I should succeed. I have got papa's temper; they all tell me so—Jemima—my other sister—everybody" (speaking very triumphantly)."You say it as if it were matter for pride. It is astosnish-ing what things people pride themselves on. I believe there was once a family which piqued itself on having two thumbs on each of its hands.""I should pity the poor man who undertook to keep me in order," says Lenore, folding her hands in her lap, while delicious ripples of laughter play about her lips and cheeks at the thought of the sufferings that await her future owner."Of course, you never mean to marry?""Of course, I do, though" (getting rather angry, and colouring faintly). "Do you think I mean to be an old maid?""I think," replies Paul, bluntly, "that, considering the utter docility which with you would be a sine quâ non in a husband, you run a very good chance of being one."Silence for a few moments; no sound but the "swish" of the oars—the cool wash of the water against the keel; then Lenore, resolute, woman-like, to have the last word, recommences."Confess," she says, leaning forwards towards him a little, and emphasising her remarks with her forefinger; "confess that there is not a more laughable, degrading sight on the face of the earth than a woman in a state of abject subjection to her husband!""Confess," replies Paul, leaning forwards a little also, and also speaking with emphasis, "that there is not a more contemptible, degrading sight on the face of the earth than a man in a state of abject submission to his wife!""You may laugh," cries Lenore, loftily, carrying her head very high, and looking defiantly at him; "but I maintain that there is not a more contemptible creature in creation than a patient grizzel!""And I maintain," retorts Paul, looking back with equal defiance, "that there is not a more pitiable reptile in creation than a hen-pecked husband, if such a being ever existed, which I have some difficulty in bringing myself to believe."They have both raised their voices a little in their eagerness. Three Englishwomen riding by on donkeys, their draperies extending from head to tail over those ill-used animals, turn their heads. M. Dunois, the banker's son, taking his afternoon canter on a big bay horse along the towing-path, turns his also."The aborigines are astonished at our vehemence," says-Paul, recollecting himself; "and really," with a careless laugh, "as we neither of us have at present a victim to test our theories and wreak our cruelties upon, we need not excite ourselves over it, need we?" Lenore's sole answer is a vivid blush, of whose birth she herself could give no account."What on earth has come to the girl? Le Mesurier says to himself, staring at her with the open unconscious stare of utter surprise; "alternately making very silly remarks, and getting as red as a turkey-cock over them. I wonder does she smoke? As likely as not. Shall I ask her? At all events, I wish she would let me.""How long are you going to stay at Dinan?" inquires Miss Lenore, presently, with an abrupt change of subject.Paul shrugs his shoulders."God knows!""What an unnecessarily forcible expression!""Do you think so? It is what the shop-keepers in one part of Spain answer if you ask them whether they have such-and-such wares in their shop; they are too lazy to look, so they say, 'God knows!'""Long, do you think?" pursues the girl, perseveringly, not heeding his apocryphal little anecdote."Until my friend gets tired of his friend M. de Roubillon's château, with all its absurd little turrets and weathercocks, I suppose,"replies Paul, being not entirely free from an old-fashioned insular contempt for everything Gallic."What is your friend's name?""Scrope.""What is he like?""Oh, I don't know;" looking vaguely round at the water—the chestnut trees—the flags, for inspiration. "I'm a very bad hand at describing; he is much like everybody else, I suppose.""Like you , for instance," rather maliciously."Good heavens! no," breaking into a short laugh; "he would be flattered at the suggestion!""You mean that he is good-looking?""Oh yes; he is all very well" (rather impatiently)."And how soon do you imagine that he will be here?""Oh! in two or three days, I should hope.""You should hope! "—with a little accent of pique—"you don't like Dinan, then?""It is all very well, for France," replies Paul, magnificently; "but it is rather like a penny bun—a little of it goes a long way."Lenore bends down her small head, heavily laden with great twists and curious plaits of crisp brown hair, and ceases from her questionings. It is Lo Mesurier's turn to catechise."Are you so very fond of Dinan, then, Miss Herrick?""We are fond of any place that is cheap," replies Lenore, shortly. "Any place where mutton is sevenpence a pound seems to us prettier and pleasanter than one where it is tenpence.""Oh, really!" looking and feeling rather awkward, and not exactly knowing how to take this manifestation of unnecessary candour."We are real Bohemians, Jemima and I," pursues the girl, resting on her hand her small downy face—downy with the wonderful bloom of life's beautiful red morning—a bloom as transient and unreplaceable as the faint grey dust on just-gathered grapes. "We pay our debts, but otherwise we are quite Bohemians. We go and stay at places out of the proper season; we drive all over London in omnibuses, and go down the Thames in penny steamboats, and do a hundred ether uncivilised things. One summer we spent at Boulogne; I liked that, Jemima hated it.""I daresay.""Oh! thatétablissement/" cries Lenore, clasping her hands together in childish glee at the recollection, while her speech trickles off into pretty low laughter. "What fun it was? and how happy all the wicked people looked!—everybody walking about with somebody that did not belong to them.""No wonder you enjoyed yourself," replies Paul, sarcastically, rather disgusted; not, as I need hardly say, at the fact related, but at the narrator."Look at Jemima gesticulating from the bank," cries Lenore, happily ignorant of the emotion she has produced; nor, indeed, is the idea that any one can be disgusted with her very much prone to present itself to her mind. "How eloquent an umbrella can be when wielded by a cunning hand! What a great deal Jemima's is saying!""It is saying 'Land!' I imagine, isn't it? Let us land," implies Paul, with some alacrity, his thoughts turning more affectionately towards claret-cup than towards a prolonged tête-àtête with Lenore."Let us land," echoes the girl, with the slightest possible unintentional sigh.CHAPTER VII.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.THE flags and the thick green rushes make way for the little boat; on either side they part, and through them and over them she slides, smooth and slow, to shore."What have you done with my cockatoo?" cries Lenore, putting one little high-heeled shoe on the prow and springing lightly to my side. "Have you mislaid him on the way, or has a 'lily white duck come and gobbled him up?'""Neither," reply I, rather morose at having been defrauded of my water-party, "he is up in the wood picking sticks; he has been gathering you a nosegay as big as a coachman's on a drawing-room day, as we came along.""I wish I could break him of that habit," cries Lenore, petulantly; "it is a bore having to carry them, and a still greater bore having to say 'Thank you' for a great posy of dandelions and buttercups.""Poor West!" says Le Mesurier, with a half contemptuous laugh; "he shall give them to me; I like dandelions.""Oh, so do I," replies Lenore, quickly. "I'm wild about flowers; they are the only things that do not deceive us—as I once overheard a girl saying to her partner at a ball.""We had better keep in sight of the boat," I say, with my usual excellent common-sense, "or the Dinan gamins will be sure to steal it.""Have you been here long enough," asks Lenore, address ing Mr Le Mesurier over the top of my head, "to discover now cordially these interesting natives hate us English? Even abandoned infants of three and four throw stones and ugly words at us, only luckily one does not understand Breton Billingsgate.""We spend a good deal of money in making ourselves in every quarter of the globe; it is a little way we have," replies Le Mesurier, with languid interest, as he stalks along, a martyr to circumstances, with a great stone jug in one hand and a kettle in the other."It is too hard upon us poor out-at-elbows English—you must know we are all out-at-elbows here," continues Lenore—"wasting our substance in clothing these Bretons and giving them better food than their wretched galette , and then getting pelted for our pains.""One always gets pelted, literally or metaphorically, when one tries to do one's neighbours good," replies Le Mesurier, misanthropically; "better leave it alone."We have turned off from the towing-path, and into the chestnut wood. There is no undergrowth, nor do the trees stand so close together, but that there is pleasant space for Walking shadily beneath them. A little way ahead of us we see a small grey smoke and little shoots of fire rising straight upwards through the windless air, and beside it, Frederic on his knees, with his cheeks puffed out, like a trumpet player or a wind-god's, blowing the flame."There's devotion for you!" cries Le Mesurier, laughing, and indicating Mr. West with his kettle. "Poor West! making himself into an improvised pair of bellows!""Dame! as they say here, how ugly he is," cries Lenore, bursting out laughing."What base ingratitude," says Le Mesurier, casting up his eyes theatrically to the chestnut boughs; "a man ruins his trousers kneeling on damp grass, puts himself into a ridiculous attitude, and runs the risk of getting congestion of the lungs for you, and all you say is—what was it? did I hear aright?—'Damn! how ugly he is.'""I said French Dame , not English," retorts Lenore, still I laughing; "there is a very great difference in force between the two.""Dame is about equivalent to our 'Lor,'" I say, sententiously, "and I should imagine nearly as vulgar.""One can use it with a pleasant arrière pensée of swearing, you know," says my sister, "without the wickedness.""I think that will do now," cries Frederic, looking up at us with bland triumph from his kneeling posture, his cheeks reddened with the exertion of inflating them, and his eyes watering from the smoke; "the sticks were rather green.""You looked an impersonation of Zephyr, as we came along," answers Lenore, banteringly; "didn't he? Didn't we say so, Mr. Le Mesurier?""We did, all of us; there was not a dissentient voice," replies Le Mesurier, inattentively, fighting with an immense yawn, and his eyes fixed upon the stone jug."Will you run and fill the kettle? Frederic must make a nice fiat place for it to sit upon," continues my sister; "you know" (looking up at him with a sort of sleepy coquetry from under her eyes) "that it was only on the condition that you were useful that we allowed you to come at all"It may be my imagination, but I cannot help fancying that our new acquaintance elevates his eyebrows almost imperceptibly at this speech."I don't think that Mr. Le Mesurier would have broke his heart if we had not let him come," I say tartly, in irri-tated surprise at Lenore's want of perception. So speaking I kneel down, and with a chafed spirit begin to unpack the basket and cut bread-and-butter. Lenore flings herself down on the grass, and lying all along among the wood-flowers, watches with a malicious smile Frederic, who has begun again to blow his flagging fire. The three English ladies on donkeys pass along the towing-path; they turn their blue-veiled heads towards our little encampment, and stare. The youth whose pleasing task it is to goad their jackasses into fitful and momentary gallops, stands stock still, with wide hungry eyes fastened on the bread and marmalade."Frederic has overblown himself," says Lenore, laughing, "he has blown all his fire away. Mima, dear, you must go and pick up some more sticks for him."I am preparing to rise and obey with my usual tame docility, when Mr. Le Mesurier, who has just returned with his full dripping kettle from the Rance, interposes:"Miss Lenore—your name is Lenore, not Lenora, is not it?—may I ask you one question?""So as it is not how old I am, or whether my chignon is all my own hair," replies Lenore, with a sort of uneasy smartness."It is neither; I don't want to know either," he answers, gravely."What is it, then? Say on," throwing her head back a little, to be able to get a good look at him."Why do not you go and pick up sticks yourself, instead of sending your elder sister?""Elder sister!" cry I, with a mirthless laugh. "Please don't challenge respect for me on that head; I had rather be treated with contumely for evermore, than reverenced for such a triste superiority""I do not go myself," replies Lenore, not listening to me, but still looking steadily up at him, "because I make it a rule never to do anything for myself that I can get any one else to do for me.""Oh, indeed! Thanks," turning away."I set no manner of store by those little every-day virtues," continues Lenore, disdainfully thrusting out her red under-lip; "running on other people's errands, carrying their parcels, ordering dinner, sitting with your back to the horses—any one can do them; they are a great deal of trouble, and there is no credit to be got out of them.""Anybody cannot sit with their backs to the horses, for it makes some people sick," replies Le Mesurier, laughing.He has thrown himself forward, full length on the ground, in one of those carelessly graceful attitudes that the British gentleman affects; his hat is on the back of his head, and his feet are kicking about among the catchflys and ragged robins."Now, if it were some big thing," continues my sister, flushing, as she, having raised herself from the grass, leans her back against a chestnut trunk, "I could do it—I know I could; that is, if I had the chance, and if there were plenty of people to look on.""And cry 'Hooray!' like the little boys on Guy Faux day. Would you ladies mind my smoking one cigar?""I could have driven in the cart to the Place de la Revolution, like Madame Roland," continues Lenore, beginning to march up and down, with her head up, and her hands behind her back; "standing up all the way, in a white gown, with little red carnations on it, and my long black hair hanging down my back; I could have smiled back at the yelling sans culottes ——""I'm afraid you could not get guillotined nowadays if you were to be shot for it," returns he coolly, holding his cigar suspended between his fore and middle fingers; "it is next door to impossible to get hung.""I could have stabbed Marat in his bath," pursues Lenore, clenching her hand upon an imaginary knife. "Yes, stabbed him as he sat there, unshorn, sick, with a dirty cloth about his head——""I'm afraid if you stick Beales or Bradlaugh in their tubs, you will only get ten years for it, commuted to two, if you make love to the chaplain," replies Le Mesurier, resolutely prosaic."I could have——""You could have hammered Sisera's temples to the floor or sawn off poor tipsy Holofernes' head," interrupts Mr. Le Mesurier, rather impatiently cutting short my sister's heroics. "I know what you are going to say; perhaps you could; for my part, of all the characters known in history or fiction, I dislike those two strong-minded females about the most.""I know exactly the kind of woman you like," says Lenore, stopping suddenly in her tramp, tramp, and looking down with contemptuous pink face on her prostrate and sprawling adversary."I don't well see how you can," replies he, throwing away the end of his cigar, and burying one hand in his tawny beard. "You have never seen my womankind; you have never seen me with any woman.""I did not even know that you had any womankind," she answers, a little inquisitively.He does not gratify her curiosity. "What is exactly the kind of woman I like?" he asks, raising his cold quick eyes to hers."Amelia in 'Vanity Fair,'" she answers promptly, with a pretty air of triumph."I knew you were going to say that," he says calmly."But it is true, is it not?" inquires she eagerly."Not in the least; you never made a worse hit in your life.""She was dollishly pretty; she cried on every possible occasion; she allowed every body she came near to bully her; she had not two ideas in her head. With all these qualifications, how could she fail to be charming?" inquires my sister with withering sarcasm."I like her better than Jael," says Le Mesurier, doggedly."So do I," cry I, tired of keeping silence, and clattering the tea-cups."What is your opinion, West?" asks Le Mesurier, trying to extract the cork from the claret-jug with his fingers. "I say, is there a cork-screw anywhere about? Which is your beau idéal of feminine excellence—Heber the Kenite's amiable wife, or Amelia Osborne?""Frederic has no beau idéal of feminine excellence," answers Lenore for him, with an ironical smile; "he hardly knows a woman when he sees one; his bride is the Church. Let us come to tea; the steam is beginning to lift the kettle's hat off at last."As I have before remarked, the dinner hour at Mdlle. Leroux's pension is six o'clock; so it is at the Hôtel de la Poste; indeed, the great event of the day happens throughout Dinan at the same hour. To avoid, therefore, losing our daily portion of ragged beef, raw artichokes, and tripe (as half-past five has already come chiming through the chestnut boughs from the town clocks), we are compelled rather to hurry up the conclusion of our al fresco feast. We give the rest of our French roll-and-butter, and the remainder of our tea (which, thinks to the Rance and Frederic, has an agreeably mixed medicinal flavour of old iron, alluvial deposit, and smoke,) to the donkey-boy afore mentioned, who, careless of his fair charges, and leaving them to the wild will of their asses, has been haunting us as a young vulture haunts a battle-field. We stand on the flowered bank, prepared to re-embark. The boat lies so still, so still on the windless tide, like a young child asleep in the sun; near the other bank a man naked to the waist, and standing up to his middle in water, is pulling bundles of rotten ill-odorous flax out of the river."I shall take an oar going home," says Lenore, with decision. "I can row.""Please don't," cry I nervously; "you know you always catch crabs, and the last time that we went out boating on the Seine, at Rouen, you caught such a big one that you tumbled backwards over the seat and all but upset us.""The oars were too short," she answers, looking displeased at this allusion; "it might have happened to any one.""One crab will be fatal to us to-day," says Le Mesurier laconically, as he stands holding the boat's head steady for us to get in."If people will make boats no wider than knife-blades or paper-cutters they cannot blame me if they upset," returns she carelessly, giving him her hand and preparing to step in. To my surprise—I might almost say alarm —by the very hand she gives him he detains her."Miss Lenore, if you get in will you promise to sit still?""I never promise," she answers lightly, leaving her hand peaceably in his. "When I was a child I never would promise to be a good girl, because I know I never should be.""If you will not promise you really must not get in.""Must not !" cries she, giving her head an angry toss. "Who says must not? Must not is an ugly word.""Not so ugly as must in a woman's mouth," getting rather angry too. "May I ask whose boat this is?" loftily."I think you said M. Panache was the name of the fellow; but I am not a good hand at French surnames.""If it is M. Panache's boat, what right or authority have you over it, may I ask?""None whatever," he answers quietly, "except possession, and that is nine points of the law.""Did he lend it to you ?""On the other hand, did he lend it to you ?""Mr. Le Mesurier, I'm not joking.""Miss Lenore, I'm not joking.""What business can it be of yours?""I do not wish to see your sister drowned," with an invidiously perceptible accent on the two words."You do not care whether I drown or not?" snatching away her hand, and flashing annihilating looks at him. They do not seem to do him much harm."We discussed that question fully before," he answers, rather bored."Please promise, like a dear child," cry I, coaxingly, from the bows, where I am seated uneasily under my yellow umbrella."Be rational," says Le Mesurier, looking at her gravely, yet with a suspicion of laughter about the eyes. "I promised to row your sister home; is not it only natural and Christian that I should wish to spare her the abject terror she suffered this afternoon?""I will not promise," says Lenore doggedly, and breathing hard. "I will not be dictated to by a stranger. I will walk home."So saying, she turns sharply away, and begins to walk quickly down the glaring sun-baked towing path."Mr. Le Mesurier, Mr. Le Mesurier!" cry I, jumping up, and almost bringing on the catastrophe about which we have-been squabbling; "let her have her own way. She has-never been thwarted in her life; we have always let her have her own will from a child!""For fear that she would break a blood-vessel if she had not," replies he smiling. "She told me so as we came along. Miss Lenore," raising his voice a little, "Miss Lenore! we throw ourselves on your mercy.""Come back, come back," cry I excitedly, shaking my umbrella; "you will get a sunstroke!"But Lenore is too indignant to answer.CHAPTER VIII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.THE blandness born of after-dinnerhood is upon all Dinan; everybody is as suave as fed lions; a child might play with them. The moon is holding her great yellow candle above the town, and ugly black night skulks away in corners. Om the other side of the Place St. Louis, the old priest is sitting at the bottom of his garden, reading his breviary by moonlight. His white house's green shutters, that have been closed all day, to keep out the dust and glare, are just opened to let in the evening cool. The mysterious family in the large yellow house, a little lower down, who always go out driving in a ramshackle old close carriage, with all the windows up, about sundown, are setting off on their nightly expedition. The immense shadows of their horses are running up the face of the Pension Leroux: the heads and ears reach to the salon windows. Madame Lange, César and Péroline are out. They have gone faire de la musique chez M. le Capitaine O'Flannigan —a broken-down Irishman, who tells the credulous natives that he has been in the Guards, and who, with his numerous progeny, lives in the graceful retirement of an entresol in the Rue de Saint Malo. The Herricks are therefore in undisputed possession of the salon . The piano belongs to Madame Lange, and she mostly locks it when she goes out. She has forgotten to do so to-day, and Frederic is committing piracies upon it. Like most little men, with small puny voices, he is fond of ferociously warlike and rollicking Bacchanalian songs, on the same principle, I suppose, which often induces a Hercules or a Samson to express in music his wish to be a butterfly,
"In his love's bosom for to lie,"or a daisy, or a swallow. Frederic has just been giving faint utterance to heathenish berserk sentiments, such as that to fight all day and drink all night are the only occupations really worthy a Christian gentleman's attention; and now, leaning forwards on the music-stool, and peering near-sightedly through his spectacles at the score, he is piping,"Soho! Soho! said the bold Marco!"Mr. Le Mesurier—he is here too, it is a few days after the tea picnic—is leaning out of the window, smiling to himself and whistling inaudible accompaniments to the singer. He is not gigantic enough to wish to be a butterfly, and too big to insist upon being a buccaneer. So he does not sing at all. Jemima is smiling, too, and beating time with head and foot, as she knits. Lenore is not in the room at all; she is sitting on the front-door step, rather to the disgust of Stéphanie, whose favourite seat it is, where she sits and chatters rough guttural Breton to her neighbours, in a clean stiff-winged cap, when her hard day's work is done. Lenore is chatting to nobody: she is only staring at the moon."Does your sister sing?" asked Le Mesurier, turning away from the window."Yes; rather well—when she chooses ," replies Jemima, rhythmically, still nodding time."Would she sing now, if one asked her?""Probably not, but I can but try. Lenore! Lenore!" (going to the window and looking down). "Come in out of the damp, child; you'll catch your death of cold.""Never did such a thing in my life, my dear.""What are you doing?""Only baying at the moon, as Mademoiselle Leroux's poodle did last night!""Come up here and sing.""Could not think of superseding the present able performer.""He has stopped," puts in Paul, leaning his arms on the sill, and craning his brown neck out. "He is exhausted. The bold Marco takes a great deal out of a fellow, does not he, West?"As he speaks he turns away again, laughing, and so laughing forgets the request, about which he had never been much in earnest. A quarter of an hour passes. Frederic is still singing; the billiard balls' gentle click from the café next door mixes with his voice."Lenore! Lenore!" cries Jemima, rising, knitting in hand, and leaning a second time out of the wide casement—"Onora! Onora! her mother is calling.She sits at the lattice and hears the dew falling,Drop after drop from the sycamores, ladenWith dew as with blossom, and calls home the maiden.Night cometh, Onora"—says Le Mesurier, spouting."Onora, alias Miss Lenore, went down the place towards the fossé five minutes ago.""Alone?""Alone.""In that demi-toilette gown?" (with a horrified accent)."Was it a demi-toilette gown?" asks Paul, with the crass ignorance of mankind."I mean without any shawl, or wrap, or cloak of any kind?""She went just as she was when she was sitting on the doorstep.""Let me run and bring her back," cries West, eagerly, jumping up and snatching his hat, prepared to rush forth on his quest with devouter haste than ever Sir Galahad showed in the pursuit of the Holy Grail."Oh, you know she never pays the slightest attention to you," answers Jemima, a little impatiently, forgetting her politeness in agitation, "nor to me either, for the matter of that. Mr. Le Mesurier, I think she minds you more than most people, I don't know why; would you mind trying to persuade her to come in out of the dew?""Delighted!" says Le Mesurier, with a ready lie, walking towards the door; "and if fair means fail, am I to employ foul?"Lenore is not in the fossé . The grey towers of Duchesse Anne's castle rise beside it like a feint dark dream; black as Erebus, quiet as death, the tree boughs spread above him; beneath them, on a black and silver path, he walks along—walks along slowly, enjoying his cigarette, and in no particular hurry to overtake his Holy Grail. On and on to the Place du Guesclin, and there, a long way from him, he sees the white glimmer of a woman's dress. He walks up to the glimmer: he has found his Holy Grail."Your sister sent me to ask you to come in out of the dew," he says, rather stiffly, and delivering his message with the exactitude of a Homeric messenger. He has come up rather behind her; she did not perceive his approach."Tell my sister to mind her own business," she cries, startled and angry."I suppose she thinks that you are her own business," he answers, coldly."At all events, I am not yours ," she says, rudely, yet laughing. Without another word he turns to go."Let her catch her death of cold! No great loss if she does!" he says to himself, beginning to light a second cigarette. He has not gone three yards when he hears a step behind him. A charming face, with little waves of moonlight rippling over it, smiles up at him."Why are you going?" she asks, in a low voice, as if saying something she was half ashamed of."I am not a spaniel, nor a Frederic West .""I was rude, I suppose" (hanging her head).No answer."I often am, I fancy.""Very often" (emphatically)."It is my way.""It is a very bad way.""I do not think it is quite all my fault either," she says, almost humbly; "it is partly theirs —I mean Mima's and Frederic's, and my other sister's. When I was a child, if I said anything rude they only laughed, and thought it clever. I wish they had not, now.""So do I.""It makes people hate one a good deal," says the girl, naïvely. "This year wk went to a ball that the 5th Dragoon Guards gave, and several of them did not ask me to dance once , because I had said things about them. I told one that he was like a pig set up on his hind legs; so he was, but he never came near me all the evening in consequence.""Poor fellow!" says Le Mesurier, laughing. "You could hardly blame him.""You are not angry now—you are laughing!" cries Lenore, joyously. "Tell me"—coming confidentially close to him—"is the bold Marco still saying Soho?""He was when I left.""Do not let us go home, then; let us sit on this bench and talk."So they sit on a bench with a back to it, in the deep shade cast by a double row of young lime trees. The heavy sweet lime flowers sway above their heads, sway so low as almost to touch their lips and cheeks. The lights from the café and the Hôtel de la Poste opposite make little red reflections on their clothes and faces. Three Englishmen are coming back from fishing with rod and basket in their hands; two very tall Englishmen and a very little one. At something that the little one says they all laugh uproariously. It seems a sin to speak above one's breath in this holy moonshine. Two Frenchmen and three women saunter by in the deep shade; it takes a little effort to count how many there are. Whether they are old or young, pretty or ugly, who but a bat can tell in this fragrant gloom?"What are you thinking of, Miss Lenore?" asks Paul, presently, peering a little inquisitively into his companion's face, as she gazes at the stars that are trembling like heavenly shining fruits between the dusk tree boughs."I am thinking," she answers, a little dreamily, "of how the Rance is looking now, at this minute , down at Lehon, as it laps against those ivied steps where the monks used to bathe.""Shall I row you down there to see?" he asks, banteringly. She springs to her feet in a moment."Will you? Do you mean really ?" she cries, eagerly. "Ah, no!" (her voice falling with a disappointed cadence). "I see by your eyes that you did not mean it—that you were only tantalising me."He feels her thin draperies wafted against his knees in the slow night-wind, as she stands before him; the breath of the lime flowers comes passing sweet to his nostrils. It is all but dark."I did not mean to tantalize you," he answers, simply. "I will take you, and welcome, if you wish; only what will your sister say?""She will say, 'Lenore, are you mad?" She always says that. Perhaps I am mad; I sometimes think so.""But what time of night is it, do you suppose? Is not it nearly bedtime?" he asks, taking out his watch, and trying to decipher the hour by the little crimson gleams from the café."Bedtime!" she cries, impatiently. "I feel as if I shall like never to go to bed again as long as I live."'What has night to do with sleep?'""All right, then—come along," says he, recklessly, seeing that he is in for it, and that it is not his business to find his companion in prudish scruples, which do not seem inclined to occur to her. A quarter of an hour more, and no woman's dress glimmers white from the shaded bench in the Place Du Guesclin; it is glimmering, instead, in M. Panache's little cock-boat on the broad bright Rance. Death's lovely brother, Sleep, is ruling over everything; even the river sleeps, and no passing breeze breaks its slumber. The moon comes up behind the chestnut woods, and the water lies smooth as glass; while the trees, and the tremulous grasses, and the great squadrons of broad ox-eyes—yellow sun-disks with white rays round them—live again in the black depths, where the moon also lies drowned, like a pale bright maiden. They are floating along so stilly, so stilly, on the opaline flood. The little boat hardly moves. Lenore is sitting in the stern. The red cloak Paul brought her is drooping from her shoulders; pearly lights are playing about her hair and her grave fair face and her wonderful eyes."If one were fond of her, one would be in the seventh heaven, I suppose," says Paul cynically to himself. But even though one is not fond of her—even though one disapproves of her—even though she is not one's style—yet flesh is weak, and blood is blood; and in cool manhood, as in hot youth, blood still tingles, and pulses throb, with the seductive enervation of night, proximity, and great fairness."Shall I sing?" asks the girl, almost in a whisper—"Sing! sing! what shall I sing?The cat ran away with the pudding-bag string.""By all means, if you like.""What shall I sing, really ?—English, French, German, Italian——""Whatever you please. The smallest contribution thankfully received."She leans her round white elbow on her lap for a moment or two, and her head on her hand, in reflection; then the pensive look fades out of her face, and a dare-devil smile flashes over it."You are a civilian, are not you?" she asks, abruptly."I am now . Why?""You cannot take my song personally, that is all. Listen; I am beginning."This is Lenore's song, as it rings gaily out over the dumb woods and waters. Most of you, my friends, know it well enough:"Oh que j'aime les militaires!J'aime les militaires;J'aime leur uniforme coquetLeur moustache et leur plumet.Je sais ce que je voudrais.Je voudrais étre cantinière.Avec eux toujours je serais,Et je les griserais.Près d'eux, vaillante et lègère,Aux combats je m'élancerais——"She breaks off abruptly."Do you like it?""Immensely.""That means, not at all.""It is a song that I was always particularly fond of, and I think the line in which you express your intention of making your friends drunk peculiarly happy," he answers, ironically.She looks down, half-ashamed."The ideal woman would not have sung such a song, I suppose?""Probably not.""Tell me," she cries, impulsively, "is the ideal woman clothed with flesh?""What do you mean?""Is she some living, breathing woman, that you have in your mind's eye?"He hesitates a little, and also reddens—unless the moon belies him—a very little."Since you ask me point-blank—well, she is."The girl turns her fair head aside, and droops it over the stream, through which she draws her hand listlessly."Tell me what she is like; I wish to know," she says, presently, very softly.Silence for a few minutes; then Paul begins:"She is not at all clever—of the two, I think, she is rather dull. She does not say much, but she always thinks before she speaks.""What an intolerable prig she must be!""She talks about things, not people. She is very loving——"Pooh!" interrupts Lenore, contemptuously. "What woman is not? It is our besetting sin. What a list of attractions! But tell me—tell me, is she handsome—as handsome as—as—as I am?" she ends, laughing confusedly, and growing scarlet.The water falls drip, drip, in long lazy drops from the idle oars."Are you handsome?" he asks, gravely—not with impertinence, but as though wishing for information—and so asking, looks at her long and steadily in the moonlight—a familiarity of which she cannot complain, as she has brought it on herself. "Well, yes" (drawing his breath rather hard), "I suppose you are."She laughs again, but constrainedly."But waiving the question of my beauty—is she handsome—pretty?""I do not know," he answered, slowly. "Some one asked me that question the other day, and I said I did not know. I do not."Lenore leans back in the stern with the rudder string in her hand."Describe her to me. I will tell you in a moment whether she is or not."He stares absently over her head, at the viaduct, striding gigantic across the valley—at the town, with its house roofs white as silver sheets in the moonshine."She is small," he begins, slowly, "very small! not more than five foot one, and thin—rather too thin, perhaps," his eyes resting as he speaks, for an instant, with reluctant admiration on the superbly developed figure of his vis-à-vis . "Her eyes are——," he stops short in want of an epithet."Bright?" suggests Lenore."Bright! No!" cries he, energetically repelling her suggestion with scorn. "I hate your bright eyes. They always look metallic ; hers look at you as if they were looking through a mist, and they have a dark shady line under them.""Belladonna!" suggests Lenore again, with supercilious brevity."Some one said to me the other day that they were like the eyes of a shot partridge," he continued, not heeding her; "so they are.""What a lackadaisical dying duck sort of idea!""She is pale—as pale as—as—as—a lily!" he continues, unable to find a new white simile. "That clear yet opaque look——""Like a hard-boiled egg," interrupts Lenore, scornfully."Not in the least like a hard-boiled egg!" retorts he, nettled, and the river of his eloquence suddenly dried."I do not know whether you are aware of it," says the girl, with a heightened colour, "but you have described a person in every respect the exact opposite of me."He gives a half smile."Have I? I apologize. I really was not aware of it. I only did as you bid me."He pulls a few yards further on; no sound but the oars turning in the rowlocks—the plash, plash, of the smitten water. Lehon Abbey lifts roofless gables to the nightly sky, and Lehon Castle its round dim towers, whence never a knight will look again. The water fairies have been supping on the river to-night; they have left their rare white waterlily cups and broad green platters behind them."Stop rowing," cries Lenore, imperiously, "I want to gather some of those lilies."He obeys. Motionless they lie among the great round leaves, and white chalices. She leans back over the stern, and pulls with her strong white hands at the tough long stalks."What will you do with them?" asks Le Mesurier, indolently, his unwilling eyes taking in the lazy grace of the half-recumbent form, of the large white outstretched arm, at which a happy moonbeam is catching; "they have not at all a nice smell in water—faint and sickly—they will only die."No answer."What do you want with them?" he asks, rising, he does not know why, and stepping over the little seat that intervenes between them."You will see," she answers, briefly.They are so wet—so wet, as they lie in her lap. He watches her as she dries one dripping bud with her pocket-handkerchief, and then with quick deft fingers places it closed and sleepy in her hair."Do you like it?" she asks in a half-whisper, raising her eyes to his, with a slow bright smile.How still it is! Not a sound; everything is asleep; only the wakeful moon sees his cold quick eyes flash. He would have laughed this morning if you had told him that Lenore Herrick could make his heart beat as it is beating now."What would you have me say?" he answers, in the same key in which she spoke. "If I did not like it, would you have me tell you so?""Yes.""I do like it," he says, half angrily; "you know I do; you knew I did before you asked me.""Take it, then," she says with a low laugh, holding it out to him. "Keep it as a memento of the fast girl who would go out boating with you, against your will, at ten o'clock at night—of the girl who may he very good fun, if one goes in for that sort of thing, but is not your style ."He reddens."What do you mean?""You will not have it? "Well, then, here it goes!"As she speaks she flings the blossom away, far out into the river. It falls with a little flop, and a little gleam of broken silver into the water, and so floats down to Dinan."What do you mean?" he cries, eagerly. "How impa-tient you are! I did want it; I held out my hand for it. I will have it yet!"So saying, he snatches up one of the oars, and makes frantic lunges with it at the little valueless prize. It is exactly three inches too far off for him to reach. Paul's arms are long, and he hates being beaten. Unmindful of the tittuppy nature of little cock-boats, he leans farther and farther over the side. It is almost within his reach—it is quite within his reach; he has got it—has he, though?"Take care! take care!" cries Lenore, wildly; but it is too late. In another moment, M. Panache's boat is floating away, bottom upwards, after the water-lily, and two people are struggling and splashing in the moonlit Rance.CHAPTER IX.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.WHEN Paul rises to the surface, sputtering and blowing unintentional bubbles, his first thought naturally is, "Where is Lenore?" At about three yards' distance from him he sees something white. He swims towards it, and catches at it; it is Lenore. Feeling his grasp, she flings out her two arms wildly, and clutches him spasmodically round the neck."Loose me!" he cries, breathlessly, still sputtering. "Lenore, Lenore! you will drown us both!"But Lenore is too much blinded and deafened by the water to pay any heed to his remonstrances. She only clasps him the more convulsively. With a strong effort he manages to unlock her arms, and grasping her firmly with one hand, with the other strikes out for shore.Swimming in one's clothes is never pleasant, but swimming in one's clothes, with only one hand at one's disposal—the other being occupied in supporting a perfectly helpless inert woman—is more unpleasant still. Happily it does not last long; the adventure is not of heroic dimensions. Not half a dozen yards from the fatal lilies the bulrushes have advanced their thick green standards, and where the bulrushes are water is shallow and footing easily gained. The flags and the rushes swish against his face and buffet it rudely as he scrambles through them, half dragging half carrying his companion through the deep river mud and the chilly midnight waters. Having deposited her in a limp bundle on the bank, he sits down beside her and pants. As for her, she is a little stunned by the shock of the plunging water; that is all. She is not wont to faint, and has not fainted now. Presently she sits up, and, pushing her dripping hair out of her bewildered eyes, says gaspingly:"Don't scold me; it was you that did it.""I know it was," he answers, as distinctly as the chattering of his teeth will let him."Well, you did not let me drown after all, you see," she says, with a smile, that, though forlorn and drenched, is still half malicious."Well, no; not this time."They look at one another for a minute, then both burst into a simultaneous fit of violent laughter."What a ridiculous drowned rat you do look!" cries she, politely."The same to you," he answers, grimly, as he sits dripping dismally on the dry June grass."What have you done with your hat?""The same as you have done with yours, I fancy.""And Mima's Connemara cloak?""Half way back to Connemara by now.""I have lost one of my shoes," says the girl, half crying, "and the other is full of mud."She looks up at him piteously, as innocently as a baby might do. The Rance has washed all the coquetry out of her eyes, on whose long lashes the river drops are hanging."How shall I ever get home? I shall have to hop all the way.""Perhaps I might carry you," he says, not unkindly, leaning forwards to examine the unlucky shoe; while his nose and his beard and his short hair water the buttercups and refresh them."Carry me!" she cries, derisively. "Why, I weigh nine stone eight? I might as well talk of carrying you!"He is not particularly anxious to carry her, and does not repeat his offer."How cold I am!" she says, shuddering. "How it runs down one's back, does not it? I wish one's clothes would not stick to one like court-plaister. I am sure it will be the death of me.?"By-the-by," cries he, a brilliant idea striking him, and beginning to search frantically in his coat-pockets (we, in Dinan, never dress for dinner, therefore he is still in his shooting-jacket), "if it is not gone—no, thank God! hero it is!"—drawing out a little silver flask—"take a pull at it, it will keep the life in you.""What is it?""Brandy.""Will it make me drunk ?" she asks, gravely, holding it in her hand, and trembling all over like a smooth-haired terrier on a frosty day.He laughs. "No such luck. It would be the best thing that could possibly happen to you, if it did; but it will not, I am afraid. Go on."She obeys, and drinks. It burns her throat, but her teeth become a shade less vocal. He follows her example; and then, jumping to his feet, gives himself a prodigious shake, like a Newfoundland who has just deposited the recovered stick at his master's feet."Come on," he says; "we had better be getting home as quick as we can. Let us pray that we may meet no one! I feel uncommonly small, do not you?""Uncommonly!" replies Lenore, with assenting emphasis."Give me your hand, and let me help you up."She does as he bids her, and as she rises to her feet a fresh deluge rustles, drips, pours down from her."How heavy water is!" she says, staggering. "I have half the Rance about me. I feel like the woman who was killed by the weight of her jewels.""Stay; let me wring out your clothes a little for you."He kneels before her on the grass, and with both hands twists and strains, and wrings her thin flabby gown and her soaked petticoats, as a laundress might."There, is that better?""Yes, thanks. I think so—a little," replies she, doubtfully."Come on, then,"—employing the invariable phrase with which a Briton embarks upon any undertaking, from a walk With his sweetheart upwards to a Balaklava charge. Without more speech they begin to tramp along the towing-path, leaving behind them a track as of a thunder shower or a leaky water-cart. On to the landing stage, up the steep steps to the highway. At the corner of the silent shining road a great rock abutting casts a sharp black shadow; and out of this shadow, and into the light come two people, running in disorderly haste."Your sister and West to the rescue," says Le Mesurier, speaking for the first time since they set off homewards."My long lost Frederic!" says Lenore, with grim merriment; "flying to the river-side to poke about for my dead body with drags and a boat-hook. How I wish we could avoid them! How small and thin, and drowned I feel?""Lenore, is that you? where have you been? how wet you are! what has happened?" cries Jemima, incoherently, scorning punctuation, and precipitating herself upon her sister."Jemima, my sin has found me out," replies Lenore, solemnly. "I made Mr. Le Mesurier take me out on the water; and in order to pay off all old scores, he upset me.""And himself into the bargain," says Le Mesurier, laughing."Jemima, your Connemara cloak is just about arriving at St. Malo; so is my hat, so is Mr. Le Mesurier's.""And you are not hurt, only drenched?" cries West, tremulously; and, forgetting his shyness, lays an audacious hand upon one of the shoulders that are glimmering, so wet and shining, through her transparent gown."Not hurt, only drenched," she echoes, laughing cheerily and eluding him while her face smiles out, pale and pretty and altered, from the thick frame of heavy damp hair that cleaves so closely and lovingly to cheeks and throat. "See, Jemima!" exhibiting a small muddy foot, "my right shoe has gone the way of all shoes.""A very blessed upset!" says Paul to himself, half an hour later, oracularly shaking his head, as he scrambles into dry clothes at the Hôtel de la Poste. "She was doing her best to make a fool of me, and she had all but succeeded."CHAPTER X.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.A WEEK has gone by. Lenore's teeth no longer chatter. She is quite dry again, and has bought a new hat seven times more coquettish than the drowned one. She keeps, however, a tender memento of her adventure with Paul in the shape of a sore throat and trifling cough, which not even the unwonted dose of cognac has kept off. Breakfast at the Hôtel de la Poste is over. The twenty or thirty commercial travellers and clerks, who, according to the wont of French hotels, share that feast with the visitors and tourists, have disappeared again into private life. Paul is sitting in the little dark salon , writing a letter to his sister, with a sputtering pen. Paul's caligraphy is rather like that of John Bell, of the Chancery Bar, who wrote three several hands: one that no one but himself could read, one that his clerk could read and he could not, and one that nobody could read. Paul is just staring hard at his production, and wondering what on earth was the mystic remark that he had made at the top of the second page—searching his mind for the history of the past week, in order to be able to give a guess as to what it was likely to have been, when the door opens, and admits Mr. West."Le Mesurier!""Well!" (not looking up).West enters, and walks over to the window."Well!" says Paul, again, abandoning the idea of reading over his letter, and beginning to fold it."West advances to the table, and lays a small tremulous hand on his friend's broad shoulder."Le Mesurier, I—I—have a favour to ask of you.""My dear fellow, do not say that it is to lend you five pounds," cries Le Mesurier, in affected alarm. "I have had severe losses myself lately; I have a heavy engagement to meet to-morrow—""Oh, pooh! it is not that, of course; but—but—I have something to say to you.""Say on.""Not here " (glancing round uneasily); "we might be overheard.""By whom? The noble army of shop-boys dispersed itself half an hour ago, and the landlord informed me yesterday that the only English words he knew were, 'Sneep, snap, snorum, a cockolorum!'""Would you mind coming outside for a moment?" says Frederic, pertinaciously."All right. Give us a light."He leisurely folds and directs his letter, and then takes out and lights a cigar, whilst West stands beside him, shifting feverishly from leg to leg, and rolling up his dumpling hat into a hundred weird shapes. They emerge from the hotel door; the voiture is just starting for Caulnes, drawn by a pony and a huge white horse, both in the worst possible spirits. A man, all clad in white flannel, is stepping into the interior; a fat priest, with his limp cassock clinging about his legs, climbing up into the dusty banquette ; the blue-bloused driver mending a rift in the rotten rope harness; and over all, the broad sun laughing down, and the lime flowers from the Place du Guesclin shaking out their lovely scent on the morning air. The two men cross the street, enter the place , and sit down on a.bench—the very one on which Paul and Lenore sat in the dark, a week ago."Well!" says Le Mesurier expectantly, after they have sat three minutes without speaking."I am going home—to England," says Frederic abruptly."Have you brought me out here to tell me that?" asks Paul, banteringly.Silence!"So you are going home, are you, eh?" pursues Paul, carelessly. "So will I, I think. Let us toss who shall pay—heads or tails," throwing up a napoleon into the air and catching it.But Frederic's thoughts are far enough away from heads or tails. The diligence is just moving off. "Allez! Allez !" cries the driver, flicking with his long whip the old white horse's sharp back. The bells give a cracked jingle; off they go!"I am naturally particularly loth to leave this place just now," says West, his spectacles mournfully fixed on the lessening vehicle."Are you?" says Le Mesurier, staring at him obtusely. "Why? and why naturally ?"Frederic pulls a delicate lime leaf that is fluttering just above his nose, and tears it into thin green strips."I thought," he says, blushing and stammering, "that you must have seen that there was—was something between me, and—and—and—Miss Lenore."Paul shakes his head. "Indeed I cannot say that I ever noticed anything of the kind," he answers bluntly, feeling rather angry, he cannot imagine why."Did not you?" (pushing his spectacles down on the bridge of his nose, and gazing over them with meek surprise at his friend,) "I fancied that my attachment—my—my devotion —must have been patent to the most superficial observer.""My dear fellow, of course they were," says Paul laughing, not ill-naturedly. "But you said something between you and Miss Lenore. Now the word between implies that there are two to the bargain.""And you think that there is only one to this bargain," says Frederic despondently, looking down, while the blush fades out of his face, and the gay motes run up and down about his hair."Good Lord, West!" a little impatiently, "how can I tell? Does the girl confide in me, do you suppose?""No doubt you think," says Frederic, turning towards his companion again, while his sensitive mouth twitches painfully, "that I am not the sort of man to take a handsome spirited girl's fancy?""How can I tell?" repeats Le Mesurier, embarrassed by the exactitude with which his friend has hit his thought.
"'Different men are of different opinions;Some like apples, some like inions—'and I daresay women are the same."How drowsily the bees are humming high up among the faint thick blooms! It is enough to send one to sleep."After all," says Frederic, brightening a little, under the influence of his companion's homely saw, "I am not altogether sure that the mere fact of her treating me cavalierly—chaffing me, calling me names, and so forth, tells entirely against me. It is the way of some girls, I believe. Even if Lenore did like a fellow, she would die sooner than shew it.""Would she?" says Le Mesurier with a half absent smile, throwing his head back, and staring up into the flickering tremulous leafage above him, while his thoughts travel back over the past week, to the silver wash of a midnight stream—to a lady with pearly lights playing about her, holding out a water lily to him, and saying with a slow soft smile, "Take it then." He is woke out of his trance by two Breton housewives, chattering past in those shrill screechy voices that God has given to Frenchwomen alone, as they step out stoutly in their short heavy petticoats and trim black stuff stockings."Now I have told you the state of things with me," says Frederic with a nervous laugh, "perhaps you can guess what is the favour I am going to ask of you?""I!" says Le Mesurier, giving a great start, and looking thoroughly puzzled."Guess.""Not I. Perhaps," with a brilliant flash of intuition, "it is to ask me to be best man: only that is no great favour, and it is rather premature, is not it?"Frederic jumps up suddenly."If you are going to make a jest——" he says, with a hurt intonation."My good fellow," cries Paul, energetically, laying his hand upon his shoulder. "I give you my word of honour that I know no more than the dead what you are driving at. I never was good at guessing. I never found out a riddle in all my life. I give it up."West looks at him distrustfully, but seeing no mirth, only boundless bewilderment, in his friend's ugly face, he continues, speaking with difficulty, looking down and kicking about some stray cherrystones that a former occupant of the bench has left strewn on the ground."I do not know why it is, I am sure—cannot make out—but you have certainly more influence with Miss Lenore than anyone else has.""Have I?" says Paul, shortly, turning away his head."She will do for you what she will not do for either her sister, or me.""Will she?" still more shortly, while a slight flattered flush rises to his forehead. "I really have not discovered it.""And such being the case," continues West, with increasing hesitation, stammering, floundering, and reddening ever more and more, "I thought that perhaps you might——""I might what ?" asks Paul, still staring stupidly at his friend."I thought," says West, plunging desperately in medias res , seeing that he is not likely to get much help from his companion's intelligence, "that you might perhaps—say something about me to her—sound her feelings with regard to me, to a certain extent.""I!!!" says Paul, turning sharp round; the mystified expression of his face giving place to one of enormous astonishment. "I! my dear West? Are you quite cracked?""She would at all events give you a hearing," says Frederic, downcast but pertinacious."Would she?" cries the other, laughing violently. " I very much doubt it. She would be more likely to bang the door in my face and tear out my few remaining hairs, and quite right too.""Perhaps it is because you saved her life," pursues West ruefully, keeping on his own tack."Saved her life!" breaks in Paul, now really angry. "My good fellow, for God's sake do not talk like a fool, whatever you do! To upset a woman into a ditch and then pull her out, can hardly be termed 'saving her life,' even in these days, when every little thing is called by some big name."Silence; the little yellow lights glancing and flashing up and down about their hats and coats."West," says Paul abruptly, rising from his seat, thrusting his hands down to the very bottom of his pockets, in his favourite attitude, and looking full and keenly into his companion's downcast face, "suppose you got Miss Lenore, what on earth would you do with her?""Do with her?" repeats West, staring. "What do you mean?""Can you fancy that girl a parson's wife?" says Le Mesurier, beginning to laugh, while with inner vision he sees again that dare-devil smile, those lovely half-lowered eyes, that had kindled such unwilling fire in his own cold veins. "Do not be angry with me, West; I could not stop laughing now if you were to kill me. I think I see her holding forth at a mothers' meeting, or teaching at a Sunday-school! Poor little wretches! would not she cuff them?""She is so young," says Frederic, deprecatingly. "I should hope that one might be able to mould her——""Mould her!" echoes Paul, derisively. "My dear boy, it would take you all your time. She would comb your hair with a three-legged stool."A pause."I am to understand, then," says Frederic, trying to speak stiffly, but with a suspicion of tears in his voice, "that you decline to help me?""Decline to propose to Miss Lenore for you? I do, distinctly," replies Paul, stoutly."Perhaps," says Frederic, with the easy baseless jealousy of unlucky love, "you would have no such objection to speak to her on your own account?"A dark unbecoming flush rushes over Le Mesurier's face."I!" he says, angrily. "What are you talking about, West? Must everybody be in love with her because you are? Did not I tell you, the very first day I saw her—the day that she took it into her head to play that unaccountable prank—very bad form it was too—that she was not my style? No more she is. I must say that she improves upon acquaintance; but, no, no—not my line at all."Frederic sits down upon the bench again, in a stooped shapeless attitude of utter despondency."Why cannot you ask her yourself?" inquires Le Mesurier, with a mixed feeling of compassion for the sufferer's misery and raging contempt for his poverty of spirit. "If a thing is worth having, it is surely worth asking for.""It would be no use," replies West dejectedly; "she would not listen to me—she never does; she would only laugh, and turn everything I said into ridicule.""Why on earth do you not go in for the old one instead?" asks Paul impatiently. "She would suit you down to the ground. She would listen to you fast enough, and she would not need any moulding.""I dare say it would have been happier for me if I could have fancied her," replies West, with the admirable conceit of man, in whose vocabulary "ask" and "have" are supposed to be interchangeable terms. "She is a dear good girl, and really fond of parish work. But no, no" (with a heavy sigh), "that is impossible now."He covers his face with both hands, and relapses into silence. Paul eyes him doubtfully for a few minutes; then, laying his hand on his shoulder, says, not unkindly:"Cheer up, old man! It is a long lane that has no turning. I would do anything in reason I could for you, for old acquaintance' sake; but what you ask is not in reason—come, now, is it?""Perhaps not" (in a stifled voice)."She would box my ears, or order me out of the house, as likely as not; she is quite capable of either," says Paul, trying to steel himself in his resolution in proportion as he finds it melting under the fire of his compassion."No doubt—I ought not to have asked you," West says, lifting his face from his hands, which fall nervelessly on his knees. "I should not have thought of doing so if I had not known what an opinion she had of you.""Has she!" says Paul, colouring again slightly, while a warm glow of self-satisfaction steals pleasantly over him. "But now, my dear fellow, do think what a fool I should look. How should I begin? How should I go on? How should I finish?""I would leave all that to you, of course.""No, no," says Le Mesurier, rising hastily "upon my soul, I cannot ; it is impossible. I have no opinion of go-betweens. Ask for yourself, and take your answer, whatever it is, like a man."CHAPTER XI.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.BRAG is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better. Mr. Le Mesurier, however, shows himself incapable of being the latter—incapable of keeping to the wise and rational resolution expressed at the close of the last chapter. On the morning of the day following that on which Frederic preferred his request, Paul might have been seen, walking slowly and with a hang-dog air, in the direction of the Pension Leroux. He is smoking like a chimney; his eyes are fixed on the ground, and his hands are buried deeper than ever in the pockets of his old grey shooting-jacket."I would give anyone twenty pounds to stand in my shoes for the next half-hour," he says to himself as he drags his feet one after another through the calf market, between the miserable calves, flung down roughly, with legs tied together, and heads moving wistfully from side to side, to lie for hours together, baking helpless, and unpitied, in the midday sun. Paul need not have gone near the calf market at all; it is quite out of his way; but then it takes a little longer. He stands for a quarter of an hour staring in at the clever little terra-cotta models of men and beasts, in M. Noel Le Quillec's small shop-window, close to the Porte Saint Louis; but however ingenious two clay pigs, set up on their hind-legs and walking arm-in-arm, or a donkey playing a concertina may be, ti is impossible to stare at them for ever."Please God she is out!" he says piously, turning with a sigh through the shady porte . But she is not out. As he comes in sight of the salon -window he sees two arms resting on the sill; a woman in a bright-blue gown and with bright brown hair leaning out. It is not Jemima. Jemima is not addicted to gay colours, save in the matter of that Connemara cloak, that Providence has sent sailing down the Rance to Saint Malo. The cherry market is held in the Place St. Louis. Groups of snowy-headed women with great eared caps are trudging about the little square, with huge baskets of piled-up cherries, shaded by great cotton umbrellas—little luscious black cherries, juicy red ones, pale fleshy whitehearts. Lenore is in treaty for some of the latter."Tenez !" she cries, sending her clear English voice, fresh as the voice of a waterfall or of a blackbird on a green April evening, down through the sing-song French screams below, and pointing with her fore-finger to a tempting heap—"Combien ?""Quat' sous la livre ," replies a weather-beaten little housewife briskly.The girl's eyes wander round the baskets to see whether any other saleswoman has bigger cherries than those under her notice, and so wandering, they fall on Paul's upturned face. Instantly she forgets that such fruit as cherries exists."Anybody at home?" asks Paul, shading his face with his hand and smiling up."It depends upon who 'anybody' is," she answers gravely. "If anybody means Madame Lange, she is out; if anybody means Jemima, she is out; if anybody means me, I am not out.""I may come up, then?""If you are sure that you can find your way," retorts she, laughing.He turns and enters the house. Old Mdlle. Leroux puts her head out from the door of the dining-room, where she is sitting, mending table-linen, waggles her grey curls and yellow ribbons, and cries "Bon jour, Monsieur !" cheerily."Oh, for a brandy and soda!" sighs Paul to himself as he reaches the landing. Screwing up his fast-oozing courage, he marches in. Lenore has turned away from the window to greet him; she looks as if she were a piece of the summer sky, all blue and smiling."You must not stay long," she says, stretching out a ready hand to him; "it is Wednesday; and on Wednesday we are obliged to evacuate this salon , because it is Madame Lange's day for receiving . Fancy receiving here !" (looking round contemptuously)."Well, are not you receiving here yourself now?" says Paul, trying to speak with airy nonchalance, and feeling as if he were looking extremely sheepish. "Are not you receiving me ?""Oh, yes, but then you are nobody," she says, with a gay little laugh."Thanks.""I mean you are only one—not a party," laughing again, and standing before him, straight and fresh and beautiful."She is meat for his masters"—is Le Mesurier's involuntary thought; and so thinking looks at her (unknowing it) with grave critical intentness. Under that look her great frank eyes fall suddenly, and her colour comes and goes, goes and comes, in tremulous carnation."I am so glad you have come," she says, beginning to talk very fast. "Mima is gone out sketching with Mdlle. Péroline, and I have been so hard-up for something to do, that I have been reduced to trying to educate Monsieur Charles. Look at him! He is rather wobbly, perhaps, but not so bad for a beginner, is he?"So speaking, she points to where, on a small stool, Mdlle. Leroux's unhappy poodle sits dismally upright on tottering shorn hind-quarters, with his arm in a sling ; that is to say, with one poor little paw unmercifully tied, with a bit of blue ribbon, round his neck."Faites mendiant, Monsieur Charles !" cries the young girl, flinging herself on her knees on the floor before him. "Up! up! Unfortunately he does not understand English!""Does not he?""He has been going through a regular course of exercises,"says Lenore, gravely. "Just before you came in I put one of M. César's hats on his head, and a pair of old Mdlle. Leroux's spectacles on his nose, and you can have no conception how like Frederic he looked."As she kneels there, with all her blue draperies spread about the floor, and the dimples appearing and disappearing in her cheeks, a spasm of unwilling admiration contracts his heart."Frederic is going," he says, brusquely, turning his head away, and looking out of window, "going home, to England, to-morrow.""Is he?" says the girl, carelessly; "why does not he come and say good-bye to us then?—or are his feelings too many for him?""He is talking of coming this afternoon.""I hope he will not cry, or have a great access of emotion; he generally has at this sort of crisis; it always makes me laugh, don't you know, and that looks so unfeeling," she says, glancing appealingly up at him."You are unfeeling!" he blurts out, unjustifiably, with a mistaken feeling of loyalty towards his friend.She looks at him quickly, to see whether he is joking, but, perceiving that he is serious, says quietly, and without anger."Am I?—what makes you think so?""I gather it from your own words.""About Frederic?" she answers, composedly. "Poor dear little gentleman! We shall miss him very much—getting tickets and claiming luggage; but you would hardly expect me to go into hysterics over him , would you?"He is silent, meditating on the utter bootlessness of his errand."Would you?" she repeats, pertinaciously. She has sunk down in a sitting attitude on the floor, her idle hands lie white as milk in her lap. Monsieur Charles has availed himself of the diversion effected in his favour to abandon his upright posture, hobble off on three legs to a corner under the piano, where he spends himself in vain efforts to bite off his blue ribbon."It would be much better for you if you had some one to go into hysterics about," says Paul, drawing a small cane chair near Lenore, and resolving to attack the fortress indirectly.She blushes vividly; some girls blush at a nothing ; other girls blush at nothing."Would it?" she says."You will not be angry with me for speaking plainly to you? We have seen a good deal of each other, considering how short a time it is since we first met, have not we?" says he, with a benevolent sense of fatherly enjoyment in lecturing this fair delinquent, this embodied storm, whom only he can calm; "but you are one of those women who would be much better and happier married than single !""Am I?" in a very low voice."You ought to marry either a tyrant or a slave," continues he, surprised at his own eloquence; "either a fellow who would knock under completely to you, or a fellow who would make you knock under completely.""And which would you recommend, may I ask?" she says, lifting her eyes archly, yet with difficulty, to his face."In your case, I think, the slave."She looks slightly disappointed, but makes no rejoinder."I do you the justice to think," pursues Paul, warmed by the fire of his own rhetoric, "that a man's looks would not influence you much—that he would not be damned in your eyes, even if he had the misfortune not to be good-looking."She looks at him again, bravely and firmly this time. "You are right; I hate your beauty-men, they trespass on our preserves," laughing."If a fellow had been fond of you, ever since he had known you, then," continues Paul, drawing his chair three inches nearer, and half wishing that he were not a proxy; "if he had never cared two straws for any other woman—if he were a really good fellow at bottom, even though he might not have much to recommend him in the eyes of the world—you would not send him away quite without hope, even though you do turn him into ridicule now and then?""Into ridicule," she says, stammering; "what do you mean?""Well, we will not say anything about that—but, you would not send him away quite without hope, would you?"Her lips tremble and form some word, but it is inaudible."You will at least listen to him when he comes this afternoon?" says Le Mesurier, with a sigh at his own magnanimity."Listen to him? To whom?" she asks, lifting her head in bewilderment, while the colour dies out of her cheeks."Whom? Why, of whom have we been talking all along? Frederic, of course," replies Paul, a little blankly.There is a painful pause; the girl's face has grown ghastly, and her eyes are dilated in a horrible surprise."I am to understand, then," she says, in a husky choked voice, "that you are his messenger—that you have been good enough to take the trouble of making love to me off his hands?"They have both risen, and are confronting one another. It would be hard to say which of the two, considering their different complexions, were the paler."Tell him," she says, making a strong effort over herself, and speaking each slow syllable with painful distinctness, "to do his own errands next time."As she speaks she points to the door. Half of Paul's vision is fulfilled. She has not boxed his ears—he wishes to heaven that she would—but she has turned him out of the house. He is downstairs and in the little hall before he perceives that he has left his hat behind him. He runs upstairs, three steps at a time, in his hurry to fetch it and be out of the house. He enters the salon hurriedly, and is half-way towards the table, when he stops short with an expression of shocked astonishment; for, on the little stiff sofa, Lenore is lying, long and limp, her face hidden in her hands, her body, and all her smart blue gown, shaken with great violent sobs."Good God! what is the matter?" he cries, hastily."What has happened? Are you ill?"Hearing his voice, she starts, and buries her face deeper than ever in the little hard bolster, as if trying to hide it for ever from the light."Lenore! Lenore!" cries the young man in high excitement, flinging himself on his knees beside her, entirely forgetting his proxy character, and speaking now altogether on his own account. "What have I done? Tell me! Have I said anything to vex you? If I thought I had I would cut out my own tongue."She does not stir; but through her fingers he sees the hot tears trickling, and, stooping over her, hears her murmur almost unintelligibly, in a voice of choked rage and shame:"Leave me alone! "Why have you come back? Go away!""I will never go, until you tell me what I have done!" cries Paul, quite forgetting himself; and, so saying, with his two hands, by main force draws hers away from her face. "Tell me—Lenore! Tell me—darling!"Her lovely eyes are drowned in tears; her cheeks are crimsoned with shameful weeping—weeping for him —as, with a throb of irrepressible passionate exultation, he feels. "Whether divining the exultation or not, she wrenches herself away from him."What do you mean?" she cries, flashing at him through her tears. "I told you to go! I hate you! Go!! " So he goes.Evening again, and bedtime. The market-women have sold all their wares, and gone home again. The old priest in the white house has just opened his door, and let out two dogs, in a whirlwind of excitement; but for them the place is empty and silent. The two Misses Herrick are in the elder one's bedroom. Lenore is sitting on the edge of the low bed; her cheeks are as white as privet-flowers, and there are red rims round her eyes. Jemima is devoured with curiosity as to the cause of these phenomena, but she does not ask."Jemima," says her sister brusquely, "let us leave this place! Let us move on somewhere else!""Leave Dinan!—leave Mr. Le Mesurier! " cries Jemima, archly, raising her eyebrows, as she stands before the glass, screwing up her pale thin hair into a little lump at the top of her head, and drawing a white crochet net over it, in preparation for her virgin slumbers."I am sick of Dinan and Mr. Le Mesurier!" rejoins Lenore, petulantly."Sick of Dinan!—sick of Mr. Le Mesurier!" exclaims the other, now thoroughly astonished, turning round with her mouth open. "Since when?""Since five-and-twenty minutes past eleven this morning, if you wish to he exact," replies Lenore, with candid bitterness. "There—do not tease, but let us go!""Go where?""'Anywhere, anywhere out of the world!'" answers the young girl, fulling hack wearily on the bed, and dishevelling the cool trim pillow on which her sister's chaste head is to repose. "To Guingamp, to see the pardon.""And what is a pardon , pray? for I have not the remotest idea," answers the elder, coming towards the bed, having finished her night-toilet, in the severe simplicity of which she looks at least twenty years older than in her day one."If you had read novels less, and your Murray more, you would not have needed to ask that question," replies Lenore, rolling her head about. " A pardon is a sort of religious fête! very dull, I do not doubt, but,"—with a tired sigh—"it all comes in the day's work; let us go!"CHAPTER XIIWHAT JEMIMA SAYS.WE are at Guingamp. "We have been here two hours. TWO hours ago we arrived, hot and angry; hustled by thronging groups of peasants, that are pressing into the little town to receive the annual pardon of their sins, and open a fresh account with God. The Hotel de France brims over with guests, insomuch that we have been relegated to a stuffy little chamber au quatrième, into which the afternoon sun beats full; hotter than ten thousand Christmas fires. Just now we asked for hot water, to wash our dirty faces; and a woman in a huge starched white collar, and clear cap, brought in some in a tiny teapot . This has put the culminating point to our despair. It is one of those days when one's very soul is hot, and longs to throw off the heavy cloak of the body; a day when one would fain take off one's flesh, and sit in one's bones, according to Sydney Smith's time-honoured waggery. It is not windless; on the contrary, there is a very perceptible air; but it is such air as meets you at the mouth of a furnace. Lenore has abandoned the struggle with circumstances. She has acknowledged herself beaten, and lies all along, in extremest dishabille, on the narrow bit of parquet between the two beds, where the hard oak communicates a little coolness to the back. Her head rests on a pillow that she has pulled down; a white dressing-gown is loosely wrapped about her, and her small bare feet wander about impatiently in the vain search for a cool spot on the hot boards. Now and again, odd, sluggish, beetleish animals, with slate-coloured bodies, crawl over her outflung arms. She has just energy enough left to shake them off, and call piteously to me to come and kill them with my shoe-heel. Our two windows and our door are open; we are trying to believe that we are in a draught. A regiment is passing through Guingamp; the officers are billeted on our hotel. Every now and then one hears the clink of a sabre and the sound of heavy feet coming down our corridor."Heavens, Jemima! shut the door!" cries my sister, unwilling to be exposed in her present sketchy toilette to the gaze of the French army. I spring forward and close it; and as soon as the large-busted small-waisted hero, in his hot red trousers and tight epauletted frock-coat, has passed, fling it wide again. I have been unpacking, my head buried in my small canvas-covered box; it is more than woman born of woman can bear. I rise and lean out of the window. Outside a lugubrious horn is playing "Partant pour la Syrie," very slowly; the omnibus is just driving into the courtyard."Poor omnibus! poor horses!" cry I, compassionately—"how many times have they been down to the station today? What a heap of luggage!""Jemima, my head is not high enough yet; give me your pillow too!" calls out Lenore, lamentably, from the floor. I comply, and then return to the window, and look again at the omnibus, which is just beginning to empty its load."Good heavens!" ejaculate I, with animation. "Why, Lenore, there is Mr. Le Mesurier getting out!" He has a puggry round his hat; how odd he looks!"Lenore is disposing two pillows and a bolster to her mind; she gives a great start, but her head is turned from me."I wish he would get a new portmanteau," pursue I, soliloquising; "the 'P. Le M.' on his is getting nearly effaced with age."The omnibus still disgorges: an old priest in a broad felt hat, and limp sash round his huge waist, with a yellow face and black teeth, yawning prodigiously; a peasant woman, with a queer baby in a tight calico skullcap; then another gentleman in a puggry."The plot thickens," cry I, with a sprightly air. "Lenore, I think the friend has turned up at last. I began to fancy that he was a sort of Mrs. Harris; but seeing is believing, and here he is!"Silence."How good-looking!" say I, under my breath, as the second gentleman joins the first, and indicates his worldly roods to the garçon. I hear a scrambling noise behind me. Lenore is at my side; her face is white, and she peeps obliquely behind the curtain, as the hot breeze blows back her loose bright hair."How ugly your friend Paul looks beside him!" say I, spitefully."When does not he look ugly?" rejoins my junior, with bitterness."They are parleying with the landlady," say I, leaning out. "No doubt she is civiller to them than she was to us; I suppose two maidless, courierless, husbandless women must resign themselves to being snubbed! Ah, poor dear Frederic! how one does miss him!""Under which head did he come?" asks Lenore, drily—"maid, courier, or husband!"The luggage is carried into the house; the pageant fades. I return to my packing, and ten minutes pass."Lenore, dear, you had better be beginning to dress," I say, hortatively; "the clock struck the quarter five minutes ago.""I am not thinking of dressing," replies Lenore, looking enormously long, as she lies stretched straight out."You are going down to dinner as you are, in fact—bare legs and a dressing-gown?" say I, humorously."I am not going down to dinner at all," replies she, clasping her hands underneath her head."Not going down to dinner! What >do you mean?" exclaim I, in high astonishment."Jemima, do French people >ever open their windows? Do not they hate fresh air? Would it be possible to eat steaming ragouts in a close room with fifty commercial travellers, to-day of all days?""Before the omnibus came from the station, you thought it quite possible," reply I, drily.Silence."Come now, did not you?""Well—yes" (looking rather sheepish)."It is on account of Mr. Le Mesurier that you are going to forego your dinner?""Well—yes" (much more sheepishly)."Lenore! Lenore! what has he done?" cry I, kneeling down beside her, in a frenzy of curiosity; "tell me.""He has done nothing," turning her face away, and plucking at the pillow with her fingers."What has he said?""He has said nothing.""Did he tell you that you were not good form, according to his pet expression?" (laughing)."No.""Did he make love to you?" suggest I, growing wild in my conjectures."No, no.""Did he propose to you?""No! NO! NO!"I can only see her ear, which has grown suddenly scarlet."What did he do?" ask I, at my wit's end."Jemima!" says Lenore, sitting up on the floor facing me, and looking very serious, "if I live to be a hundred and fifty, I will never tell you.""I shall have to ask him then; he will tell me quickly enough," answer I, nettled, and rising to my feet again."Perhaps; very likely!" rejoins she, curtly."But you will come down to dinner, like a good child?" say I, coaxingly, as I wrestle with a white muslin Garibaldi, which has shrunk in the washing, and is too small to contain my charms."I will not.""But you have had no luncheon?"'"No.""Nor afternoon tea?""No.""You would probably be at a distance of half a mile from him," say I, encouragingly; "the table is as long as from here to England; I saw it.""Jemima," replies Lenore gravely, looking at me with her large solemn eyes, "I might sit exactly opposite to him, and that would kill me on the spot."I shrug my shoulders. "He is ugly enough, certainly," I say severely; "but he is hardly such a Medusa's head that it is death to look at him."But Lenore is obdurate. "I had rather die than go down," she says, with the tragic exaggeration of youth, shaking her head, and all the shining tangles of hair that ripple about her throat.The boll rings, tingling and jangling through the open doors and narrow passages. I am obliged to go down alone, in my shrunk muslin Garibaldi and shabby old black-silk skirt, into a crowd of bearded English and shorn French, who are gathered to raven like wolves in the salle à manger . I leave Lenore lying prone on the parquet, hungry and frowning, and slaying an occasional beetle with her slipper. At dinner I sit between the landlord and a close-shaved little Breton, with a vast and greasy appetite. In silence and lone-liness I raven like my neighbours. Mr. Le Mesurier fulfils my prophecy; he is half a mile off. Now and again I have a vision of his leonine beard between the thirteen or fourteen intervening guests, and of a handsome blonde head beyond him. On remounting to our garret I find that Lenore has resumed her clothes, and is sitting on the window-sill, pelting a stray dog in the courtyard with cherrystones. Her eyes turn with a sort of anxiety to me as I enter."Well, well," say I, spitefully, "there was an excellent dinner; I have brought you a ' Menu to show you what you have lost—"'POTAGE.Vermicelli.Poissons.Soles, fines herbes.ENTRÉES.Jambon Madère.Poulets sautés.Champignons——'""Pooh!" interrupts my sister, impatiently, "what do I care? Well, did you—did you see him?""I caught a glimpse now and then of his chestnut curls," reply I, banteringly; "only a glimpse, though, as he was at least a kilometre off.""Did he see you?""Probably not; the dear fellow did not seem to have eyes for anything but his dinner.""He did not miss me, then?" with an accent of chagrin."If he did he disguised it admirably.""I might have gone down, after all.""Perfectly."She picks, up the menu . "'Jambon Madère'—how good it sounds! Why did not you ask it to walk upstairs? Jemima, are there any biscuits left in your bag?"I investigate, and find half a one, and a great many dusty crumbs, upon which my sister pounces, as a kitten upon a ball of worsted."I could not conscientiously say the children's grace, Thank God for my good dinner,'" she says, shaking her head."Jemima, let us go out.""It is only eight o'clock, and the pardon does not begin till nine.""Never mind; there is, at all events, more to see in the town than there is here, and I shall be more likely to forget that fifteen hours must elapse before I see food again."So we go and pass through the courtyard, and out into the cheerful swarming streets. The prospect of having a year's sins wiped off seems pleasant, for all faces look gay. The town is thronged with exquisitely-starched clean lace caps, sticking out half a mile behind their owner's heads—thronged with broad felt hats, and loose embroidered waistcoats, trimmed with chains of silver buttons. They are like peasants in a melodrama—real benighted peasants—who have not yet begun to tell themselves that they are quite as good as their betters, and that there is no reason why they should not wear hats and bonnets of exactly the same shape and fabric.But even here innovation is laying her ugly hand. Even Brittany is setting forth on the road that leads to chimney-pot hats and shooting-coats; even here, the ancient Breton costume in all its purity is the exception; the old-world trunk hose of yesterday are ceding to the new-world trousers of to-day.We stroll slowly up through the chattering crowd, amongst long-haired lank men, and laughing weather-beaten women.On most Breton faces is written, "Life to us is arduous." No one is drunk, and no one is swearing. "How can they be happy, then?" would be the thought of an English working-man; but they are, or at least they look so.The church is already lit, though it is yet day, little points of yellow light nickering feebly in the broad white light of the summer evening. We mount the steps—mount them gingerly, lest we should tread on the outspread legs of the crowded worshippers, crowded as swarmed bees, upon the steps and in the porch before an image there. We enter the church; censers are swinging slowly; the fragrant hush of a holy gloom is spread between the dim high arches—gloom that the thousand little yellow lights are fighting against. Grown men, with swart heads bent and doffed hats in their rough hands; women; little prim children in caps like their mothers, and petticoats down to their little heels, all—all are prostrate before each gaudy shrine, sending up their simple souls in prayer to God's great mother.Not to her alone, however. As thickly as about the crowned and sceptred Virgin the people press around a brass head, with a glass window in its chest, and its nose blackened by the salutations of many past years and generations. Standing a few paces off, I am watching a tall youth, who, with long thick hair hanging straight and black about his harsh melancholy face, is stooping to kiss the uncouth brazen features, when an English voice sounds low and laughing in my ear:"Worse than the Pope's toe, is not it?"I give an angry start. Devotion is as catching as mumps. Without any feeling of the ridiculous I could have followed the Breton boy's example, and kissed the blackened nose. Paul Le Mesurier is beside me, and beyond him, heedless of the praying Bretons, staring with all his blue eyes at Lenore, stands a fair handsome youth, leaning against a pillar."Is it wicked to introduce people in church?" asks Paul, sotto voce . "I cannot help it, if it is; I have had no peace since. Scrope, let me introduce you to Miss Herrick."CHAPTER XIII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."I HOPE you are better, Miss Lenore," says Paul, leaving his friend and his acquaintance together, and threading his way between the kneeling country-people to where the young girl stands with her back resolutely turned to him, and her eyes as resolutely fixed upon the high altar, aflame with lights and laden with flowers."Better of what?" she asks, brusquely, not turning towards him."I always think there must be something radically wrong with a person who foregoes her dinner in a land where luncheon is unknown," he answers, trying to get a peep round the corner into her averted face."How do you know that I forewent my dinner?" she inquires sharply, glancing at him for an instant, and then looking away again as quickly."I saw your sister, and I did not see you.""I dined upstairs," she answers, shortly.He looks at her doubtfully. "Did you, really? Why?""I hate talking in church," she says, flashing round impatiently at him; "it is irreverent.""So do I; the incense gets into my head. Let us go outside.""You may go if you choose," she says, setting her back against a pillar, and resolutely ignoring his presence. "I prefer to stay here."A little child, kneeling at her feet in close calico cap, with a rosary between its little fingers, stares up wonderingly, with wide eyes, at the monsieur and the madame, standing so erect and chattering so irreverently in the great solemn church."Your sister and Scrope are going down the steps now," he says, stopping a little to whisper to her in deference to the sacred place, while an amused gleam flashes in his eyes. "The procession will begin in a quarter of an hour. Come!"She makes a half-movement of compliance."Mind," she says, looking at him defiantly, "I am coming, not in the least because you ask me, but because I do not want to miss this fine sight."The street is fuller than ever. The dusk is drawing on. Gendarmes in cocked hats and tail-coats; tight-belted, redlegged soldiers leavening the mass of the peasants. A woman at a stall selling candles—candles as thick as your waist; candles as thick as your wrist; candles no thicker than your finger. Every one is buying, each person laying down his francs or centimes, and walking proudly off with a hollow taper as tall as himself."You have not forgiven me yet, then?" says Le Mesurier, as he elbows a way for his companion between the woollen-shawled women and embroidered-jacketed men."Forgiven you for what?" she asks, resolutely obtuse, while her cheeks show a sudden rivalship with the poppybunch in her hat."For my—my unlucky embassy," he answers, with a rather awkward laugh.She looks away from him to the illuminated church, at once bright and dark against the warm gloom of the June twilight.I thought it was very officious of you," she answers, coldly."Officious! " echoes he, quickly, while his own tanned cheeks catch the pretty angry poppy hue. "Do you suppose I did it for my own pleasure; Do you suppose that I ever, in all my life, had a job that I hated more?""Why did you undertake it, then?" asks the girl, drily."Because I was living in the same house with him; because I had no peace day or night: because I was sick of the-sound of your name; because—poor little beggar!—he cried —yes, actually cried! —If I said 'No' once, I said it a hundred times.""It was a pity that you did not say it a hundred-and-one times.""I not only," continues Paul, becoming exasperated, and consequently spiteful, while his usually quiet eyes give a cold flash—"I not only declined the office for myself, but I did all I could to dissuade him from asking you himself.""Thank you.""I told him that, if he did induce you to marry him, you would make him rue the day.""Thank you.""I told him how utterly unsuited you were for a parson's wife.""Thank you.""How much more suited to him your sister was.""Thank you; two 'thank yous,' indeed—one for myself and one for Jemima.""He had some fatuous idea in his head of being able to mould you into the proper clerical shape; but I flatter myself I, at all events, succeeded in weeding that grotesque notion out of his mind.""In short," says Lenore, turning sharply upon him a lovely crimson face, like a blown rose, and proud eyes trying to wink away the mortified tears—"in short, not satisfied with hating me yourself, you have been doing your best to make one of my few friends hate me too.""Well, at all events," retorts he, smiling, and recovering his good humour at the same moment as she loses hers—"at all events, I did not succeed; for despite all my dissuasions, you see, he still wished to gain you."The crowd grows thicker and thicker. In five minutes the procession will begin. Leaning over a little balcony above them, some English ladies and gentlemen are laughing real English laughs, unlike the high cascades of shrill French laughter.''We shall be hustled to death down here," says Paul, lifting his high head to look over the press. "We ought to have secured a window, like those Britishers up there. It is not too late now. Let us ask the candle-woman."The candle-woman turns from the diminished heap of her tapers to listen politely to Paul's slow laborious English-French."Monsieur and madame desire a croisée in order to see the procession? Mais oui, certainement . If monsieur and madame will have the goodness to follow her, she will conduct them."So saying, she leads them under an archway, through an empty workshop, and up a perfectly dark and filthy flight of stone stairs. The room to which they at length attain belongs to a blanchisseuse . It is low and poor, but very clean. Neatly-starched caps are hanging on a line across the room; two tidy little beds are in the small recesses; a crucifix hangs over the chimney-piece; and an excruciating smell from the gutter below rises up to their offended nostrils. The owner of the apartment having expressed an obliging hope that madame will not be "trop gênée par l'odeur ," and having placed a hassock on the low sill fur Lenore to lean her arms upon, leaves her visitors in peace. Paul stands upright and silent, with an expression of face as if he were trying entirely to repress the faculty of smell. Lenore lets her eyes wander round, and gives the reins to her imagination.Supposing that this garret were her home—hers and Paul's; supposing that she spent her life in ironing caps, and hanging them on lines. Supposing that Paul spent his in digging in the fields, and came back at night to galette and cider, in a broad Breton hat and trunk hose. Good heavens! how ugly he would look! She breaks off her suppositions to smile involuntarily at the idea."What are you smiling at?" asks Paul, stooping over her, and swallowing a large mouthful of bouquet de gutter as he speaks."Must I tell you really? " she asks, lifting her face—every dimple full of mischievous laughter—to his."Yes.""I was thinking then—mind, you made me tell you—how ugly you would look in a flapping felt hat and trunk hose.""Is that all?" he answers, carelessly. "I can assure you that I am nothing to what I was when I was a boy. In my old regiment we used to pique ourselves upon being the ugliest corps in the service; we had not a decent-looking fellow amongst us."There is a little pause. Everybody is lighting his or her candle; one or two unlucky mortals have broken theirs off in the middle."Did you really think I should marry Frederic?" asks Lenore presently, with abruptness."How could I tell?""But did you think it probable ?""If I were a woman I do not think I should care about undertaking him," he answers, laughing. "But you might have done worse."She looks away, vexed—she could hardly have said why?"He is exactly five feet two inches high," she says scornfully, drawing up her long white throat, and looking insultingly tall."Do you mete out your love to a man according to his inches?" he asks, leaning his arms on the back of his chair, and laughing again.Ho has a nose like a piece of putty.""He has.""He wears barnacles.""He does.""And goloshes.""Yes.""He plays the concertina at tea parties.""Does he?""And sings, 'I'm a nervous man.'""So he is.""He turns up his trousers at the bottom when it rains.""Well, why should not he?""It would be impossible," says the young girl, with trenchant emphasis, "to marry a man who did any one of those things; it is a thousand times more impossible to marry a man who does them all .""He would let you have your own way in everything, big or little; he would let you ride rough-shod over him. It would be very bad for you, but I suppose it would please you," answers Paul, half cynically, taking in, with an uncomfortable unwilling glance, the poppy-crowned hat; the eyes, dewsoft yet spirited; the fine nostrils, and blood-red lips half parted, as if for some sweet speech of his young companion."Perhaps it would—perhaps it would not," she answers gently. "I have never loved anybody yet —never; at least, not for long—not for more than two days; but of course I shall some day; and then, I suppose—I fancy—I imagine" (stammering) "that what he likes I shall like."Is it some reflection from the lights outside, or are her cheeks a shade more deeply coloured than usual, as she lifts her eyes, with a sort of tender trouble in their shady depths, to his?He shakes his head. "May I be there to see!" he says, with a light laugh; but there is no laugh in his eyes!—instead, an eager gravity, touched with the stirrings of a restless passion. "When an uncivil woman is to you alone civil; when a cold woman is for you alone warm; when a high-spirited woman is for you alone meek, the flattery is trebled in value. It is difficult to feel sentimental in a very bad smell, but I think, if you asked him, Paul Le Mesurier would tell you that he accomplished that feat in the little Guingamp garret. The procession is really beginning at last; out of the lit church-doors it streams, and the surging sea of heads part and cleave asunder to make way for it. Gilt and coloured lamps lead the way, carried by Breton peasants; then the relics of a saint in a gilt case; then a troop of young girls in white, clear and clean as St. Agnes; then a troop of sailors, also in white, with red sashes: two carrying a little model of a ship, two carrying a gilt anchor between them; then a wax figure in a red silk petticoat carried on a bier."It is le petit Saint Vincent!" cries the good woman of the house, in high excitement, clasping her hands—carried by Basse Bretagne peasants, clad in soutanes for the occasion: an honour for which they will have to pay high. "Has Madame observed him—how pretty he is? how fresh! how white—as white as a little chicken?""And who is le petit Saint Vincent, when he is at home?" asks Paul, in crass ignorance of the Roman Catholic calendar."He was martyrised at fourteen years," explains the woman; and so falls into fresh raptures."Oh! qu'il est gentil, le petit Saint Vincent! II est si frais, si rose.""If she is so much struck with le petit Saint Vincent, what would not she be with Madame Tussaud's establishment?" says Paul, laughing, and leaning on the sill.He is past now: he, and his red petticoat. La bonne Dame des hommes follows close on his heels, borne on devout shoulders; then the brass head with the blackened nose waggles along; then grey-haired priests in glorious flowered damask robes, holding high the effigy in ivory and gold of the slaughtered Christ; then two bishops in mitres; then a great flood of snowy caps and broad-brimmed beavers; everybody with a candle; some big, some little, but everybody with one. It is the greatest wonder how they manage to avoid setting fire to each other. All together, singing loudly, yet sweetly, they float away slowly into the distance.Half caught by the infection of their devotion, Lenore throws herself forwards half through the rusty casement to look down the street; one sea of waving light, an undulating river of light, rather, flowing between the two dark banks of the houses on either side. The soft glamour of the summer moonrise makes glorious each little detail of the queer pretty show. The coloured lamps sparkle like real great jewels—rubies, sapphires, amethysts—through the cool night. The young girls' dresses shine dazzlingly candescently white: even the brass head with the black nose is transmuted to-gold."What a pleasant easy way of getting to heaven!" says Lenore, withdrawing her head. "I wish I could believe that a big candle and a kiss to little St. Vincent would take me there!""Do not you think we have had almost enough of this?" asks Le Mesurier, rather indistinctly, from between the folds of his pocket handkerchief, in which he has now completely enveloped his nose and mouth. "Oh, libelled Cologne! If Coleridge had but smelt Guingamp!"So they descend into the street. The procession is to circle round the town, chanting always, and re-enter the church by another door. It will be some time before this is accomplished. Meanwhile people still swarm in the space before the church. Women in close stiff black bonnets or hats, and big black collars to match, taking one back to the reign of Edward VI. Dark, sad-faced, lean men. These are from the very, very Basse Bretagne. They are so poor, so poor! They have come on foot many a weary mile, to have their sins forgiven: they will sleep in the street to-night, and at cock-crow to-morrow set forth on the trudge back to their far lone homes. Others with almost low-necked dresses, and wide loose muslin collars. They are all tramping hither and thither; talking very merrily; hustling Paul and Lenore with their stout Breton elbows; threatening them with their heavy sabots, which at any moment may come pounding down on their feet."You had better take my arm," says Paul, with a protecting air, as they move slowly along. "I might easily mislay you in this crush, and if I did, it would be like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay to try and find you again.""It would be no great harm if you did mislay me," she answers with a pretty air of independence. "I, who have travelled all over England, Scotland, and Ireland quite by myself, am hardly afraid of coming to harm in the half-dozen safe yards that intervene between here and the Hôtel de France.""What business had you to travel all over England, Scotland, and Ireland by yourself?" he asks brusquely. "It was very wrong of your people to let you.""Of course," she answers with irony, "of course, I ought to have had a maid to carry my dressing-case, and a footman to take my ticket and look after my luggage. So I will, some day, when I marry the Marquis of Carabas, or—or Frederic!""You will never many Frederic!" he says vehemently, involuntarily pressing the small hand that lies on his arm, close to his side; "never! NEVER!!" looking down at her face, on which the flaring candles are throwing capricious little crimson flushes."Shall not I?" she says, lifting her limpid innocent gaze to his, "I do not know." He is silent, at least as far as speech goes. He has forgotten the pardon , the white caps, the thronging peasants. His reason is drowning fast, fast , in the unfathomed wells of a woman's slate-blue eyes. "You told me just now that I might do worse," she says, under her breath."So you might," he says, with some excitement. "So you might. I said true: you might" (with a rather reckless laugh) "you might marry—me! who am the younger son of a younger son—have not a sixpence to bless myself with, and have the Devil's own temper to boot."At his words her head droops forward, like a snowdrop's, weighed down with a happy shame; her hand falls from his arm. It is past eleven o'clock; the people are hurrying into church again for the midnight mass. At the door every one gives up his or her candle to men stationed to receive them. There is a great heap, as high as your shoulder, already in the porch. A throng of peasants—lean, long men; stout, square women; big lads—come pushing by, nearly hoisting Lenore off her legs. As they pass she utters a little sharp cry of pain."What is it? Are you hurt?" asks Paul, vigorously shouldering aside the peasants, who are beginning to crowd again as thickly as ever, and digging his elbows viciously into the plump ribs of a matron behind him."It is nothing," she says, a little faintly; "one of them trod on me, I think, and a sabot is not the lightest—there!" (beginning to laugh a little) "do not look as if you were bent on knocking somebody down; it would be sure to be the wrong somebody.""You are hurt," he says, with vague indignation, gazing down solicitously at the cheeks that the little sudden pain has drained of their sweet red blood, "I know you are, only you are too spirited to own it.""You are wrong," she says, smiling; "from a child I have always cried out before I was hurt.""Lean on me; lean all your weight on me," says Paul obligingly, drawing her away out of the press, and into a little side street."Ah! here is a door-step, let us sit down and rest."The little street is quite dark, at least on the side where Paul and Lenore are: as dark as the Place Du Guesclin under the limes. Only on the faces of the houses opposite the moonbeams are sliding pearl-white."I never could bear pain," says the girl languidly, leaning her back against the closed door of the unseen house. "I never could understand that line of Longfellow's—"'To suffer and be strong.''To suffer and scream ,' is my version."There is a momentary pause between them. They are beginning to feel as if they need not be talking all the while. In the deep shade where they are sitting they can hardly see each other's faces: they only feel one another's pleasant proximity. The tramp, tramp of wooden shoes, the distant chant, bandied about, tossed this way and that by the frolic airs, come, now loud, now low, to their ears."I wonder what time it is?" says Lenore presently, reluctantly breaking the happy silence; "ten? eleven? twelve?""What does it matter?" replies Paul indolently, clasping his hands behind his head. She is the exact opposite of everything he has hitherto thought good and fair in woman. Her very beauty—large and noble—is the reverse of the small, meek prettiness that has hitherto been his ideal, and yet—and yet it is pleasant to him to sit in the dry, warm gloom beside her, while the night winds, fresh from the tanned haycocks, fondle his hair with lightest, gentlest hands. The church clock strikes midnight: each slow stroke falling on the air like a rebuke."I must go," replies the girl, half-frightened, springing to her feet."Go!" repeats Paul impatiently, rising too. "Why must you? Shall we be better off in two stuffy garrets in the Hôtel de France, apart , than here together?"They are standing in the middle of the street: a tall ugly man, a tall beautiful woman (men always have the best of the bargains in this world). She has taken off her hat: it hangs with its coquettish poppies and black ribbons in her drooped right hand; the moon is throwing little jets of silver on the waveless sweep of her hair."We shall at least be less likely to take cold," she answers demurely.But Paul is losing his head. Lenore and the moonshine are too much for him.Cold?" he repeats, crossly. "You never thought about cold that happy night when we went on the Rance together.""That happy night , when you tried so hard to get out of going, and said it was time to go to bed," she answers mockingly, while her eyes for the moment lose their love light, and glitter maliciously. He laughs rather consciously. "That happy night when you soaked all the colour out of my blue ribbons, and drowned my best hat for me," continues she gaily. "No, no! we will have no more happy nights. My wardrobe would not stand it! Come, let us go!"CHAPTER XIV.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."IT is too late now," says Lenore, with a sulky pout, leaning her arms on the top of the wrought-iron rails of the balcony; "l'Américaine is at the door."We are no longer at Guingamp. We have moved on to Morlaix, and are lodged in a certain hostelry, that is scented through and through with the ill-odour arising from the very unclean stable over which it is built:"I do not wish to tell its name,Because it is so much to blame.""No one dislikes the smell of a clean stable. The warm, pungent odour that greets you when you go to see your friend's hunters need offend no well educated nostrils; but the terrific reek that ascends from the lodgings of Breton beasts of hire, that you swallow, nolens volens , in bed, in your bath, with your tea, with your cider—which enters not only your nose and mouth, but even your very eyes and ears—is trying to the least sensitive organs.We two are seated—by-the-by, Lenore is standing—in a little salon whose balcony overlooks the street, and whence we may spy the passers below, keep a look-out on Lozach, débitant de boissons , opposite, and refresh ourselves with a slightly varied version of essence of manure. A great bowpot, full of immense roses, stands at my elbow: each several rose smells mightily of tobacco: a phenomenon accounted for by the fact that the salon is daily resorted to for smoking and coffee-drinking purposes by the noble army of commercial travellers who breakfast and dine at the table d'hôte. When "ces messieurs ," as the landlord, with innocent irony, calls them, have retired, we are permitted to enter, and work our own wild will among the tobaccoed roses and the jingling old spinet in the corner."It is too late," says Lenore, from the balcony; "l'Américaine is at the door.""It would be very easy to send it away again, I suppose.""I suppose it would.""I do not believe that there is anything to see at Huel-goat," say I, sceptically, turning over the leaves of my familiar spirit, "Murray," and hunting among the H's in the index."I dare say not.""Nothing but lead-mines and a reading-desk," say I, having found the place."Oh, indeed!""It is, then, merely for the pleasure of a téte-à-téte with Mr. Le Mesurier that you are going?" cry I, raising my voice a little, for fear that the lazy wind that is ruffling the smoky roses and swaying the muslin curtains may disperse my gibe."Merely for the pleasure of the téte-à-téte with Mr. Le Mesurier, as you felicitously observe," replies my sister, with baffling candour, leaving the balcony, and coming to stand defiantly before me, with her chin a little raised, and her hands folded behind her back, in her favourite attitude, like a child saying its lesson. Some people's clothes look as if they wore thrown on; some as if they were put on; some as if they grew on. Lenore's is the latter case."I should have thought that you must have had a surfeit of those delights by now," say I, disdainfully, with all an outsider's intolerance for the insipid repetitions of love-making."I have had exactly nine," answers Lenore, growing grave, while a happy absorption fills her eyes; "I think" (smiling) "I must make it a dozen; and then, perhaps, if Mr. Scrope is very good, I may give him a turn."I feel vexed, and, unable and unwilling to explain why, rise, and walking over to a little étagère in the corner, begin to fiddle with some deplorable spar boxes with "A Present from Brighton" on them: traces, even here, of the indefatigable Briton, who has inscribed his name and that of his blacking on the pyramid top. Lenore sits down at the piano, and opens it."You might be man and wife , from the way in which you travel about together," say I, fuming."Perhaps we are," answers Lenore, with a laugh, her low rippling laughter mixing pleasantly with the crash she is making among the bass notes; "to the prophetic eye present and future are one.""Heaven forbid!" say I devoutly. "I cannot fancy calling that man 'Paul,' and kissing him, as I suppose one would have to do if he were one's brother-in-law; one would lose one's self in the intricacies of that scarlet beard.""It isnot scarlet!" cries Lenore, in a fury, wheeling round on the music stool. "It is not even red.""It is like Graham's hair in 'Vilette,'" reply I gravely, "whose colour his friends did not dare to specify, except when the sun shone on it, and then they called it golden."A little pause."I do not think that two young women in our position can be too careful," say I primly, " and realty, Lenore, it is hardly advisable.""Advisable!" interrupts my sister, jumping off her stool and giving a little stamp, while her pretty pink nostrils dilate with angry wilfulness. "I hate the word; it is a mean, sneaking, time-serving word. Either a thing is right or it is wrong: if it is not right, it is wrong, and if it is not wrong, it is right. If it is not wrong to take a drive on a summer day with a man whose society——"She stops as if she had been shot. The door has opened, and the man whose society——is looking in and saying,"Miss Lenore, are you ready?"There is a flushed confusion on his honest ugly face, as if he had overheard Lenore's last speech; and, indeed, as she has always a singularly pure clear enunciation, and declaimed this last sentence in a high key and with a distinct and trenchant emphasis, I do not see how the poor man could well help it."Am I ready? " says Lenore, with an awkward laugh, turning away to hide her discomfiture. "That is amusing! A man keeps one waiting an hour and a half, and then comes and asks innocently, "Are you ready?"At the door stands the "Américaine," so called because more un -like an Américaine than any other conceivable vehicle; a little heavy jingling rattletrap, with a hood in the last stage of shabbiness. A little old mare in her dotage, and a tall colt, hardly come to years of discretion, compose the team. One has bells, the other has none; both are smothered under immense sheepskin collars, like leviathan doormats; the flies are teasing them sadly. A noble army of beggars—
"——Men and boys,The matron and the maid,"
press round with obliging empressement; old blear-eyed men beggars, capped and long-frocked little girl beggars—lame boy beggars—beggars with ingeniously horrible malformations of nature, well brought forward into notice."So this is a walking tour through Brittany, is it, Paul?" asks Mr. Scrope pensively, as we emerge from the door. He is leaning against the doorpost, looking very handsome, very lazy, and half asleep, as he mostly does. "So this is the pedestrian exercise that was to make you two stone lighter by next season! Oh, Miss Herrick!" shaking his head at Lenore, and smiling reproachfully with his indolent blue eyes, "how much you have to answer for!"They get in. I think they feel rather foolish, sitting perched up on high, side by side. There is something absurdly nuptial about this departure."Go on! what are you stopping for?" cries Paul, in the worst possible French. The driver says "Sapr—r—r, " the poor beasts stretch to their work; the old rope traces strain; the grin of expectation vanishes from the beggars' faces."Do not you feel as if we ought to throw old shoes after them?" asks Mr. Scrope, turning languidly to me, as the bells go tinkle tinkle down the street. I smile. "Would a sabot do as well? I might borrow one." The jingling has ceased. They are fairly gone."What shall we do, Miss Herrick, now that our natural protectors have left us?" says my companion, appealing piteously to me, as I stand on the broiled and broiling steps under the umbrella with which I have judiciously furnished myself; while the sun catches his yellow hair and the young soft moustache that rather directs attention to than hides his handsome mouth—the feature that is seldomer than any other in the human face good. "What shall we do? Shall we hire a couple of jackasses, and go out riding?""Rather too hot, I think.""It is hot, now you speak of it. Phew!"CHAPTER XV.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.CERTAINLY it is sleepy work, driving to Huelgoat. The day is one of those that remind one of a bad painting or of the landscape on a papier-mâché tea-tray: garish, staring, inar-tistic. The sky is all dead blue, and the trees are all dead green. Jingle, jingle, jingle, tingle, sound the bells; jig, jog, with their noses down to their knees, go the horses along the road—that is white as flour, and quite as powdery. Up long-backed hills, down long-backed hills; up, down, up, down; there is no end to it. The driver forgets to flick his whip, and cry "Allez! Allez! " He sits swaying to and fro in the sunshine, fast asleep. He looks old and starveling, as if he had never had enough to eat in all his life. Great sweeps of fern and gorse spread around, only broken by little miserable patches of oats and blé noir; endless reaches of desolate moorland—grey, barren, silent. It makes one shiver, even in this broiling noon, to think how the north wind must rush and rage over these eerie wolds, these awful landes , on a January night. Jig, jog, jig, jog. The road still twists, twists always, like a white snake writhing its endless folds about the hills."I wonder how they, are getting on," says Lenore, after a twenty minutes' silence, blinking in the sun, and trying to believe that she is enjoying herself."They . Who?" asks Paul, with an absent start."Jemima and Mr. Scrope, to be sure.""I do not know about your sister, I'm sure," replies Paul, leaning back, and resting his head against the stained and discoloured leather of the old hood; "I have not known her long enough to say; but as I knew Scrope when he was in round jackets, and have seen a good deal of him, off and on, ever since, I can tell you to a nicety what he is doing, if you wish.""What?""He is lying on his back, in the coolest place he can find, and drinking claret-cup, if he can ask for it in French, which I doubt; but if not, brandy and seltzer, cider and siphon, anything—certainly drinking; and as certainly making love to some one—the landlady, the femme de chambre, , your sister, perhaps, if she does not snub him as resolutely as she does me.""Poor dear Mima!" says Lenore, laughing. "She will be sorely puzzled to know how to take it if he does.""If it is not your sister it is somebody else," says Paul, tilting his hat over his nose, and closing his eyes; "he is the sort of fellow that one could not trust alone in the room with his own grandmother for five minutes.""Indeed!""Generally," pursues Paul, in a sleepy voice, "after a two days' acquaintance, he proposes to every woman he sees; if she refuses him, he asks her to be a sister, or mother, or aunt, or something of the sort, to him; if she accepts him he is off by the next train, and never heard of (by her , at least) again.""He must remind one of the saying that the best way to be rid of a troublesome friend is to lend him a five-pound note."Their talk flags; the dust seems to have got into it; there is no juice in it. A little public-house stands by the roadside, a bunch of box over the door, to show that they sell cider there. Inside, a woman with a distaff, an old old woman, all grin and wrinkles, every wrinkle filled up with dirt. Immensely tall pigs, with finely-arched backs, noses like greyhounds, and legs like antelopes, throng about the door. Now and again a primitive cart passes; the shaggy unkempt horses prick their ears and rear and plunge, as if they had never seen a civilised being before. With hardly less astonishment do their wild-eyed drivers stare. It is three o'clock and past by the time that Paul and Lenore reach Huelgoat—Huelgoat, sitting in the sunshine, at the very end of the world, beside her still grey tarn."I am ravenous," says Lenore, gaily, as they jingle up the dead grey street. "I ate no breakfast, did you? One cannot eat in that smell. "What shall we have? Cutlets, trout? There ought to be trout in that lake.""Do not be too sanguine," answers Paul, shaking his head, "it is uncharitable to judge by appearances, but from a bird's eye view of Huelgoat I should say that whitebait was hardly less unlikely than trout or cutlets."No one, it seems, at first sight, lives at the Hôtel de Bretagne, at least no one appears. They descend from the Américaine, and enter a flagged passage, with two doors exactly opposite each other, one on each side. That on the left is open, and gives admittance into a bright and fireless kitchen—innocent of the very faintest odour of cooking. A woman, in a cap that is a cross between a night-cap and a chimneypot of the hooded kind, comes to meet them, with an immense white collar and a clean sour face."What did Monsieur and Madame wish?""Monsieur and Madame wish for something to eat, now, immediately, à l'instant .""Monsieur and Madame can have some bread and butter—some cheese; there is unhappily nothing else in the house au moment .""Nothing else in the house! " repeats Lenore with angry volubility. "Why there is a chicken! I saw it. I see it now, there! " pointing with her finger to where a long lean cock lies, lank and plucked, in a meat-safe in the passage."There is, as Madame has observed, a chicken, a superb chicken, but he is for the table d'hôte.""But we are dying, perishing, affamés! " cries Lenore, eking out her uncertain talk with plentiful gesticulation."Monsieur and Madame can have some bread and butter—some excellent cheese—an omelette."It takes ten minutes of entreaties, expostulations, prayers, before she can be over-persuaded to the sacrifice of the "superb " chicken. On being asked how soon it will be dressed, she answers, "Half-an-hour;" and being earnestly besought to abridge that time, repeats inexorably, "Une demi-heure, à peu près .""Let us go into the salle à manger and shut the door," says Lenore despondently. "It will drive me mad to see her pottering and dawdling about; and if we watched her she would only potter and dawdle the more, to spite us."A quarter of an hour passes. They devour huge slices of the loaf, and make a clearance of three miserable little dry sardines, brought in on a plate. They look out of window at the silent street, call it "Welsh, Irish—every ugly name they can think of. Lenore could not coquet with Paul now, were she to be shot for it; neither could Paul say anything affectionate, even if under the same penalty. They are both far too hungry."Look if it has gone out of the meat-safe yet," says Lenore presently."If it has not," replies Paul gravely, "I am aware that it will be unmanly—but I shall cry ."He opens the door and peeps out into the passage."It is there still!"Despair for a few moments—then rage; then a rush into the bright kitchen opposite, bright with pewters and coarsely painted pottery plates; bitter reproaches, quickly sunk in hopeless silence."Madame is unreasonable; Madame must have patience; the fire is not yet lit!"They return to the salle à manger , and Lenore sits down on the flagged floor, while her pretty blue gown makes what children call "a cheese" all round her. Paul stands over her in gloomy silence."How well I can understand now how shipwrecked mariners eat one another," she says, looking up at him pathetically.After a while a few coals of charcoal make a feeble glimmer in the open hearth. The enemy with the chimney-pot cap takes the fowl—his sex plainly declared by the comb which still adheres to his head—and runs him once or twice through the flame to singe him; then, taking a few warm (not hot) coals, places them in a sort of tin box, and lays the carcass in the box at some distance from them."As if those wretched, half-dead embers could ever cook anything!" cries Lenore, indignantly. They sit stupidly gazing through the two open doors."How does he look?""There is not a sign of cooking upon him," answers Le Mesurier morosely. "He is as white as when he went in.""He will be done only on one side," says Lenore, half crying; "is not she going to turn him at all?"She comes in presently, and turns him over deliberately; then goes with unfeeling calmness about her other occupations."Well! Now? " (eyes sparkling, and her long neck stretched to look into the kitchen)."There is a slight shade of brown coming over him," says Paul, with a smile. Ten minutes more, and he appears; his legs and arms are all straggling wildly about, his skin is burnt blacker than any coal, and his flesh is as pink as a bit of catchfly; but he is—oh, how delicious!By-and-by, after he is eaten, and nothing but memory is left of his charms, they stroll out together down the dumb stone street, where tiny old-world children, in tight white skull-caps, not showing a curl of their baby hair, are playing gravely in the gutter, with their long petticoats flapping about their heels and entirely hiding their little fat legs—where, just inside the doors, women in the home dishabille of filthy white chimney-pots sit at their spinning-wheels.Coming to Huelgoat is synonymous with putting back the clock two hundred years. Down by a mill, along a narrow path, across a ferny slope, to see the pierre tremblante . Great rounded boulders lie about like couchant elephants; dusky fir woods clothe the hills, that rise so close and stern, and on their barren breasts great grey granite masses heave huge shoulders out of the heathy ground. Below, a little brawling stream slides coyly under the great rocks, then bubbles coldly out again, talking to itself all the way and to the small marsh flowers that grow about its low brim; a little mountain beck, like a flashing smile on the valley's lips, like a silver chain about the hill's cool feet.Paul and Lenore have been climbing the hills, have been straying amongst the piny odours, have been pushing and fighting their way through the thick bilberry bushes, and now they are hot and tired. Lenore is kneeling on a flat grey stone, and, stooping low down, lays her mouth to the clear water and drinks."I am too old and stiff to be so supple," says Paul, with a smile of admiring envy; "make me a cup of your hands; I have no letter in my pocket to make a leaky cornucopia of."She complies, gravely. Joining her white hands together, she dips them into the water, and then holds them up for him to drink. He has to drink very fast, as the water runs out nearly as quickly as it came in. Then she stoops again and bathes her head in the stream. The water rolls in diamond beads from her hair, and on to her turquoise blue gown, as she kneels on the broad grey stone; long-legged flies are walking about on the stream; little blue butterflies hover round like flying flowers, that have grown tired of their stalks, and are gone visiting their kinsfolk. Paul is stretched on the short fine grass on the other side of the brook, but yet not a span off. His elbows rest on the ground and his hands are buried in his bronze beard. It is all so pretty, so lorn, so silent, as if, long ago, God had made this fair spot and then forgotten it."Mr. Le Mesurier," says Lenore suddenly, "do you think it was wrong of me to come with you here to-day? I would not ask any other man, because I know I should only get some silly civil speech: but I know that you will tell me the truth, however disagreeable; perhaps" (laughing) "with all the more alacrity, the more unflattering it may be."Paul lifts his head and stares at her in some surprise at the demand made upon his veracity."Since when has your conscience grown so tender?" he asks evasively. "Who has been putting such an idea into your head?—for I am sure it never grew there of itself.""Jemima," she answers, dabbling her hand and her pocket-handkerchief in the bright water, with more than a child's delight. "When you came in this morning she was in the middle of telling me how improper it was. I do not mind her; she is an old maid—or at least, in her, coming events cast their shadows before; but I want you to tell me. Is it wrong, incorrect, hasardé , as the French say?""Not one of the three, in the very least," he answers warmly. "The worst that any one can say of it is, that it is a little, a very little, unconventional.""The woman with the eyes like a shot partridge would not have done it, I suppose?""Probably not." Then, seeing her look mortified: "If the woman with the eyes like a shot partridge has a fault, it is being in the slightest degree in too great bondage to Mrs. Grundy. She would hardly dare to go along the road to Heaven unless she knew that many very respectable people had gone there before her."Silence, save for the low small noise that the glossy bees make in visiting from heather-bloom to heather-bloom. The high sun is already sloping westwards; in two or three hours one will be able to look him in the face."If I had but Joshua's gift?" says Paul, sighing, as he lies gazing up at the flawless sapphire above him. "If I could but say, with any hope of being obeyed, 'Sun, stand thou still!""Why should you say so?" asks Lenore, opening her eyes as she busily wrings out her pocket-handkerchief, and lays it on the grass to dry. "Why should you wish to stop him? He will last quite long enough to light us home, and that is all we want him for to-day.""To-day! Yes," answers Le Mesurier, sighing again; "but when one thinks that, in all human probability, he will shine upon us two together at Huelgoat never again!""He will shine upon us two together at Morlaix," says Lenore playfully, "which will be much the same, will not it? Probably he will not only shine upon us, but will freckle us a good deal.""He will not shine upon us together anywhere long," says Paul, rather crossly, as if vexed by her gaiety."What do you mean?""I mean that I am going back to England the day after to-morrow; that is all.""Going!" she repeats, while a cowardly, treacherous white spreads over cheeks and lips, and her wet hands drop forgotten into her lap."Yes; I am going," answers Paul, his vain man's heart all astir at sight of her change of countenance, and his face gaining all the colour hers has lost; "my people, who have never hitherto shown much propensity for my society, have suddenly found that I am indispensable to them."She turns her head aside, and looks away towards the piny hills."So you are going away?" she says, almost under her breath. "Well" (forcing a smile), "considering how inauspiciously our acquaintance began, we have got on very well together, have not we?""Very well," answers Paul, emphatically."We have managed to agree pretty well, although I am not your style " with a perceptible accent on the last three words."Not my style? What do you mean?" he asks, reddening consciously."Although you did think it such a hardship coming on that tea picnic with us down the Rance; although you did look at your watch so often and sigh so heavily. I thought once or twice" (laughing a little) "that you would have blown out Frederic's new-lit fire.""Is it possible?" cries Paul, tragically; not in the least struck by the ridiculousness of the offence imputed to him, but rather by the state of mind in himself that such au offence evidenced.Lenore bends her eyes on the ground; her finger ignorant of what they are doing, pluck at the fine blades of grass and dwarf yellow flowers about her; her figure has a drooped air of languor."There was a pretty redness in her lip,A little riper and more lusty redThan that mixed in her cheek; 'twas just the differenceBetwixt the constant red and mingled damask.""Yes, we have got on very well," she says, in a tone that is half a whisper and half a sigh. Paul has risen to his feet, and now steps across the narrow barrier of the brook that parts them, and stands over her, with his hands in his pockets, and a strong emotion agitating his plain burnt face."Lenore," he says impetuously, "do not you think that we should get on very well together always?"If only premeditated proposals came to pass, every parish register would be the poorer by two-thirds of its marriages. When he set off this morning from Morlaix, Paul had as much idea of offering himself to Jemima as to Lenore, only he would not believe it now if you were to tell him so. At his words she springs to her feet, and a slight quiver passes over her features."I think," she says, trying to laugh, "that we should quarrel a good deal.""Lenore!" says Paul, earnestly, "I do not know why I am asking you. You are not in the least the sort of woman that I ever pictured to myself as my wife, and I have no earthly business to ask any woman; my face" (with a rather grim laugh) "is my fortune, and you see what a handsome one that is, and yet—and yet—tell me, Lenore, am I worth living in a garret on cold mutton with?"She gives him no speech in answer; only she stretches out her arms, and her eyes flash softly through her happy tears: he must read his answer there.The beck tinkles at their feet; the butterflies hover about their heads; the sun gives them his broad, warm smile; and three little Breton girls, going a bilberrying, with tin mugs in their hands, stand on a neighbouring slope, aghast at the manners and customs of the British. She is lying in his arms, and he is kissing the beautiful lips that have kissed none but him, that (as he confidently thinks) will kiss none but him ever again."Are you sure," asks Lenore, presently, lifting her ruffled head from his breast, and smiling through her tears, "are you sure that you are asking me for yourself this time?""Quite sure.""That it is not for Frederic?""No.""Nor for Mr. Scrope?"'"No.""Are you quite, quite sure that you like me?" she asks, drawing a little away from him, and reading earnestly his grey eyes, as if with more confidence in their truth than in that of his mouth."I am not at all sure of it," he answers, laughing. "You are not the sort of person that any one could like , but I am very sure that I love you, if that will do as well.""Better than the shot partridge woman?" she asks, smiling, half ashamed of her question, and yet with solicitude."Immeasurably better!" answers he, devoutly.At that she seems satisfied, but in a very little while her restless doubts return."Paul," she says, withdrawing herself from his arms, "you have not yet asked me whether I like you.""I suppose," he answers, gaily, "that I thought actions spoke louder than words.""You did not think it worth while asking me," she says, reddening painfully, "because you were so sure of what the answer would be; you knew I was fond of you; you have known it all along! Oh, why did not I hide it better?" clasping her hands together, and flinging herself down, disconsolately, on the grass."I knew nothing of the kind," answers Paul, pulling his moustache, and looking very much embarrassed; "if, indeed, you had been any other woman, I might have been conceited enough to fancy from your manner that you did not dislike me, but as you are not in the least like any woman I ever saw in my life, I could not possibly argue from their manners and customs to yours.""You are very kind," she answers, shaking her bead, "trying to put me in good humour with myself, but you cannot: I have been a lame hare—a lame hare!""Do not call my wife ugly names!" cries Paul, playfully, yet distressed, sitting down beside her; "it is very bad manners.""If you had been less sure of me, you would have valued me a hundred times more," says the girl, with bitter mortification, fixing her solemn, tragic eyes on his face."Do not get into the habit of talking such nonsense," retorts he, brusquely; all the more brusquely perhaps from a latent consciousness that there is a grain of truth in her self-accusation. "How many limes must I tell you that I was not sure of you; that I did not know but that you might give me my coup de grace with as little remorse as you did West?"How Mr. Le Mesurier reconciles this astounding fib to his conscience, I must leave the reader to determine.Another little silence; the bilberry children have disappeared in the wood; the long-legged flies are still promenading on the stream; the sleepy mellowness of afternoon is upon everything."Paul," says Lenore again presently, not in the least convinced by her lover's perjuries, and lifting a charming quivering face to his; "can you swear to me that yon did not ask me because I looked grieved at the news of your going? Can you swear to me that you like me always? Not only now, here , but always , all day and all night—even when you are away from me.""Even when I am away from you, strange to say," he replies, heartily, drawing her fondly towards him."I know," she continues, not yielding to his caresses, but rather resisting them, "that while I am with you, I please you, as any man is pleased with the company of a young, good-looking woman, who has evident delight in his society; but when you are away from me—alone, in your own room at night, quietly thinking over things—do you like me then ? do you approve of me then?"He looks a little pained at first by this puzzling catechism; then, putting an arm of fond and resolute ownership round her, answers gravely, but without hesitation:"Lenore, since you are bent on tormenting yourself and me with these ridiculous doubts and questionings, I will tell you the very truth: I would not have loved you if I could have helped it; for the last three weeks I have been trying honestly to dislike you. I have told myself over and over again—yes, I have even told West too, that I did not admire you; I have pretended to hold you cheap; I have said that you were fast —that I could see you had a temper—that you were bad form—that you were not even pretty—God forgive me for such a lie," breaking off suddenly, to smooth her ruffled hair."Well; go on," she says, curtly, impatient of the interruption, while her cheeks wear as deep a dye as the strewn petals of a red rose."I felt—well, to tell truth, I feel now" (laughing) "that you were not a woman that a man would have an easy time with. Lenore, I shall be frantically jealous of you; I shall very often fly into a rage with you——""There," cries Lenore with spirit, "we shall be quits; for I never stayed in the house with any one for a fortnight in my life, without quarrelling à l'outrance with them.""You are," continues Paul, still smiling, "as unlike as it is possible to be to the patient Grizzle, the amiable fond drudge, that I have always imagined trudging humbly through life beside me! I cannot fancy you trudging humbly beside any one; you would be more likely to stalk on in front of them, with your head up—but yet—but yet, Lenore—look me in the face for as long as you please—the longer the better—I defy even you to find any falsehood there—I would not change you now for all the Grizzles in Christendom.""Would not you?" she says, softly laying her head caressingly down on his shoulder, "I am glad!""Poor darling!" he says, with a passionate pang of self-reproach, "I wish I was better worth being glad of."Neither speaks for a few moments, and both are happy-Lenore, womanlike, is the first to break silence."Paul," she says, lifting her head from its new resting-place laying a hand with innocent familiarity upon each of his shoulders, and scanning closely his face, which looks even less handsome under this minute inspection than when viewed from the respectful distance at which his acquaintance are wont to regard it, "do you know that I am not at all nice? Not at all; quite the contrary. I would not have told you, only that I am sure that you would very soon have found it out for yourself: hitherto, I have not cared whether I was or no; but I am not a nice person, certainly. As yet you have seen only the best of me.""The best of you!" cries Le Mesurier, raising his brows in feigned dismay, "if what I have seen be the best of you, what must the worst be?"She smiles. "You remind me of the man, who, when his ladylove refused him, saying that she wondered how he could have the presumption to propose to her, as she had never shown him anything but her coldest manner, answered that if such were her coldest manners, he shuddered to think what her warmest must be." The laugh becomes a duet. "Do not you remember," continues Lenore, gravely, "what Miss Richland says in Goldsmith's 'Good-natured Man?' 'Our sex are like poor tradesmen that put all their best goods to be seen in the windows.' All my best goods are in my windows.""Why do not you leave me to make these discoveries for myself? asks Paul, half vexed, half playfully. "Why do you tell me? it is like telling me the end of a novel.""Do not you see," she says, eagerly, "that I want you to know the worst of me at once?""And about how bad is the worst?" asks Paul jestingly, as he takes her two hands, and puts them about his own neck, While he gazes at his leisure into the shady depths of her deep-fringed eyes; "is it that you have a will of your own?—I know that already—I knew it from the day when you first burst upon my dazzled sight in Stephanie's cap and petticoat—is it that you snub your sister? I know that too—is it——""Oh, do not joke," she says, earnestly, "it is no joking matter, but I will try to be nicer for the future; I will indeed, for your sake! I will begin directly—to-morrow.""Why not to-day?" (smiling)."I shall have no temptation to resist to-day," she answers simply. "To-day, I am too happy to be wicked."Again he presses her to his heart, with a feeling of remorse, as one that has been given a good gift, and prizes it not according to its worth."Oh poor child!" he cries with emotion, "why are you happy? is it because you have made the worst and most losing bargain ever woman made since first this cheating world began?""I have been so lucky all my life," she says with a pensive smile; "from a little child, I have always succeeded in getting what I wanted? You are the first person whose love I ever wished for, and—is it forward of me to tell you so?—I wished for it from almost the first day I saw you, rude and surly as you were to me—and now—so you tell me, do not you?—against your will I have got even that.""There is not much doubt of it," answers Paul, with more emphasis than eloquence. "Oh perverse pretty darling, what blessed contrariety ever induced you to take a fancy to such an ugly ill-conditioned devil as I? Most women hate the sight of me.""And you return the compliment with interest," rejoins Lenore, smiling; "so Frederic told us. That was what first made me think of you. Oh Paul" (her gravity returning, and the unbidden tears rising to her eyes), "was there ever an instance of any one being happy always? or shall I have to pay for my good luck by-and-by?""Do not talk like that," says the young man hastily, with a pained look, "it makes me feel as if I had been misleading you, and yet God knows I have not done so consciously. Oh love!" (with an accent of bitterness) "you will find soon enough that there is nothing alarmingly fortunate in the lot you have drawn.""If you think," she answers, with a spirited smile, "that I am deceiving myself in my estimate of you, you are mistaken; I am not elevating your excellences at the expense of my own; if I am not remarkably amiable, neither I am sure are you; we shall probably lead a cat and dog life, to the edification of all our neighbours—but yet, try as you may to persuade me to the contrary, it still seems—it will always seem to me—good luck to belong to you. Come, let us go!"As she speaks, she rises, and stands beside the little quarrelsome stream, tall, and straight, and beautiful, with a grave fond smile on her shut lips, and a bulrush wand in her small white hand: his own, his very own, and not another man's!CHAPTER XVI.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.IT is half-past eight, but still broad daylight. Paul and Lenore have not yet returned. I wish they would. "Good night!" say I, closing the old spinet at which I have been warbling, in the little salon that overhangs the street."Are you going to bed?" asks Mr. Scrope, dissuasively, "do not." He is tying on three chairs, meditating, like Mr. Pickwick, with his eyes closed."I have a head-ache," I answer rather crossly. "Can no one keep awake in my society?" is my reflection."Please sing 'Good night, good night, beloved,' before you go," says he, lifting his blue eyes with lazy entreaty to my face, "do ."I laugh: "You are like the man in 'Sam Slick,' who said to the girl, 'Thing me that little thong again!' when she had already sung it twice. I sang 'Good night, good night, beloved,' ten minutes ago."He first looks confused, and then laughs with boyish heartiness. "Did you? You see it was a better lullaby than, you had any idea of.""Good night!" say I, tendering my hand for the second time."Do not go!" he says again, drawing himself languidly up; "it is only half-past eight.""Is not it as well to sleep comfortably and peacefully in bed, as uncomfortably and spasmodically on three hard-bottomed chairs?""I think not" (rising and yawning). "In order to get to bed one has the trouble of going upstairs. Now, if one had some one to carry one up it would be different.""I wish they would come back," say I, uneasily stepping out into the little balcony. "It is a great shame of Mr. Le Mesurier keeping Lenore out so late.""How do you know that it is not she that is keeping him out?"I drew myself up with dignity: "What do you mean?""I meant no offence," he answers, good-humouredly; "only from the very little I know of your sister, I should say that she was not the sort of person to let any one make her come in, or go out, against her own will.""You do not like Lenore," say I, leaning my arms on the rails and gazing down the street."To tell you the truth," he answers, confidentially, "she frightens me out of my wits! You do not in the least; but when I see her come into the room, my first impulse is to take to my heels, and hide in dens and caves.""Is it?" say I, surprised. "Why?""Her eyes go through one like gimlets ," he says, his handsome young cheeks flushing; "and she has a way of looking over and under and through and on each side of one, without affecting to perceive one.""Has she?" I say, wonderingly; "I never observed it.""Perhaps it is only I who am invisible to the naked eye," rejoins he, with an indolent smile. "She perceives Paul , no doubt: we can all see that, of course.""There is no accounting for taste," I answer, tritely. "Bottom and Titania are of very frequent occurrence nowadays.""I did not mean that exactly," says Mr. Scrope, too loyal to his friend to relish the ingenious comparison that I have instituted between him and the ass-headed weaver of Athens. "I am not in the least surprised at Miss Lenore's preferring Paul to me, for he is the very best fellow in the world, and consequently I can only be the second best.""Very best !" cry I, carping at such unlimited praise be-stowed upon a person whose merits I have, as yet, been unable to discover. "How very best ? Most religious, do you mean?"He looks down. "No not that, I suppose.""Steadiest?"He smiles significantly. "Hardly! poor old Paul! They used to call him 'Lincoln and Bennett' in his old regiment, because he was as mad as two hatters.""Most amiable?""Well no, I think not; Paul is a queer-tempered fellow; he can be very nasty when he likes.""In what, then," inquire I, astonished, "may I ask, does his super-eminent merit consist?""It knocks one up so much this hot weather, explaining things," answers he, stretching. "All the same, he is the very best fellow in the world.""That is the Italian mode of argument," say I, smiling, "which consists in repeating the disputed assertion over a certain number of times, in exactly the same words as at first.""With this parting thrust, I take my leave. Early as is the hour, many of the commercial travellers have already retired to bed; at least, many boots stand outside many doors. As I walk slowly up the stairs, the problem that engages my mind is—"Wherein can Mr. Le Mesurier's charm lie? Ugly—irreligious—dissipated—ill-tempered!" I fall asleep without having solved it. I am awoke, or half-awoke, by a sensation of being violently called upon and shaken by some one. I sit up and blink: "I have sung it twice already," I say, irrelevantly, imagining that Mr. Scrope is still pressing me to sing" Good-night, good-night, beloved," and is shaking me to enforce compliance."Sung what? Who wants you to sing? Wake up, you foolish old person!" cries my sister's laughing voice. I obey. Broad awake, I look round. The moonlight is lying in silver bars on the floor, having shone through the Venetian blind. A candle glares uncomfortably into my eyes; and, on my "bed, Lenore is sitting, still dressed in her hat and jacket; her clothes wet with the night-dews, and the steady shining of a great new happiness in her eyes. "Jemima!" she says, with an excited smile, snatching my hand; "are you awake?—wide? Can you understand things?""It is not your fault if I cannot," I answer, drowsily, rubbing my eyes."Stop blinking," she cries, impatiently, "and look at me? Do you know that you are looking at the very happiest woman in all France?"And you at the sleepiest," reply I, lying down again."Do not go to sleep!" she says, laying her sweet fresh face, cool with the kisses of the night-wind, beside mine on the pillow. "You do not know what interesting things I have to tell you. Do you know" (in a confidential, emphatic whisper)—"I daresay you will hardly believe it at first—I can hardly believe it myself, yet—but Paul likes—me—very—much !""Well?" say I crossly, half at my interrupted slumbers, half at the unwelcome, though expected news; "there is nothing very wonderful in that; for the last three weeks you have been doing your very best to make him like you, and your efforts in that line are not generally unblessed with success."Her countenance falls; her tone of gay triumph changes "Doing my very best!" she repeats, slowly. "Ah! that was what I was afraid of. So I have—so I have.""Your friend Paul had no need to see farther through a stone wall than other people, in order to perceive that it was a case of, 'Oh, whistle and I'll come to you, my lad!'" pursue I, with clumsy badinage.She covers her face with her hands; then, lifting it, looks with wistful anxiety at me. "Did I do anything to make a person despise me, do you think?" she asks, in a low voice. "Was I 
unladylike? Did I run after him?""Run after him! Pooh! nonsense!" reply I, carelessly; then, after a pause, meditatively: "Paul! Paul! It is an ugly, abrupt little name. Paul Pry! Paul Ferroll, who killed his wife! Are there any more Pauls? You really must have him re-christened, Lenore.""Paul and Virginia," says Lenore, assisting my memory, having recovered her smiles; "I do not think I am much like Virginia.""And do you mean seriously to tell me," continue I, becoming grave, "that it was with the deliberate intention of asking you to share his exceedingly indifferent fortunes that he took you out on this expedition to-day, in that little dusty tumble-down pony-gig, in the roasting sun?""I do not know whether it was deliberate intention or accident," replies my sister, looking down, and plucking at the clothes. "I rather think it was accident; but whichever it was, he did ask me.""And you said 'Yes,' and 'Thank you kindly,' I suppose?" cry I, reddening with indignation.She nods assent: "If I did not say it, I felt it."A little silence: "You will at least have an excellent foil , on all occasions, ready to your hand," I say, spitefully, in bitter vexation that Damocles' sword has fallen—that the catastrophe which I have been vaguely dreading for the last three weeks has happened."What do you mean?" (with an absent look). "Oh!" (with a smile) "I see; you think him so ugly?""Extremely!" reply I, drily."So do I," rejoins she calmly; "I like ugliness.""Come sit thee down upon this flowery bed,While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,And stick mask-roses in thy sleek smooth head.And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy,'"say I, maliciously, quoting Titania's apostrophe to Bottom.Lenore reddens. "You are rude, Jemima, and not at all witty.""He is poor too," say I, with rising exasperation; "unjustifiably poor. I suppose lie goes upon the principle that what is not enough for one is enough for two?""I suppose he does," she answers, quietly. "I like poverty.""He is ill-tempered, too," pursue I, eagerly. "Do you remember what a fury he flew into at Guingamp, with that pool garcon who could not understand his bad French when he asked for the time-table?""I remember; I like ill-temper.""And he is also a gourmand," continue I, relentlessly. 'Did you notice how thoroughly put out he looked yesterday at dinner, because the galantine was finished before it reached him?""Did he? I dare say; I like greediness."I shake my head, silenced and baffled by this hopeless agreement with all my objections."You see," cries Lenore, with a triumphant smile, "that, try as you may, you cannot put me out of conceit with him.""The point I am trying to arrive at," say I, with a sigh, "is, what could have ever put you into conceit with him
first? Do not look so angry, my dear child! I am not so raided to my own opinion but that I am quite ready to change it, if you show me good reason why I should. But—I really do not mean it offensively—but what good qualities of mind or body has Mr. Le MesurierLenore springs off the bed, and begins to walk rapidly up and down the room: her little high heels tap-tapping against the carpetless boards. "How you talk!" she cries, angrily. "Do you think that, when a person loves, they pick out this quality and that, and say, ' This is loveable, and that is loveable, and therefore I will be fond of the person who owns them all?' One loves because one loves—because one cannot help it, and because one would not, if one could.""Talk High Dutch, or Coptic, you will be quite as intelligible to me," I say, indignantly.She returns to the bed, and fixing her large bright eyes on my face, "Is it possible, Jemima," she asks, "that in all the many years you have been about the world," (I wince) "you have never had a lover that you cared about with all your heart and soul, for no particularly good reason that you could give either yourself or anybody else?""Never," reply I, with rather a grim laugh. "Humiliating as the confession is, I should have thought, Lenore, that you might have known by this time that I never have had a lover, either that I cared about or that I did not care about; and I do not think that there are many women of eight-and-twenty that can make that proud boast.""Poor Jemima!" cries my sister, in a tone of the sincerest compassion, taking my hand: at this moment she feels ten years older in experience and emotion than I."Do not pity me!" say I, with asperity; "l'appetit vient en mangeant: if I had one lover, I might wish for more; but, as things stand, the more I look around me, the more inclined I am to think that 'ignorance is bliss.'""Good-night, Jemima!" says Lenore, stalking to the door with as much dignity as a waterproof down to the heels and a brass candlestick in her hand will permit; "I am sorry I woke you; next time that I come to you for sympathy——""Stay—stay!" cry I, vexed at the effect of my words, and yet puzzled how to mend them. Sitting up in bed and stretching out my arms to her:—"Remember, I was only half awake; I did not quite take it in: I—I—daresay he is very nice when you come to know him." (Lenore pauses with the open door in her hand.) "He looks quite like a gentleman, and—and has the usual younger son's portion—Very good teeth," continue I, laughing awkwardly, and floundering about in search of a possible excellence in mind or body on which to be able conscientiously to compliment my sister's lover. Silence. "I am sure—at least I think—that he will improve on acquaintance.""It is not of the least consequence what you think!" says Lenore in a fury, banging the door.CHAPTER XVII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."The Lord of Nann and his lady fairIn early youth united were,In early youth divided were.""Do not you think that we are rather like the Lord and Lady of Nann, engaged yesterday, to be separated the day after to-morrow VIt is Lenore who says all this: she is strolling along beside net lover down one of the lovely old streets of Morlaix, that the malignant mania for smart new quays, broad bright new thoroughfare, has not yet swept away. They have been pry-ing into the dim interiors; climbing unforbidden the dusty beautiful wrecks of carven stairs, up and down which the stately nobles used to pace, in the gone centuries; and where now only dirty gamins roll and tumble, and the clamp of sabots comes. Life seems easier here than in England. In the ancient timber-fronted houses people are leaning on the heavy window-sills miles up in air: below, in the street, they seem to have nought to do but to jaser with their neighbours, sitting in old carved doorways; while bright blankets and rugs hung out in the front make a brilliant bit of colour. At almost every house, birds, hung in wicker cages—parrots, canaries. A little child is trotting about in the gutter with a bunch of cherries in its little hand. The sun is beating, blinding hot, on the fine bare new streets, but here the tall friendly houses lean over, storey above storey, so close, to-gossip together, that they intercept his rays.Lenore has furled her umbrella."I do not think that my worst enemy could accuse me of being in early youth," Paul says, with a smile."About how old are you?" asks Lenore, peering up inquisitively at him. "You are one of those baffling sort of people who might be any age, from twenty-five to forty-five inclusive.""I am halfway between the two; I am thirty-five.""You look more, I think," says Lenore, with charming candour; "I suppose it is that horrid beard."Le Mesurier does not answer, but he does not look particularly pleased."You know I have never yet seen your real face," continues she, slipping her hand through his arm. "I have the vaguest idea of what sort of features I am undertaking; I shall be like the lady who was so short sighted that she said she never knew her husband by sight until they married: this appendage must, come off before we meet again." She speaks playfully, but in the imperative mood, which has been habitual to her through life.Paul thinks the imperative mood very good in a man , but utterly inadmissible in a woman. "Must it?" he answers, very shortly; then, with a rather awkward attempt to recover his good humour: "Do not you know what the early Christians said?—that shaving was a lie against one's own face, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator!"Lenore thrusts out her fresh lips in a mutinous pout. "I can quote too; did you ever hear this distich?" she say?, saucily:—"'John P. Robinson, he Said they did not know everything down in Judee.'"Paul looks grave. He has not read the "Biglow Papers." and he particularly dislikes flippancy in a woman. Men may be allowed to be a little wicked; but all women should be religious. They have emerged from the old street; have left behind them the tall slate-fronted houses, nodding to each other over the way; have left also the gables, the dormer-windows, the strange saint-faces, deftly wrought in wood. They are sauntering slowly back to their hotel through the more modern part of the town. Morlaix lies so prettily; viaduct, river, churches, peaked houses, all hobnobbing in the hollow, between green hills."What will you be doing this time three days hence?" asks Lenore, presently, with a half pensive smile, abandoning the obnoxious subject of beards.Undergoing, probably, a catechism at the hands of my People, as to your merits and demerits," answers Paul, laughing."What will they ask you first about me?" inquires she with anxious curiosity."How can I tell?""What points are they likely to lay most stress upon?""They will probably," begins Paul with some reluctance, "wish to know first whether you are of a good family. By-the-by—do not be angry with me for not knowing, but you. see I should like to be ready with my answer—are you?""Of course," replies the girl, drily, tossing her head with a jerk. "Came over with the Conqueror.""Really?" cries Paul, with an eagerness which shows that, whatever other weaknesses he may be superior to, he is not above that of a sincere penchant towards pedigree."How do I know?" cries Lenore, impatiently. "Who cares? What does it matter? Grandfathers do not make a man, or a woman either.""They are rather apt, however, to make a gentleman," answers Paul, somewhat stiffly."I always tell everybody," continues she, with an smile, "that we are lineally descended from the poet. I should not mind being great—great—great—granddaughter to 'Fair Daffodils.'""And are you?" asks her lover, resigning himself to come down six centuries in his expectations."I have not the slightest reason for supposing so," answers with a careless laugh.Paul heaves an involuntary sigh."What will the next article be, as shopkeepers say?" asks Lenore, presently, giving her head an uneasy toss, and with a sort of swagger in her voice, which is quite as much the result of nervousness as of pride. "Whether I have any money, I suppose?""Possibly," answers he, uncomfortably."And you will reply, 'Not a sou!'" (raising her two hands and letting them fall again with a gesture expressive of utter destitution)."Exactly."She laughs maliciously. "How I should like to see their faces! Grandfather doubtful, and pennilessness certain! You would, however, not be quite correct; I have several sous—an immense number, in fact. How many sous are there in four thousand pounds in the Three per Cents""As many as in four thousand out of the Three per Cents," he answers, laughing."A base evasion of a difficult arithmetical problem! Well, sous or no sous, I really have four thousand pounds.""I am delighted to hear it.""Could not you put it into francs when you mention it to your family? It sounds so immense then.""I am afraid they would detect the imposture.""Jemima has more—a good deal more," says Lenore, communicatively; "still, we only make up five hundred pounds a year between us—a fact, however, which we carefully conceal from our acquaintance, having learnt by experience the entire truth of Solomon's epigram, that 'the poor, even his neighbour hateth him!'"They reach the hotel, the empty salon . "It is a contemptible dot ," cries Lenore, indignantly, flinging down her hat on floor, and herself on the sofa. "One ought to be super-humanly handsome to induce people to overlook it.""It is better than nothing," replies Paul, with a philosophical, if lugubrious attempt to look at his beloved's minute portion from a cheerful point of view."Four thousand pounds!" repeats Lenore, scornfully "Not four thousand pounds a year —that would be all very well; but four thousand pounds for the whole maintenance and support of a reasonable educated being, with a fine feeling for lace, and a just abhorrence of country boots and thread gloves!""And gingham umbrellas!" supplements Le Mesurier, laughing."You must know that we are not all church mice however," says Lenore presently; "for the credit of the family, I must tell you that we have some rich people among us—my sister Sylvia, for instance.""Your sister Sylvia!" cries Paul, rather aghast. "I had no idea that you had a sister Sylvia, or a sister anything else, except Jemima. I suppose Kezia, and Keren Happuch, and a few more, will transpire by-and-by.""Some years ago she married," continues the girl, biographically. "She is a pretty little cat, with eyes as big as teacups; and he—well, he was old enough to be everybody's grandfather" (stretching out both arms comprehensively). "He was as bald as my hand" (opening one pretty pink palm), "as fat as Falstaff, as ignorant as a carp, and he had made his money by that yellow grease that they put on railway wheels.""Good Heavens! how awful! Is he alive still?" asks Paul, nervously."That is what I am coming to," continues she, gravely. "In poetic justice he ought to have had creeping paralysis, softening of the brain—anything that would have kept her tied to the leg of his bath-chair for the next twenty or thirty years, as a judgment on her for marrying him; instead of which, what happens?" (Standing before him and gesticulating). "Within four years he is carried off by an attack of apoplexy! Bah! what luck some people have!""So that is your idea of luck! " rejoins Paul, leaning his chin on the back of the chair on which he is sitting astride, and staring curiously up at her; "to marry a commercial porpoise, and survive it.""It is to be hoped," resumes Lenore, after a thoughtful pause (marching up and down the little room), "that your people will ask whether I am good-looking. That is the one question to which you could give a really satisfactory answer." She speaks, not with the blushing naïveté of a jeune inégnue , but with the matter-of-fact calmness of a woman whom early contact with the world has taught the value of the one great gift she has been given."If they do not ask I must volunteer the information.""You might also," pursues Lenore, beginning coolly to check off her accomplishments on her fingers, "hint to them that I dance extremely well—that——""My father does not approve of dancing," interrupts Paul, tilting the hind legs of his chair till he nearly topples over.Her hands drop to her sides, and her great eyes open wide like large blue flowers in the sun. "Not approve of dancing! What a dreadful old man! What can he be made of?""If you asked my eldest brother, he would answer 'Cast iron,' judging from his duration," replies he, with a lazy chuckle of amusement."And does not he allow your sisters to dance?" asks Lenore, looking thoroughly dashed by the insight just afforded her into her future father-in-law's character."They may walk through a quadrille, or romp through the lancers, if they choose," replies Le Mesurier, still laughing at the expression of his betrothed's face. "I would not be they if they were caught indulging in any wilder mode of progression.""Poor dears!" ejaculates Lenore, with a sigh of heartfelt compassion. "No doubt, however, they dance like dervishes as soon as his hack is turned.""Is that the course you mean to pursue when I forbid you to do anything?" asks Paul in jest, but also most heartily in earnest."Undoubtedly," replies she, coolly, locking back at him with defiant gravity. "From the time I could walk alone I can safely say that I have never yet been forbidden to do anything that I did not instantly strain every nerve to do it."If Miss Herrick expects her lover to show either pleasure or amusement at this proof of her spirit, she is disappointed. He only says "Oh!" and coughs rather drily."Parents and guardians, tutors and governesses, forbid ," continues Lenore, incisively; "one does not hear such an ugly hectoring word mentioned between man and wife.""I have an idea, however," retorts Paul, quietly, "that one can find such ugly hectoring words as 'honour' and 'obey' in the Prayer Book. I will show you the place, if you like.""One cannot always take the Prayer Book au pied de la, lettre ," says Lenore lightly. "After all, I dare say I shall be quite as likely to 'honour and obey' you as you to 'worship' me!""I do not know that" (rising); "when you have that blue gown on, and a blue ribbon in your hair, and look meek , I am not far off it now." As he speaks he takes her two hands in his, and the look that for the moment makes the wise man half-brother to the idiot—that no doubt made even Solomon himself seem but a foolish fellow among his seven hundred charmers—invades his usually shrewd eyes."I had that identical blue gown on, the day that you so good-naturedly acted as Frederic's proxy," replies Lenore, demurely."Lenore!" says Paul, neither heeding nor hearing her allusion, loosing her hands, and clasping his own round her waist, "I have told you what I shall he doing when I am gone: tell me now what you will? I do not want you to promise to look at the moon, or say your prayers, or drink your cup of tea at the very same moment I do, or any such lolly,—but" (with an impatient sigh) "I—I suppose in this sort of cases we are all pretty much alike, and—do not laugh at me, I hate being laughed at—I should like to be able to say to myself at such-and-such an hour, Lenore is doing such-and-such a harmless thing; if not I shall be sure to imagine that you are up to some mischief.""Thank you.""Come, Lenore, what will you be doing the first day?""The first day," says the girl, feeling a vile inclination to be sentimental and tearful, and resolving not to be conquered by it—"The first day I shall lie in bed all day with the window-curtains drawn: I shall refuse all food, however hungry I may be; hitherto I have not found that love takes away the appetite, and I shall cry noisily, obtrusively, and without intermission.""And the second day?""Half of the second day I shall spend in gazing at your photograph—that one of Disderi's, in winch you are sitting with your back to Mont Blanc, looking like a murderer—and the other half in wrangling with Jemima about your attractions: 
we have already had one or two passages of arms as to the shape of your nose and the colour of your eyes.""And the third day?"The third day! " flinging down her head on his shoulder, and groaning honestly, "the third ugly empty immense day! How shall I get through it? Well," (recovering herself, and feeling rather ashamed of her ebullition,) "the third day I may, perhaps, pluck up my spirits enough to enable me to try and wile that handsome, sulky, sleepy Scrope boy into the mazes of a gentle flirtation."Paul unclasps his hands from about her suddenly, and walks towards the balcony."What is the matter now?" cries the girl, half bewildered, half offended; then, breaking into a laugh, as she catches a glimpse of his face: "Good heavens, Paul! how ill-tempered you can look when you try! I thought I was a pretty good hand at it, but I'm nothing to you.""I detest that sort of jokes," replies Paul tersely, turning upon her a thoroughly cross jealous face; "they are not ladylike!""But I am not ladylike either," retorts Lenore, flinging up her head and growing scarlet; ''did I ever say I was? We did not come over with the Conqueror; we have no more to say to the poet than you have: it is my belief that we are roturier to the backbone?"She is standing beside him, very upright, with her hands behind her: her voice is not shrill , it is not its way to be so; but it is undoubtedly raised two or three tones above its usual low key: little sparks of fire are darting from her eyes, and her cheeks are redder than the red rose in her belt.Delightfully handsome as a picture certainly—but as a future wife? "Is it possible that she can have told me the truth when she said that hitherto I had seen only the best of her?" thinks Paul, with a cold qualm.CHAPTER XVIII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."GOOD-BYE" is an ugly word: written or spoken, it has an ill-look—a down-looking, sighing, weeping word. There is something faintly disagreeable even in the limp hand-shake with which one parts from a disrelished tedious guest, as one thinks, with slight remorse, that perhaps he was not so bad after all. But of all delusions and all snares, seeing people off is the worst. It is bad enough to take an indifferent acquaintance 
to the train—to stand with your hand on the carriage door—the last civil regret uttered, the last friendly hope for a speedy meeting again expressed; the smile of farewell stereotyped on your lips, while your ears thirst for the engine's parting whistle, which will not come for five minutes yet. But how far worse to see one that is really dear to you off on a long voyage! To stand on a cold dirty quay on some dull November morning, while the huge drab-grey sea heaves and booms before you, suggestive of shipwreck, while the harbour is robed in mist, and through it the tall ship's masts and rigging show indistinctly great; while all about you, unfeeling men roll barrels and carry bales, and under your veil your tears drip miserably, to the great annoyance of the dear one, who, if he be equally grieved, yet, man like, feels angry with you for adding to his sufferings; and if(as is most probable) he is not equally grieved, yet is constrained, 
out of sympathy, to pull a long face, while his manly soul yearns for the consolation of a pipe and cognac! Even if you are absolutely certain never to see a beloved one again. yet abstain from "seeing him off."But Lenore thinks differently: she is bent on seeing the last of Paul. The voyage from St. Malo to Southampton is certainly not a long one, but in this case it is not the actual breath of the seas which will lie between the lovers that constitutes the bitterness of the parting. Paul is going on a doubtful errand—to break to two doting sisters and a gouty Calvinistic father the news that he has at length found a woman to his mind: a woman (as he himself uncomfortably feels) of the very kind most antipathetic to his people.Lenore, meanwhile, has resolved to pass the time of suspense that must ensue at Dinan. She has wisely made up her mind to go over each sacred spot where they first met and squabbled, and to weep plentifully at each. She will be in no whit behind Marianne Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibility," who "would have thought herself very inexcusable had she been able to sleep at all the first night after parting from Willoughby.Meanwhile they have made up their little differences. Paul has eaten his words—has assured his betrothed that he habitually values people for their own merits, not for those of their forbears; that, in fact, he looks upon ancestors as rather a disadvantage than otherwise. And she, on the other hand, not to be behindhand in magnanimity, has been racking her brains to recollect an authentic great-grandfather. Le Mesurier has done his best to dissuade his beloved from coming to wave her pocket handkerchief after him as he sails away from St. Malo, but in vain. "It will be too much for you I—it will upset you!" he has said tenderly, but she has answered with a wilful smile and shake of the head:"Nothing ever upsets me, except not getting my own way; that has always injured my health, from my youth up."So he is silenced, and has perforce to submit, with what grace he can, to the prospect of what he most dreads on the earth's face—a scene, and being publicly cried over.Still he makes one struggle more against his fate "I hate saying 'good-bye'—do not you, Scrope?" he says that night to his friend, as they sit on the hotel steps smoking, under the yellow moon, which in her third quarter looks odd and three-cornered."I hate saying anything, this weather," replies Scrope, languidly. "I should like to keep a little boy to make remarks for me, and they would chiefly be requests for iced drinks.""Suppose," continues Paul, "that we give them "(indicating, 
with a motion of his head, the direction where he supposes Jemima and Lenore to be) "the slip, and start by the early train to-morrow morning: I have been looking, and there is one at 6.40.""Start!"echoes Scrope, with more energy than he had any that the hot weather had left him, holding his cigar between two fingers, and looking reproachfully at his friend. "Your sole ideas of the pleasures of travelling are 'starting' and 'arriving;' the sole enjoyment you have in a landscape is tracing where the railway runs. My dear fellow, I have already an indigestion of trains, boats, diligences; I have as much idea of starting by the early train as the late train, and the late train as the early train. I mean, D.V., never to start again""No more would I, if I could help it," replies Paul, gloomily. "I have naturally more cause to wish to stay than you, but when one has a father, and that father has the gout——"Gout is apt to make parents insubordinate," says Scrope, coolly; "but you see" (in a tone rather self-gratulatory than regretful) "I have no father, and there is no reason why I should get up in the middle of the night because you have one.""You do not mean to come home yet, then?" exclaims Paul, in a tone in which surprise and suspicion contend for mastery.Scrope turns his head half away. "Why, no—I think not; I expect to be a sadder and a wiser man by the time I next see the chalk cliff's of Albion."A few moments of silence. Scrope picks up a pebble, and aims it at the landlord's poodle, which, at once dirty and ridiculous, and happily unconscious of being either, is trotting bravely along, with his shorn tail borne gallantly aloft."Which route do you mean to follow?" asks Le Mesurier, presently, with hardly so much of confidential friendship in his voice as there was when the conversation first began. "Strike across country from here to Napoléonville, or go round by Auray and Carnac?"Scrope does not seem in any hurry to answer. "I do not think I shall follow any route at all," he says at length, slowly, and looking rather guilty. "Walking tours" (beginning to laugh) "wear out boots in a way that I cannot justify to myself.""What are you thinking of doing with yourself, then?" rather austerely."How do I know?" says Scrope, wearily and yawning; "do I ever know? I shall probably go wherever the wind blows me, like a deaf leaf.""A most apt simile," says Paul, with a dry look at the healthy solidity of his companion's tall figure, and of the legs, at which he is at the present moment pensively gazing. "Cannot you give a guess as to the direction in which your attenuated person is likely to be wafted?""Not the slightest," replies Scrope, nonchalantly; then, with a boyish blush: "to Dinan, perhaps.""To Dinan!" cries Paul, sharply, looking thoroughly and unaffectedly and most angrily jealous. "What on earth should take you back there?""Did not I tell you just now—the wind?" replies the other.Paul rise, unable to conceal his ill-temper, and, not-willing to indulge it, begins to walk hastily up and down before the, hotel door. Scrope draws himself lazily up from his sitting posture, and languidly walks to join his friend."My dear Paul," he says, coldly, and yet smiling, "if you had not been so completely taken up with your own little game—so brutally selfish and self-absorbed as lovers always are, you might have perceived that I too have a little game.""What are you talking about?""My good fellow, do not look as if you were going to run your nose through my body," says Scrope, with a rather unkind allusion to the saliency of one feature of his friend's face. "What I mean is this; while you have been amusing yourself making love to the young Miss Herrick, I have been laying siege to the old one. It has been rather uphill work, as she did not seem to understand the situation; but I hope, by God's grace, to make her see my drift in time.""My dear boy," taking his arm, but still looking half unbelieving, "she is old enough to be your grandmother!""I know she is: that is why I like her. You know you have often accused me of a depraved taste for old women. I own it; I like them mellow."Paul laughs, but not very merrily.So you see," continues Scrope, "so far from my helping you to evade your 'good-byes,' you have a harrowing parting with me too to look foward to.""I wish to heaven it was over!"says Paul, devoutly. "J would give any one ten pounds to get me clear off, without saying 'good-bye' to any one. But," with a sigh, "you see, Lenore"—the name does not come very glibly yet—"seems to have set her heart on seeing me off.""You ungrateful dog!" cries Scrope, with an indignation none the less real, because affected to be feigned. "Why will the gods always cast their pearls before swine? Would to heaven that any handsome woman would set her heart upon seeing me off! I should be the last to oppose her.""It would show how little you cared about her, then," replies the other, briefly; and then, ashamed and afraid of having been demonstrative, walks away into the hotel.CHAPTER XIX.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.So Lenore has her wish! and together they all retrace their steps, and journey back to St. Malo. And now the heavy parting day has come—the day that is to interpose the cold grey sea between him and her. There are but three hours now till the moment when Paul will set forth on hís return to old associations, to the strong influences of use and wont, leaving Brittany and new love behind him. All morning they have been strolling about the old town and the ramparts, two-and-two—the lovers and the playing-at-lovers. Judging by appearances, the latter seem to be enjoying themselves the most.By-and-by Lenore and her betrothed stray away from the others, across the sands, that twice a day the tide's long wash covers and twice a-day again uncovers; across the sands to the little bare island where Chateaubriand—in no graveyard, hustled by no dead kin—has-willed to sleep out his last sleep. They have climbed through the sands and the sand-coloured bents to the little eminence, where, with no name graved upon them, no date, no valedictory text, stand the simple white cross and slab that mark the spot-where the restless Réné lies. On the very edge of the precipice he is sleeping, and beneath him the rocks slant sheer down, and at their base come the stealing summer waves with a slow soft lapping. Lenore leans on the railings that Châteaubriand begged his fellow-townsmen to place round his tomb, "pour empêcher les animaux à me deterrer" and stands looking seaward, parted-lipped, tasting the salt wind."Jemima will be very clever if she gets Scrope up here,' says Paul, with a determination to say something very commonplace, in the hope of ridding himself of the sense of sad solemnity that the place, the sighing wind, and his own approaching parting, combine to produce."She will not try," answers Lenore, not changing her attitude. "Jemima hates 'Atala," and she loves limpets, and little crabs, and all sorts of noisome monsters of the deep. If Mr. Scrope were not with her, she would take off her shoes and stockings, and paddle."Scrope would paddle too, on the smallest encouragement," 
says Paul, laughing; "just the sort of thing that would suit him—cool, and no trouble; and besides, he tells me that he is very much smitten with Jemima."Lenore turns away her large eyes from her abstracted contemplation 
of the purple waves and the glancing sea-gulls; turns them on Paul, full of a sort of careless surprise. "Unhappy young man," she says, calmly; "what could have induced 
him to tell such a shocking story?'"Why might not it be true?""It might," says Lenore, indifferently, "but it is not. Mr. Scrope—Charlie Scrope, is not he? he looks like Charlie—is no more smitten with Jemima than he is with——Who shall I say?""Than with you!""Well, than with me , if you like.""You do not seem to think that that is putting it very strongly," says Paul, suspiciously."What does it matter whom he is smitten with, or whom he is not?" cries Lenore with evasive vehemence. "What does it matter whether he is alive or dead? We have only two hours left, and we are wasting our time talking about him.""I am, naturally, rather interested in my successor in walks and talks, and moonlight strolls," says Paul, with a bitter jest."Is not he going to set off to-morrow on that ever-talked-about, and never-walked walking tour?" asks Lenore, surprised. 
"I thought he was, but I suppose 'the wish was father to the thought.'""Walking-tour, indeed!" says Paul, scornfully, "I know what that means: lying at your feet under the chestnuts at Mont Parnasse, and reading Byron and Shelley to you!""Being read aloud to always sends me to sleep.""Promise me " (looking very eager) "asleep or awake, not to flirt with him.""I will promise nothing so ridiculous," answers she, contemptuously. 
"Flirt with an infant , that gets red all over when I speak to it!—that trembles and stammers when I remark to it that 'It is a hot day!' Bah!""It is a singular fact," says Paul, drily, "that it is only in your society that it blushes, and trembles, and stammers; most people find it a brazen-faced and fluent infant enough.""Do they?""You will, at all events, promise not to let it "(laughing) "read poetry to you?—for it is a handsome fellow and a sentimental.""Can it read?" (with an air of surprise). "I should have thought it had not got beyond B—a, ba, B—e, be, B—i, bi, B—o, bo, B—u, bu——""Lenore," says Paul, very gravely, "however you may choose to ignore the fact, you know as well as I do, that Scrope is a grown man, and a disgustingly good-looking one. Swear to me to be as little alone with him as possible—swear to me not to flirt with him!""Make me swear not to give him a pop-gun or play 'tipcat' 
with him! It would be much more rational," answers Lenore, derisively. (Paul turns away.) "Do not be vexed," she cries, very gravely, laying her hand on his arm. "If it will give you the least grain of pleasure I will promise to cut him out-and-out, henceforth and for ever. I will not even say 'Good morning' and 'Good evening' to him. Do you think it would be any privation to me? Set me some harder task—something difficult and disagreeable to do—against you come back, for your sake! Perhaps it will make the enormous days go a little quicker." Her eyes fill with tears as she speaks; the sea-gulls scream and Paul sighs heavily. "I hope it is not a bad omen," she says, winking away the drops from her curled lashes; "but you are the first person or thing that ever succeeded in making me cry. I never could cry over books, or at plays, or when people died: I did not know that I had any tears about me, till I met you.""Lenore!"(half indignantly, half hurt,) "what a more than doubtful compliment!""I will never pay it you again," she says, with confident hopefulness. "Henceforth, my life will be all plain sailing: I see it as clearly as that shining wake of yellow light behind the steamer out there. You must tell your father" (speaking between joke and earnest) "that no one has ever thwarted or contradicted me all my life, and that he must please to follow suit."Paul smiles rather sadly, and shakes his head: "I am afraid he would answer that neither has any one ever thwarted or contradicted him all his life, and that you must please to follow suit."A pause."What is there so obnoxious about me?" cries Lenore, suddenly turning away from the grave, and facing her lover with a Hushed proud face. "Why should he object to me so strongly, as I see you think he will?""God knows! Perhaps he will not! "Who can answer for the freaks of a man possessed by the twin devils of gout and Calvin?""I have no money, certainly; but neither have nine-tenths of the women that men marry, and no one thinks of getting up to forbid the banns.""Quite true.""I come of a good and a healthy stock: we never run away with our neighbours' wives, or have D. T., or go mad.""That is more than I can say for us! At least, we do not go cracked; but we occasionally indulge in the other two pastimes you mentioned.""I am not a flirt.""No?" (more interrogatively than assentingly)."Nor fast.""No—o,"(rather slowly and doubtfully).
"I am not fast," she repeats, stoutly; "how can I be? I do not hunt; I do not drink hock and seltzer for breakfast; I do not smoke.""Good heavens, I should hope not!""Make me out as nice as you can to your people, even at the expense of strict veracity," says Lenore, coaxingly. "Indeed" (with a little air of complacency), "by softening a shadow here and striking out a light there, I really describe very well.""Even without that process," says Paul, with a proud smile."For instance," continues she, with a deepened colour and ashamed though defiant laugh, "you need not enter into detail with regard to the peculiar circumstances that attended our first meeting.""I should think not! "(very much accentuated)."I do not see what necessity there is for so much emphasis" rejoins Lenore, rather offended; "it was a bad joke, because, thanks to Frederic's imbecility and your straightlacedness, it failed. If you had been a different kind of man, and it had succeeded, it would have been a good one.""Good or bad," says Paul, with a promising forestalling of marital authority in his voice, "I shall be very much obliged if you will not repeat it while I am away, Lenore."For a moment she looks mutinous; then, at the sight of the green sea, the steamers, and the thoughts that both suggest, 
melts utterly. "I will not—I will not!" she cries, eagerly. "Do you think I shall have time for jokes? I shall spend all my days and all my nights in trying to be a really nice girl, by the time you come back. A really nice girl," she repeats, dreamily. "I have been called a tall girl, and an odious girl, and a sharp girl, and now and then a deuced handsome girl; but never to my recollection, in all my life, have I been called a nice girl.""Poor Lenore!" (stroking her bright hair,) "strange to say, you have at last found some one to think you nice.""Have I?" (looking quite at sea). "Who?""Who? Why I , to be sure.""You! "(shaking her head). "Oh no, you do not.'It is a flat contradiction; but it does not .sound rude. He does not asseverate. Bewitching, charming, maddening—she is all these; but "nice? " The epithet has a domestic, homekeeping, quiet sound, that does not seem to fit her."I must practise being lady-like, and gentle, and sweet, against I see your people, or these virtues will sit as uneasily on me as an ill-made cloak," she says, with a rather anxious laugh."Do not be in any hurry to see my people," cries Paul, hastily. "I am not. I had far rather keep you to myself.""Would you? Do you know," (taking his hand, and smiling softly,) "I have been vexing myself with the thought that, try as I may, I never can give you all my life? There must always remain eighteen years in which you have had neither part nor lot, and in which other men have. I cannot, indeed," (laughing a little) "accuse myself of having ever been over civil to your sex; but once I gave a man a bunch of violets, and once I got up at five o'clock in the morning to see another man off to India. I daresay you have done many worse things, but I do not believe they can weigh on your mind half so much!"For Heaven's sake do not let us compare notes!" says Paul with a hasty flush, while his mental eye flashes back over the occupations of his grown-up years. "I do not want to make you believe that I have been worse than other men, and I have not Lawrence's idea, that, by being superlatively immoral, one is more likely to win a good woman's love; but still" (sighing) "beside your sweet white life, mine looks black enough. Let us cry quits, Lenore, and make a fresh start. If you stick to me I swear to you that, for the future, mine shall be as white as yours.""We shall be like two lilies on one stalk," says Lenore, with levity; but her eyes are wet.After all, it is Paul that sees Lenore off, and not Lenore Paul. The Dinan boat starts several hours before the Southampton one. The bitter "Good-bye" has really come. The passengers are stepping on board, and seating themselves in the bows and on the rickety camp-stools on the hatchways. Three old Frenchwomen are chattering together, asking each other whether they are not fatigué par le vent? Black smoke is pouring out of the little black funnel; the paddle-boxes, black and white like magpies—bird hateful to the French soul—contrast the green water that they rest on. A devoted Breton père de famille is returning to his home with three red and yellow paper twirligigs in his hand; evidently his offspring 
number three."For God's sake do not forget me, Paul!" Lenore is saying, in a low broken voice. She has one of her lover's hands tight held in both hers; her face is as white as death, and
the tears are pouring down it. She has never much regard for appearances, and she is entirely reckless of them now; in a Waterproof, quite down to her heels, she looks like a young Grenadier—only, surely, never had Grenadier so wet and woebegone a face. "Think of me every minute, even if you think something disagreeable. Oh, if I had but some one to talk of me to you! But I have not—no one; you will never hear my name, or, if anyone does mention it, they will say no good of me: nobody ever does!""My dearest child, do not talk such nonsense!" says Paul hastily, casting a furtive glance round to see whether any one is laughing. He is very miserable himself, but he is not quite so much swallowed up by his grief as nut to retain an uneasy curiosity as to whether their pretty pose does not afford mirth matter to their fellow voyagers. He catches the stoker, who has just come up, streaming with perspiration and black as night, from the lower regions, flagrante delicto . He is smiling, and nudging a neighbour. Mr. Le Mesurier relieves his mind by scowling at him."I cannot stand this much longer," says Scrope in a suppressed voice to Jemima. Mr. Scrope is unable to keep quiet; he is turning red and pale, and biting his lips. "It really is too sickening. These ceremonies ought to be strictly private, or altogether omitted. Do not you think so, Miss Herrick?""Do not look that way," says Jemima, drily."I cannot help it; there is a sort of horrible fascination. Thank God, there's the bell! Miss Jemima, why the——why, I mean, does no one ever cry over me ?""You are not going away?""But if I were, who would? I never caused any one's tears to flow in my life, except my small brother's, when I licked him at school.""Be a good girl, Lenore, and do not flirt with Scrope! These are my last words to you. God bless you, my darling!"Paul has at last forgotten the rest of the company; the stoker may laugh his fill; he sees nothing but Lenore's drowned blue eyes, and his own are not far from matching
them.And in this fashion they partEND OF MORNING.PART IINOON."And in the eye of noon, my loveShall lead me from my mother's door,Sweet boys and girls, all clothed in white,Strewing flowers before."But first the nodding minstrels go,With music meet for lordly bow'rs:The children next, in snow-white vests,Strewing buds and flowers.'And then my love and I shall pace,My jet-black hair in pearly braids,Between our comely bachelorsAnd blushing bridal maids."CHAPTER IWHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.ARE you of those who hate Winter, or of those who love him? Do you shrink from his strong ice-clasp; or do you hold out your right hand to him heartily, saying, "You are welcome?"Do you love the enjoyments that are to be fought for (so to speak) by effort and exertion, with quick blood and high pulses; or those that come lazily and warmly, without your seeking? To whichever class you belong, you must come with me into Winter's innermost stronghold. I bid you; and, shiver and shake as you may, you must not say "No." Forget June—forget its hot faint airs and thronged red roses; remember only December, with all his cold white train. It is Christmas: a season which, if one took one's idea of it from Dickens' books, would seem to be a season of universal jollity, of widely diffused sausages and mince-pies, of great crackling fires and hard bright frost; when every one is gladder than his wont; when each man greets his neighbour lovingly, and godly charity and pious mirth shine out of each happy eye;—a season which, if one judge it by one's own experience, is for the most part mildly drizzling—a season of bills and influenza triumphant; when one reckons up the empty chairs by the fireside, and, counting over one's losses in love and joy, finds smiling—much road laughter—but difficult. Into an English country-house you must come: till to-morrow you must wait to see whether it is Gothic, Tudor, Ionic, Inigo Jones-ish, or a happy medley of these styles; for now the black night-winds are feeling blindly round it, and the harsh rains are lashing its front. It is dressing-time; but who can bear to tear themselves away from this hall-fire—hall that is the liveablest room in the house, with its floor spread with warm beasts' skins, its low wide hearth, its thick-draped windows, its round table groaning under new novels—novels proper and novels improper; novels Ritualistic and novels Evangelical; novels that are milk for babes, and novels that are almost too strong meat for men. There are no gone faces to sadden this hearth; the only face that is gone would cause considerable consternation were it to come back again. On the deep woolly hearthrug Jemima is sitting, with a book in her hand; she is reading a pretty love-story by the firelight. Opposite to her, in a low chair, sits (or rather lies ) her sister Sylvia, the widowed house-mistress. Her little chin is buried in her chest; the large jet beetles in her ears bob gently to and fro as she nods, nods; on her lap rests a pug-dog. His face is blacker than the raven's wing; his nose turns mightily upward; his tail curls tightly twice to the left; his toes turn out, and his tongue protrudes, like a pink rose-leaf; if he squinted he would be perfect; but, alas! life is made up of "ifs." A little farther off, two young people are playing at bézique—Lenore and Scrope. Yes, though it is neither Brittany nor June, Scrope is here. Twining round his legs, scaling Jemima's back, playfully trying to poke their fingers into their mother's shut eyes, running heavily on their heels, plunging, wrangling, with all the innocent vivacity of childhood, are two enfants terribles —terrible as only the healthy male young of the human species can be—little red-faced scourges to society. If parents, when they give their children smart names, would but reflect on the number of uglynamed men whom they may possibly, nay probably, espouse! Why did not Sylvia's parents? Sylvia Prodgers!"Is these children's bedtime never coming?" cries Lenore, impatiently, as she begins a fresh deal. "It seems to me that that blest epoch moves further and further on every night. Tommy, dear, are not you sleepy? I will give you sixpence if you will say you are.""Mother said we might stay up to see Uncle Paul—did not she, Bobby?" replies Tommy, triumphantly. He has just succeeded in tying himself in a true-love knot round Mr. Scrope's neck; his feet are beating a playful yet painful tattoo on that young gentleman's ribs."Uncle Paul, indeed!" cries Scrope, indignantly. "Who taught you to give people brevet rank? I say, young man, fair-play is a jewel. Let me get on your back, and hammer your ribs a bit now.""Stay up to see Uncle Paul," echoes Bobby, who, not being very rich in ideas himself, draws chiefly on his elder brother's stock."How pleased he'll be!" says Scrope, laughing. "I think I see the benignant smile with which he will greet you, when you run at his legs and kick his shins, as you are in the pleasant habit of doing to mine.""He will not mind," says Lenore, feeling impelled to stand up for her lover's amiability. "I hate children myself, as you know—loathe them, in fact. They seem to me to combine all the worst qualities of both sexes, with no redeeming Points of their own—egotism more than man's, garrulity more than woman's. But I always like a man to be fond of them; there is always some good about a man that is.""I wish they were not quite so fond of me," says Scrope, groaning, as he takes Tommy by the scruff of the neck, and deposits him in a vociferous heap on the floor."Uncle Paul is going to be Aunty Lenore's 'usband—Morris says so" (Morris is the butler), remarks Bobby from the background, with that utter contempt for the letter h that one often notices in little children."Quite right, Bobby,"answers Lenore, gaily; "Morris never said a truer word in all his life."Scrope makes no comment; he only throws four kings viciously on the table, and announces in a sulky voice the unanswerable proposition that 80 and 70 make 150."I wish Aunty Lenore's 'usband would come," says Lenore, laughing, but rather anxiously. "I feel as if it were getting very late. Jemima, you can see the clock; what time is it?"Jemima starts, drops her book, and stretches her neck."Five minutes past seven.""He ought to be here, ought not he?" says the girl, wistfully, 
playing a queen of trumps that she has been carefully hoarding for the last ten minutes, and looking inquiringly across at her antagonist."Perhaps he has thought better of it," suggests Scrope, in his slow lazy way. "Perhaps his pretty cousin has persuaded him to stay and eat his plum-pudding with her.""He has not a pretty cousin," answers Lenore, quickly, and quite unaware that she has double bézique in her hand."He has, though," replies Scrope, carelessly, looking doubtfully over his cards, to see which he can best spare. "He may have kept it dark, but he has. I saw her last month, when I went down there for covert-shooting. She had on a grey cloak down to her heels, and a long poke-bonnet like a tunnel; but I looked down the tunnel, and saw a pretty little prim face at the end of it.""She was a Sister of Mercy, no doubt.""Only a lay one.""I wish he would come," repeats poor Lenore, feverishly. "Children, run to the window, and listen if you can hear a carriage""You must remember it is Christmas Eve," says Jemima, reassuringly; "the trains are often three hours late.""Everybody drunk, and collisions imminently probable," remarks Scrope, pleasantly.Lenore flings down her cards on the table, and, running to the window, disappears behind the heavy red curtains with the children."My word, Bobby, is not it raining?""He is not to get up upon the window-seat, is he, Aunty Lenore?""Yes, I may; mayn't I?""Aunty Lenore, is not he a naughty boy?""You shall not get up here; I won't have you!"A sound of hustling—a fall—a howl. Scrope to the rescue.Unmindful of her nephews, Lenore is standing, with her nose flattened against the pane, staring out into the rough night. The clouds are breaking, and from underneath one heavy black one, the moon is pushing and pouring wet silver; it streams on Lenore's eager face, making it look extra pale. The children tumble back, over one another again, into the Warm room: in the dark recess behind the curtain the young man and the young woman stand alone."Do you think there has been an accident ?" asks the girl, in a low voice, turning to him her pretty tragic face. "Do you think anything has happened to him?""I am certain nothing has,"answers the young fellow bitterly turning on his heel.In ten minutes more, doubt as to Mr. Le Mesurier's fate is at an end, and Lenore's nose may recover from the pressure it has suffered against the window-pane as soon as it can. Through the bellowing wind and the fighting rain carriage-wheels are plainly heard, and a bell's sharp "Ting, ting,"vibrates through the house."How about the pretty cousin and the poke-bonnet?"cries the girl, her face all alight, flying triumphantly past Scrope into the outer hall."Wait a bit; perhaps he has brought her with him."But Lenore is out of hearing."Why could not she stay here?" says the young man, advancing, grumbling and shivering, to the fire. "It would not have robbed her of two seconds of his precious society. Why do not they come in?" (walking impatiently to and fro). "I suppose they are falling into each other's arms under the chaperonage of Morris. Bah! I hate lovers! Do not you, Miss Herrick?""I never had one, so I cannot say."The bell has awoke both Sylvia and her dog. The latter tumbles down, in a fat fawn-coloured ball, from his mistress's lap. The former stands sleepily up, and mechanically puts her hand to her head, to feel for her plaits."Is he come?" she says, in a little plaintive voice. "I wish people would not come so suddenly—they make one's heart beat so. Jemima," (standing on tiptoe, and trying to get a glimpse of her little head, and of the mountainous hairerection 
that makes it look top-heavy, in the looking-glass over the high old chimneypiece)—"Jemima, does my frisette show? Do I look a great object? What will he think of me?""It does show a good deal," answers Jemima, candidly. But do not be uneasy; he will not see you—he never sees anybody when Lenore is by; ten to one he will forget to say 'How do you do?' to you!"What—to the mistress of the house!" cries Scrope, with his eyes eagerly fixed on the door."I hope he will not expect one to be very affectionate," continues Sylvia, simpering; too entirely taken up with herself to hear or heed Jemima's remark, and carefully patting down the little Gainsborough fringe of hair on her forehead. "I suppose I am peculiar, but I always feel so reserved with strangers; if he is hurt by my coldness, you must explain to him that it is my way.""I do not think there will be any need," replies Jemima, drily.As she speaks the door opens, and the betrothed pair make their triumphal entry. To Lenore, at least, it is such: her two hands are clasped on her lover's arm, and her glad proud eyes are fixed on his face. It is not much of a face to be proud of, after all; but, such as it is, sisters, nephews, friend, butler, footmen, are quite welcome to see her radiant happiness in again looking upon it. Paul is happy too—inly, heartfeltly happy; but, coming in straight from a long December railway journey, only just delivered from the wind's cuffs and the rain's stings, shivering and shy, it is difficult to look radiant. Paul's shyness, like that of many other men's, takes the form of a peculiar ferocity of aspect. Sylvia has arranged herself in a pretty pose ; she has disposed all her neat little features symmetrically into a smile of welcome: Bobby and Tommy, awed into momentary silence and stillness by the stranger's advent, are filially grouped around her."so happy to make your acquaintance!" she murmurs, extending her hand, and then dropping her eyes bashfully—"Darlings, give Mr. Le Mesurier a nice kiss!"But the darlings—whose mauvaise honte , on first introduction, is only to be exceeded by their painful intimacy at a later stage of acquaintance—burrow their coy heads in their mother's skirts and decline. As kissing is with them a damp, and open-mouthed process, perhaps their future uncle has the less reason to deplore their refusal. Ho shakes hands with them all—unknown sister-in-law, known sister-in-law, nephews-in-law, friend (with the last perhaps with less warmth than the rest); and then they stand round the fire, and say clever things about the rain and the wind, and the train and the dog-cart. These do not last long, however, and when they are finished, a rather constrained silence falls."So some one has been playing bézique, I see?" remarks Paul, with an effort to break through the silence and his own shyness at the same time."Yes," answers Lenore, laconically, not thinking it necessary to explain who the players were."It is Mr. Scrope and Aunty Lenore," cries Tommy, officiously; "they play every night, and one night Bobby spilt the cards all over the floor. My word! did not Aunty Lenore smack him!""Play every night!" echoes Paul, glancing quickly from his love to Mr. Scrope, and back again; "I had no idea that you had been here any time, Scrope?""About the inside of a week, I suppose," answers Scrope, nonchalantly."Why, you knew he had!" cries Lenore, reproachfully.
"I told you so ages ago.—It shows"(turning to the company with a rather nervous laugh) "how attentively he reads my letters, does not it?""Her hand is difficult, is not it?" says Sylvia, sweetly. "We all write illegible hands; I am shockingly scolded about mine."Mr. Le Mesurier does not seem very much interested as to whether his hostess's hand is decipherable or not; he walks to the card-table, and begins to fiddle with the bézique-markers."I do not know what anyone else thinks," says Jemima, depositing her novel on the table; "but I think that it is quite time to prepare for the great event of the day.—Mr. Scrope, will you light my candle?"They all troop off up the lit stairs—women, children, man; Lenore and Paul are left for the first time alone. In a moment they are together, standing on the hearthrug: her face is between his two cold hands, and he is looking down on it, with an expression a little troubled, perhaps, but as truly, heartily loving as even she could desire."Lenore, have you been a good girl?""Paul, have you been a good man?""Middling for that"(sighing), "but I think I have tried.""And I think I have tried to be a good girl, but I am not at all sure that I have succeeded.""And Scrope?""Has he been a good man, do you mean? I really cannot say.""You know I do not mean that, Lenore; but what about him?""Nothing about him.""Do you think him as much of a child as you did that day at St. Malo?""No, I do not; I think he is rather precocious."Soup is apt to make the nose red, but after a long winter journey it is certainly solacing. It does not matter whether Paul has a red nose or no, as he has no beauty to spoil; nor (owing, I suppose to the deeper-colouredness of their whole faces) is a red nose as absolutely fatal to men's loveliness as to women's. Sylvia's sherry is good; so is her champagne. Paul does not seem half so shy, or half so cold, as he did an hour ago. Why should he be, either, sitting near this kingly Christmas fire, that one sees, without feeling it oppressively, through the glass screen, and among all these kindly smiling faces? Sylvia smiles on principle, because her teeth are white and even. Jemima smiles from habit: in this world it is politer to smile than to look grave. Scrope smiles, because 
dinner is involuntarily cheering, even when one's heart is sick, and angry to the pitch of longing to knock anybody down. And Lenore—neither soup nor sherry have power to add to her perfect well-being. Indeed she cannot eat. She has had plenty of time to eat and sleep, and go through all the dull necessities of life, during the last void six months. Lenore is absolutely happy! It is something to have been able once to say that; but why do not people know when to die? Why does life insist on staying on:"Like some poor nigh-related guest,That may not rudely be dismissed,But hath outstayed his welcome whileAnd tells the jest without the smile?""So your father has been having the gout?" says the girl, considerately waiting till her lover has swallowed his last mouthful of soup, and not "starving her man," as the Saturday , in the long-gone days when it used to write pleasant articles, 
once happily worded it."Yes.""Quite safely and long-livedly, I suppose?"Paul looks rather shocked; he has not yet had time to get acclimatised to Lenore's startling candours of expression:I hope so."Is he very cross?""Very.""Gout is apt to sour the sweetest temper, as no one has better reason to know than I," says Sylvia, with a sigh, and a downward glance at her dress.Sylvia's grief had passed out of the capped and crape stage; it has declined into the more supportable phase of corded silks and white tuckers."Would he like me to go and nurse him?" asks Lenore, laughing, yet eagerly awaiting the answer."I do not know about that," says Paul, laughing too; "he has already three lone spirits for his ministers. I do not think even he could find work for a fourth.""Three!" cries the girl, growing pink, with a faint suspicion. "Why, Paul, I thought you had only two sisters!""Suppose I have a cousin!"Lenore involuntarily glances across at Scrope: he is smiling malevolently, and reciting, half under his breath:"I have brothers and sisters by the dozen, Tom;But a cousin is a different thing;"Nothing has happened: the fire still radiates warmth from its deep red heart. The footmen are carrying round sweetbreads, and fricandeaus, and timbales, and all manner of nice things. Sylvia and Jemima are still smiling, but yet—but yet——Lenore has made one step, a very little step indeed,but still a step, down from her pinnacle of heavenlike bliss."I quite like him, Lenore—I do really. I am not joking," says Sylvia that evening, patronizingly, as the three ladies stand round the drawing-room fire: "and you know I am not one to say what I do not mean. If I have a fault in that way, it is being too sincere. I had my misgivings, but he really is quite nice; but—but—what an odd way he has of staring at one!""I never remarked it.""I thought he looked rather queer when I called Charlie Scrope 'Charlie' at dinner," continues Sylvia, sinking down upon the fender-stool, and carefully disposing her skirts about her. "You must explain to him that poor dear Charlie is one of my oldest friends. I hate people to get that sort of idea about one into their heads, don't you know?"CHAPTER II.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."Babe Jesus lay on Mary's lap,The sun shone in His hair;And so it was she saw, mayhap,The crown already there."For she sang, ' Sleep on, my little King,Bad Herod dares not come;Before Thee sleeping, holy thing,Wild winds would soon be dumb."'I kiss Thy hands, I kiss Thy feet,My King, so long desired;Thy hands shall never be soiled, my sweet,Thy feet shall never bo tired."'For thou art the King of men, my Son!Thy crown I see it plain,And men shall worship Thee, every one,And cry Glory! Amen!'"Babe Jesus opened his eyes so wide,At Mary looked her Lord;And Mary stinted her song and sighed,Babe Jesus said never a word."NOBODY sings those old carols nowadays; but to me they have a heartier, truer ring than any of the new-fangled Christmas psalmodies. Yes—it is Christmas Day, though there is neither snow, nor frost, nor ice: only stripped trees, a chilly little sun, and mild west-wind. Everybody has been to church, has prayed, has crossed his arms, and yawned; has stared at the hollied font and the ivied pillars, at the blue and red and gold texts, that tell us the old, old news, that "Christ is born;" has thought of his earthly accounts, and of his account with High God, as the bent of his mind inclines him. Tommy has dropped his mother's smart Prayer-bonk into a puddle on his way to church; has been hoisted up on the seat, on his arrival there; has made faces at a little girl in the next pew; has broken into audible laughter during the Second Lesson, at something that tickled his fancy in one of the footmen's appearance; has been privately admonished that expulsion from church, and deprivation of pudding, will be the consequence of continued mirth; has therefore lapsed into tearful gravity, and finally into sleep. Now they are all at home again: Lenore and Paul have succeeded in the object—always a primary one with lovers—of eluding every one else, and are dawdling about in the conservatory till the luncheon-gong shall summon them into the control of the public eye The formal camellias —the Roman matrons, Cornelias and Lucretius, of the nation—hide no ears under their sleek dark leaves; the jonquils, whose gold throats are so full of sweets, tell no tales."I never saw you in a frock-coat and tall hat before," says Lenore, playfully surveying her lover from head to heel; "turn slowly round, that I may judge of the tout ensemble .""Nor I you in a bonnet.""You have seen me, however, in a cap ," returns Lenore, with, a mischievous smile.Paul looks a little grave."Do not abuse it!" cries the girl, laughing. "With all its misdemeanours, it was a blessed cap, and I have a good mind to be married in it.""Lenore, I hate that episode!""Do you? Well, then, we will dig a hole and bury it: all the same" (sighing a little), "though I am a great deal gooder than I was, I am not yet good enough to regret it.""Are you 'gooder' than you were?" (with a fond but rather incredulous smile)."Do not you think so?" she asks eagerly. "Have not you remarked it? Do not you think I am improved?"Paul is a little puzzled; ho has not been here four-and-twenty hours yet, but, as far as he sees, she is the very identical Lenore that he left sobbing on the deck of the St. Malo steamer. She is not sobbing now, and, instead of a waterproof, she is clad in a smart winter-gown and a bonnet with a feather; but, for the rest, he sees no change."Have you heard me say anything fast?" asks Lenore, growing serious."No.""Or slang?""No.""Or seen me get into one of my rages?""No," answers Paul, half laughing at the idea of the self-control implied by keeping out of a rage during eighteen hours of which seven were spent in sleep, and the rest in the company of a favoured and adoring lover."Have you heard me snub Jemima?""No.""Or seen me box Tommy's ears?""No.""Well, then, I must be improved," cries Lenore, triumphantly; "for I can tell you, you could not have spent an hour in my society this time last year without seeing me go through some of those manoeuvres.""Well, then, you are improved," answers Paul, smiling, and smoothing her shining hair; "and we all know there was room for it, do not we?""Plenty," replies Lenore, briefly."All the same, I did not think you needed much mending that last day at St. Malo," says Paul, indulging himself in looking as thoroughly sentimental as even Scrope could have done, now that he is sure that nobody is by."You prefer me with my nose swelled and my eyes bunged' up, do you?" asks Lenore, gaily. "Good heavens!" (grow-mg quite grave), "how I hated everybody and everything that day—Chateaubriand and his tomb, and the ramparts, and the old houses, and the steamer, and the stoker, and Jemima! Do you know, I cried all the way back to Dinan? I do not think I stopped for one minute, and Jemima and Mr. Scrope sat on two camp-stools opposite to me. They did not look at the view, and they did not look at the other people; they kept staring at me the whole way. What possessed them I think.""I wish I had been there," says Mr. Le Mesurier, looking rather vicious; "I would have turned Jemima's camp-stool straight round, and kicked Scrope overboard.""And what would he have been doing meanwhile?" asks Lenore, archly. "Poor Mr. Scrope! how bored I was by him those first few days after you went!""The first days!" echoed Paul, suspiciously. "You were not bored by him afterwards , then?"She does not answer immediately, and he has to repeat his question. Then she speaks with perhaps a shade of unwillingness:"Well, no; I do not think I was. One gets used to things, you know, and he is not a bad boy, after all, and—and—and he was almost as useful as Frederic himself in running errands.""And expected the same reward, I suppose?" says Paul, with a sneer."I have not a notion what he expected," retorts Lenore, beginning to look rather rebellious, and to hum a tune."Lenore! Lenore!" (the sneer disappearing as he snatches her hands, and gazes with anxious grieved love into her face), "what were the very last words I said to you at St. Malo?—do you remember?""Perfectly; they were, 'God bless you, darling!' "she answers, speaking softly, her lips framing the words lovingly, as if they were dear to them."Ay, but the words just before them?""They were ugly, stupid, unnecessary, jealous words! I do not remember them," says she, impatiently, snatching away her hands, and not perceiving that the first half of her sentence contradicts the last."Ugly, stupid, and jealous they may have been,"says Paul, with forced calmness, "as many of my words, I dare-say are; but were they unnecessary?""What were they?" (very impatiently). "Let us hear them, and have done with them!""They were, 'Do not flirt with Scrope!'""Well?""Whatever else you do, I know you do not tell lies: did you flirt with him?""Upon my soul, I do not know!" answers Lenore, ingenuously."I would have given you carte blanche to bully Jemima and maltreat your nephews," says Paul, magnanimously. "What do little flaws in the temper matter compared to——0 Lenore, to lower yourself and me by flirting with that boy , my own friend, whom I myself had introduced to you, and after all I had said to you!——Why do not you turn your face this way? Good God! is it possible that you are blushing about him?""I am blushing with rage at being put through such a degrading catechism!" answers Lenore, colouring scarlet, and Hushing indignantly at her lover."Did you flirt with him?" repeats Paul, sternly: his lips look thin and sulky, and his eyes also sparkle coldly."Is sitting by the hour in a person's company, wondering when he means to go, and yawning till the tears come into your eyes, flirting with him?" asks the girl, excitedly—her mouth beginning to twitch, and the tears to gather in her eyes."Certainly not.""Is thinking a man very good-looking, and wishing that he would fall in love with your elder sister, and being sure that he will not, flirting with him?""Certainly not,""Is going endless expeditions to places that you have not the heart to look at, in a man's company, letting him spread his overcoat on the grass for you to sit upon, and carry your Prayer Book to church, and forgetting to say 'Thank you'—flirting with him?""No—o!""Is" (this last query comes much less trippingly and more reluctantly from her tongue than the former one)—"Is seeing that a man is going to make a fool of himself about you, and being so shamefully fond of admiration as not to do everything in your power to stop him—is that flirting with him?""Of course it is," replies Paul, roughly, all his brown face turning white in his deep anger."Then I did flirt with him!" cries Lenore, bursting into a passion of penitent tears, and throwing herself into her lover's arms, which neither expect nor are willing to receive her."You did—did you?" says Paul, cuttingly, not making any attempt to press her to his heart, or otherwise caress her, but, on the contrary, endeavouring to restore her to the perpendicular, which she has abandoned in his favour. "And you can stand there smiling, and tell me so?""Not much smiling about it, I think," replies the girl, ruefully, wiping her eyes; then, more tartly: "Why did you go on asking me, if you did not want to be answered? O Paul!—Paul!" catching his hand and holding it, "I am not much of a person; long ago I told you that, and you would not believe me. Ah! you see it now—but don't—don't be too hard upon me! I have not been, like your sisters, pent all my life in a good, steady, stagnant English home, where never a man dare look over the park-palings. All my life I have been a Bohemian, as I told you almost the first time that we met—up and down the world, here, there, and everywhere and I have always had some man dangling after me. I did not care for them, Heaven knows, and I daresay they did not care for me; but they were useful, and pleasant, and made the time pass——""As Scrope no doubt did! I daresay" (looking very ugly and sardonic, for a sneer deforms the beautifulest face, much more an unhandsome one,) "that you did not find the days between June and December so endless as you expected; perhaps you did not buy that popgun , after all?""No, I did not," says Lenore, her wrath bursting out into a blaze. "Paul, I warn you that you are going the very best way to hinder me from being sorry for what I did. What am I saying? What did I do? I cared too little about his comings and goings to shut the house-door in the face of a boy, who had got into a stupid habit of staring at me, and who—I own to you—would have loved me if I had let him, without my running after him, and persecuting him in the way I did you"—throwing herself into a rustic chair, and sobbing violently at the reopening of the old wound caused by the reluctant origin of Paul's affection.Paul hates a scene with all his strength. He kneels down beside her, but even then he is too angry to be able to bring himself to say anything fond. "Good God! Lenore, stop crying; they will hear you in the drawing-room.""If I had turned him out of the house," she says, from the depths of her pocket-handkerchief, "I should have met him fifty times a day in the street.""Why could not you leave Dinan?"We had taken the lodgings for six months."Lenore! " (very impatiently), "what are you going on cry-ing about? What more have I said? It is five minutes to luncheon-time.""Hundreds and hundreds of times I have told him, honestly, what a bore I thought him!" continues she drying her eyes, having successfully stained and disfigured her face almost past recognition."It implies a considerable amount of intimacy with a man to be able to tell him, to his face, that you think him a bore," retorts Paul, drily."I was intimate with him," replies Lenore, boldly. "Who says I was not?—not I, certainly. He was kind and manly and gentlemanlike, which not one of the half-dozen brokendown Irishmen who form the manhood of Dinan was: he was a sort of tame cat about the house, and so near my own age, and altogether"——Paul winces; he himself was verging on eighteen, full of a man's impulses and thoughts, when this his betrothed was born."When I gave myself to you at Huelgoat," continues the girl, more calmly, but with profound earnestness in her swimming eyes, "and you took me—more, I think, out of compassion and gratitude than anything else, but still you took me—did I keep back one smallest fraction to be able to give it to another man? Not a shred! Myself , with all my badness and my goodness—not much of the latter, perhaps—I gave you, and you have it.""I have—have I?" says Paul, whose harsh face has been gradually softening throughout the last sentence, and at the end looks almost mollified. "Well, then, with your permission I will keep you, and not hand you over to Mr. Scrope, manly and gentlemanlike as he no doubt is, and also so much more suitable to you in age, as you kindly reminded me just now. Lenore, I have been counting; I was eighteen the day you were born.""And I am sure you were an ugly gawky hobbledehoy, all anus and legs! I am very glad I did not know you in those days," says Lenore, laughing; then quite gravely: "Paul, never pretend to be jealous of me again! It is patent to everybody that I love you a hundred times better than you do me; you know it yourself, and I—I am not blind to it.""Bosh!" says Paul, turning away uneasily, not feeling exactly guilty; for he does love her heartily, yet with an uncomfortable lurking sensation that there is a grain of truth in what she asserts."It is the way of the world, I suppose," says the girl, sighing. "One gives, and the other takes; it would be superfluous for both to give, would not it? Perhaps some day—some far-off day—the balance will be changed, and we shall love each other equally; till then"——"Till then," says Paul, gaily, mimicking her tone—" till then, Lenore, let us go to luncheon, and eat so many mince pies as to incapacitate us for afternoon church."CHAPTER III.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.It is afternoon tea-time, and that high festival is always held m the hall. Scrope knows that there is no hope of bézique to-night, and Paul sees that a téte-à-téte is unlikely. They have therefore retired to the smoking-room, and, with their enmity temporarily smothered, and their friendship as temporarily re-born, are smoking the pipe of peace together. Only the three sisters lounge round the fire in easy chairs; the fire, in burning, makes the low quiet noise that is fire's talk."How I ever shall bring myself to call him 'Paul,' I am sure I do not know," says Sylvia, gently waving to and fro the hand-screen with which she is shading her face. "If it were a three, or even a two-syllabled name—Augustus, or Reginald, or Henry—it would not sound half so familiar; but 'Paul!' there is something so abrupt and uncompromising about it; however, I managed to bring it out at luncheon. I said 'Paul , will you cut me some partridge?' Did you hear? He looked so pleased.""I do not think he heard," says Jemima, maliciously. "I always tell Lenore that he is like Dr. Johnson—deaf while he is eating.""Oh, but he did, though!" retorts Sylvia, quickly, getting rather pink. "I knew it by his face; one can always tell by a man's face when he is rubbed the right way."Jemima looks across sceptically at Lenore, who smiles lazily back."Do you remark that he never calls me anything but 'Mrs. Prodgers?" continues Sylvia, complacently; "many a man would have taken advantage of his situation to 'Sylvia' me at once. I think it so particularly gentlemanlike of him, I shall tell him so as soon as we get on a little more easy terms; you might give him a hint, Lenore, that he need not be so ceremonious for the future.""I do not think it has anything to say to gentlemanlike-ness," replies Jemima, who has retained all her old aversion for hearing Mr. Le Mesurier complimented. "He does not remember your Christian name.""Impossible!" cries Sylvia, now thoroughly nettled. "How can he help knowing it when he hears Charlie Scrope calling me by it fifty times in the course of the day? By-the-by, I must tell that boy that it will not do for him to be Christiannaming me before all those people at the "Websters to-night. Poor fellow! he means no harm; but I suppose it is one of the penalties of being left so early alone in the world, that one sets people's tongues wagging more easily than others do.""What a trial the Websters are!" says Jemima, groaning. "To dine out on Christmas Day! It would be a hardly greater heathenism to give a ball on Good Friday!""And such a regiment of us going too!" says Lenore, sitting up in her chair, and pushing back the restive hair-pins that her reclining attitude has displaced. ."One, two, three, four, five—like a flock of ducks waddling into the room one after another.""I do not see why we need waddle! " says Sylvia, with dignity."I do hate visiting in a patriarchal manner, with all my tribe!" returns Lenore, energetically.Her betrothed is quite of her mind; suavity of manner is never his forte; but he has difficulty in manifesting even his usual amount of complaisance, when he discovers what his fate is to be."Oh, Mrs. Prodgers, could not you leave Lenore and me at home? "We should never be missed out of such a multitude," he says, vainly hoping for a reprieve at the last moment. "There is something so appalling in being trotted out as two people who are going to commit matrimony; an engaged couple are always everybody's legitimate butt.""I do not think you need be afraid of that," says Sylvia, speaking with the happy mixture of sisterliness and coquetry with which she always addresses her future connection. "You see you have never been seen with us before, and Char——I mean Mr. Scrope, has always been en évidence . I think he is generally looked upon as the happy man. Lenore, would not Paul have laughed the other night to see the way in which the Ansons manœuvred to let you have the morningroom to yourselves? If they are there to-night, we may have quite a pleasant little mystification."At the conclusion of this speech, Scrope smiles oddly, Jemima reddens, Lenore rushes headlong into a remark that has neither head, tail, nor middle, and Paul—Paul is putting on his overcoat; his face is turned away—one cannot see it.They look to themselves—or rather to some of themselves—an inordinately long string, as they file into the Websters' drawing-room: three long-tailed ladies, two swallow-tailed men. The light is very subdued, even more so than people usually have it in the five minutes before dinner. Paul gives up the idea of making out the Webster family in detail till dinner; then Lenore will explain them to him sufficiently to prevent his descanting on the ugliness of a wife to a husband, or making disparaging remarks about a child to a parent. As he stands near the fire, furnishing the room, in company with half a dozen other men—whom he regards with the innate distrust and thinly-veiled suspicion with which every Englishman regards every other Englishman who has the misfortune to be unknown to him—his spirit soothes itself. The drive was the worst part, and that is over: not allowed to decline into comfortable silence and semi-sleep by Sylvia, next whom he sat, and obliged by the noise the omnibus made to say "What?" and "I beg your pardon, I did not catch what you said," in answer to all her low-murmured prettinesses.He will be very kind to Lenore to-night. Hitherto he has made her Christmas Day rather tearful, poor child! "Well, she shall have a thoroughly happy evening, if he can compass it; after all, perhaps, he will have better chances of private commune with her, of sweet grave talk, and sweeter looks into her lovely loving eyes, than he would have had in the small home-party, with Jemima and Sylvia staring at him.These thoughts are interrupted by the approach of an old lady in a yellow gown (to whom he has a dim idea of having been introduced as hostess), who leads him up to a plain girl in blue, presents him, and leaves him beside her, with a whispered request that he will take her in to dinner.In a moment afterwards, that festival is announced. Paul sees men and women, all equally unknown to him, paired together, marching solemnly off. Presently a couple, of whom neither man nor woman is unknown to him, sweep by—Lenore and Scrope."This is part of the pleasant little mystification, I suppose," he thinks, setting his teeth. "Who knows if Lenore were not a party to it?" But the ungenerous thought is no sooner formed than he is disabused of it by the expression of the beautiful face, that, unhappily for itself, can never keep its own secrets. She looks at him over her shoulder with a look of unaffected angry disappointment, shrugs her shoulders almost imperceptibly, while her lips frame words which he rather feels than hears to be, "Too bad!"On the very smallest encouragement she would outrage propriety by dropping Scrope's arm and running to him. Perhaps, after all, he may be able to sit on the other side of her. He catches up his ugly blue fate in a hurry, and hastens off with her in pursuit; but it is too late—another couple have struck in and occupied the coveted place; he has to content himself with being nearly opposite.There is a great deal of holly and mistletoe about the room. Most of the women have holly in their hair; it does not look particularly pretty, and scratches their heads and necks. Altogether, there is a great affectation of Christmas cheer and jollity. But the entrées are cold, the champagne is all froth and sweetness, and the sherry is not to be named in the same breath with Mrs. Prodgers's.Scrope has no idea of allowing his neighbour to lapse into sentimental silence and wistful gazes across the table. He has got her now to himself for a full hour and a half; except under pretext of a bleeding nose, or improbably sudden indisposition, she cannot get away from him."Miss Lenore, the expression of your face reminds me of a scene in 'The Taming of the Shrew:' 'Enter Horatio, with his head broken.'"Lenore declines to smile."It is not my fault that Mrs. Webster has not entered with her head broken," she answers, with perfect gravity."Why so?—for giving us such drink as this? Well, it is filthy stuff!""For making such a stupid mistake as to send me out to dinner with you ."He bows his blonde curled head, ceremoniously. "Thanks."
"Engaged people always go into dinner together." says Lenore, trenchantly."On what principle, I never could divine. With a whole lifetime to get sick of each other in, why they should be crammed down each other's throats before there is any legal necessity, I never could see.""That is their affair.""Mrs. Webster was aware of the barbaric custom," says Scrope, growing as red as any girl. "She was good enough to imagine that it "was I that was engaged to you."Lenore reddens, and turns down the corners of her mouth.
"What could have put so grotesque an idea into her
head?""There is nothing grotesque about it," replies the young man coolly. "Internally, we may be conscious of how distasteful to, and dissimilar from, each other we are; but outwardly , we are rather suitable.""I do not see it" (very icily)."Miss Lenore" (turning round, and bending over her, to speak low and eagerly), "why do you thrust your happiness so obtrusively under my nose? Do I deny your bliss? Do I pretend to be as happy as you?" She is silent. "We cannot all be Paul Le Mesuriers, you know," says Scrope, with a rather jarring laugh. "Of course, we would if we could; but, as we cannot, you must bear with us."Lenore glances across apprehensively at her lover, to see whether he has caught his own name; but no—he is not looking at her. With grave interest, he and his blue neighbour are together consulting the mystic French secrets of the
carte . Bah! how greedy the best of men are!"Was it good manners," continues Scrope, growing more exited at each word, "to shrug your shoulder so perceptibly, and exclaim so audibly, 'Too bad!' because your hand had to
rest on my coat-sleeve for the tenth part of a minute?"I never pretend to good manners," replies Lenore, shortly. "He will sit into your pocket all this evening; he will sit into your pocket," says the young man (making use of an audacious figure), "all the rest of your life. Need you have grudged me my miserable half-hour's innings?"Again Lenore glances hurriedly across; still he is not thinking of her. She looks at Scrope: his blue eyes are always bright, but the champagne, bad as it is, has made
them sparkle more brightly than ever. With his straight nose and soft gold moustache, most women would have thought him distractingly handsome. An innocent, cherubic,
yet stalwart beauty, such as some men manage to preserve through half-a-dozen seasons, Scrope looks as if he had said his prayers and gone to bed at eight o'clock every night of
his life."For one half hour forget that there is such a person," says the young man, entreatingly. "At cheese-time I will give you leave to remember him again.""You are very good. Till then"——"Till then—bah!" cries he, with a reckless laugh; "let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die, or—marry , which is worse.""The one is at least optional, which the other is not," says Lenore, with a demure but rather wicked look at him from under her eyes.Paul has abandoned the carte; he has discovered what the word that puzzled him was. "It is "Topinenbourgs,'" he says to his neighbour; and then he leans wearily back, and thinks that he will refresh himself with a look at his beautiful sweetheart. He does so just in time to witness the glance that she is bestowing on his rival: it is the only look with the slightest tendency to coquetry in it that she has given him during dinner, and it is the only one that Paul intercepts. Pouf! is not that ill-luck for you?CHAPTER IV.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.THE men are left to themselves—left to work their wicked will upon the walnuts, and to raven amongst the candied fruits, of whose existence, as long as the women were in the room, they pretended to be unaware. And the women, meanwhile, stand, gently rustling, softly chattering, about the drawing-room fire; sipping coffee, holding gossamer handkerchiefs between their pretty pink faces and the flame, and mentally priceing and depreciating each other's gowns. Sylvia is very happy: she has, indisputably, a longer tail and a thicker silk than any one else present; her toilette happily hits the golden mean between the mournful and the magnificent, and she is almost sure that, as she left the dining-room, she heard some man ask who she was. Presently every one sinks into chairs, and upon ottomans and sofas; breaking up into groups of twos and threes, as similarity of tastes in pointlace, dressmakers, and children prompts. Lenore forms part of no group—takes part in no chat. The night is cold, and the room not particularly well warmed; yet she chooses an easy-chair apart from the rest of the company, and unsocially sitting by itself in a little recess. Lenore deposits herself upon it, and bides her time. When the walnuts, candied fruits, and ungodly after-dinner stories are done, that time comes.Paul is determined not to be checkmated a second time; he may dislike to be pointed at as an engaged man, but he dislikes still more to have Mr. Scrope pointed at as such. He walks straight up to Lenore."Do you know what I have got hidden here?" asks the girl, looking up at him, while her whole face laughs—not only mouth, but eyes, dimples, cheeks—as she points to the wide spread of her gown. "Guess!""I have not an idea."She sweeps away her skirts, and discloses a tiny light canechair."Sit down! You are an unfortunately big person, but I think, judiciously sat upon, it may bear you."He had meant to scold her: well the scolding will keep; it may be carried over, and added to the next account. He sits down, and his jealousy goes to sleep."I was determined to have no more mal-entendus to-night," says the girl, gravely. "If any one had come this way, I meant to have looked at them with my own scowl—the one you used to admire so much—and say, 'This is Mr. Le Mesurier's chair.'""Lenore" (looking round with a sense of lazy wellbeing), "is there any one in the room that is not a Webster?""Hardly anybody; they are all directs or collaterals. That tall old woman whose forehead has goodnaturedly gone round to look for the back of her head, who is ambling about saying indistinct civilities to everybody, is Mrs. Webster, the head and front of all the others; she always reminds me of Agag —she 'goes so delicately.'""I know her, the old cat!" says Paul, resentfully. "Serve her right if she were drowned in a butt of her own gooseberry, and I cannot wish her a worse fate.""The old young woman who never stops smiling is Miss Webster; we call her 'the savoury omelette,' because she is so green and yellow! Does not she smile?—it makes one's face ache to look at her." Paul laughs. "Paul, if you jilt me, and no one else takes compassion on me, do you think I shall ever get to the pitch of smiling like that? If I thought so, I would, have the corners of my mouth sewn up.""Prevention is better than cure: I would.""The man with the red beard is Major Webster: do you see how short and broad he is? His brother officers say that he has swallowed a box: is not it a delicious idea?—it quite invigorates me."Paul laughs again: after dinner, it is pleasanter to be amused than to be amusing."Apropos of beards," says Lenore, turning from the company to a subject that interests her more, "yours has not disappeared yet, Paul?""Why, did you think it would? Did you suppose I moulted , like the birds?""I thought, perhaps, you might have moulted voluntarily , to please me," replies she, with a slight pout."When my beard moults," retorts he gaily, with an expressive glance at the sleek but unnaturally luxuriant twists that bind her head, "I shall expect your (or rather the unknown dead person's ) plaits to moult too."Lenore shrugs. "Que voulez-vous? Look at Sylvia. She has at least five pounds' worth on her head; I have certainly not more than £2 10s . on mine. Nowadays, without a chignon of some sort, one's head loooks mutilated and indecent.""Then I like mutilation and indecency.""Do you know, Paul" (with a pretty air of candour), "without my plaits I hardly look handsome at all?""I do not believe it," replies Paul, with warmth; "I would stake my existence that you look infinitely handsomer, sweeter, modester! Why cannot you be content to wear your hair as Nature meant it—flat to your head, and low down on your ears and cheeks?""Merciful Heavens!" cries Lenore, expressively casting up hands and eyes to heaven. "Paul!" (with a sudden suspicion), "have you been seeing any one lately with her hair dressed like that?"To her searching eyes, he seems to redden ever so slightly."No—o, nobody particular."She is not satisfied, but does not pursue the subject."Well" (with a sigh) "to return to your beard——Bah! what does the old woman want with us now? Apropos of beards, look at hers! Has not she a 'menton d'une fertilité désolante ,' as Gustave Droz says?""So sorry to disturb you, but we are going to play Dumb Scrambo."This is Mrs. Webster's errand."And what is Dumb Scrambo?" asks Paul, with a disgusted intonation, when, hunted out of their cold and quiet alcove, and the hostess having moved on to collect fresh recruits, he and Lenore advance to join the rest of the company."It is not bad fun," answers the girl—" a sort of silent charade, you know: did you never see it? Oh, you must have done!""But I have not.""Oh, you know, the audience think of a word. You will be audience, will not you? I am sure that you can no more act than a tom-cat,""Well?""And then, do not you know—they give the actors another word that rhymes with it; and then they—the actors, I mean—have to act in dumb-show all the other words that rhyme with it, till they hit upon the right one."At this lucid explanation, given with surprising rapidity, Paul looks a good deal mystified, Mrs. Webster has some difficulty in collecting a troupe. Sylvia is among those who positively decline."Oh no, indeed—thanks, Mrs. Webster—I really could cot: I am so childishly nervous that the feeling that everybody's eyes were fixed upon me would make every word I had to say go out of my head.""But you have no words to say; it is all dumb-show .""Oh, thanks! but that would not make any difference; I should have the same dreadful feeling that everybody was looking at me."It being useless to try and convince her that some of the other actors might divert a portion of the dreaded public notice from her, Mrs. Webster desists.Paul declines too, with that decisive brevity which forbids pressing. He is angry with Lenore for not having done likewise; but she is firm."Impossible, my dear boy," she says, in a smiling aside. "If they were to ask me to walk on my head to-night, I should have to try and do it. Have not they given us a huge family teapot, and is not this part-payment?"He is the more displeased when he sees Mr. Scrope march off, with the rest of the performers, into the dining-room, which opens out of the hall, and is converted into a temporary green-room.It is a pretty old house, oak-floored; a step here, a step there, in and out of the rooms. The audience have disposed themselves about the hall-fire, in chairs set a-row for them. The leading spirits amongst them have fixed upon a word, a very little one indeed, but which they hope will prove puzzling: it is jet . The word that rhymes with it, which they have given to the performers, is net . In the interval of waiting, until these latter shall be prepared to be dumbly funny, they beguile the time with talk."I always envy people who have aplomb enough to act, and do all those sort of things that make one conspicuous," says Sylvia, leaning back in her chair, biting the top of her black fan, and looking pensively over it at Paul, who happens to be her neighbour. "I am afraid I am not quite like other people , but I should feel ready to ink into the earth , don't you know. Now, Lenore has none of that feeling.""Evidently not," replies Paul, drily.His eyes are fixed on the dining-room door: it is a little ajar, and, through the chink left, he sees a dim vision of green. Lenore has a green dress; he is straining his eyes to see whose are the legs that are in juxtaposition with that green gown."Last time we were here," continues Sylvia, "they acted the word 'tail;' and all the ladies fastened long boas to their dresses behind, and walked about the stage wagging them. You can have no conception how droll it looked."Further talk is stopped by the opening of the dining-room door, and appearance of the performers. Mr. Scrope makes his entry on his hands and knees, crawling awkwardly along. It is plain that he is meant to represent a horse; his gait much more nearly resembles a cross between that of a bear and a monkey, but the equine intention is evident; it is rendered the more so by the fact of Major Webster being seated astride on his back, with a tall hat on his head, and a dogwhip in his hand: with this latter he pleasantly flogs him round the stage. Then another Webster enters—a heavy fellow, who has been distinguishing himself by making stupid and impossible suggestions—comes up, and feels his legs . Mr. Scrope lashes smartly out at him, and then continues his victorious course, kicking and plunging round the room. It entails fearful exertion, and feelings verging on apoplexy; but he is rewarded by the plaudits of his fellows. Having unhorsed Major Webster, and sent that gallant officer rolling on the oak-floor, to the great benefit of his dress-clothes, the cortége retires, amid laughter and well-deserved hisses."How good for the knees of his trousers!" says Paul, who, with a mind relieved from the apprehension of seeing Lenore in some grotesquely affectionate, or affectionately grotesque, attitude with Scrope, is able to laugh as heartily as the others.Poor man! did not he look as if all the blood in his body had rushed to his head f says a young lady, compassionately."That was a good bonâ fide kick he gave Webster," says a man—" no mistake about it. I wonder how his shins feel!"Meanwhile, the actors are talking over their late performance, and planning the next."It was not obvious enough," says Major Webster, who, being manager, is responsible for the éclat of the proceeding."It had no more to say to bet than I have," said Lenore, bluntly. "I cannot imagine how they ever guessed it; I do not believe they have.""Well—no, perhaps not!" (looking rather mortified). "You see" (gnawing his moustache, reflectively), "we were supposed to be betting about him " (nodding at Scrope). "It is rather difficult to be explicit when one does not say anything.""Phew!" cries Scrope, wiping his face, and stroking down his tossed curly locks. "I had no idea that being a horse was such apoplectic work. Miss Lenore" (turning eagerly to her), "did you see me? Was not I a very free goer?""I did not look at you," replies Lenore, indifferently. "I was thinking what we could have next. What on earth
rhymes with net?——Set? pet? fret?""Fret?" cries Paul's blue dinner neighbour, determined not to be behind the rest, though in her the dramatic gift is, to say the least, latent. "Might not we all go in, and sit in a row with our handkerchiefs up to our eyes, crying, don't you know?""I do not think it would be very amusing," replies Lenore, drily. "Let? set? pet?""Pet! " suggests the heavy youth, brilliantly. "What do you say to one of us going in by himself, and pretending to be in an ill-humour—pet—eh?"This idea meets with the silent contempt it so justly merits.A pause."Stay—I have it," says Scrope, eagerly. "Eureka! One of us must be a baby —a dear little pet , you know; and some one else must carry us in, squalling and holloaing. I say, who will be the baby? Do not all speak at once!"The warning is unnecessary."Well, I suppose, if nobody else will, I must," says Major Webster, rather ruefully.—"Scrope, you are the biggest; will you carry me in? Are you sure you can? " eyeing him rather doubtfully."Of course I can, my dear fellow, as soon as look at you; up with you!" answers Scrope, stoutly, and so stoops promptly down to embrace his nursling's legs."Stop a bit!" cries the other, gravely, stroking his red beard. "I must have something on, must not I; or they will not know I am a baby?"Scrope looks round on the properties scattered about—umbrellas, hats, doormats, sheets, carving-knives."Here you are," he says, snatching up a white tablecloth. "This is the very thing for you. Who has got a big pin!"
Having pinned the tablecloth round his waist, and tied an antimacassar over his head, Major Webster stands complete, ready to represent smiling infancy. There is some difficulty in getting him hoisted up; the tablecloth will get under Mr. Scrope's feet, and trip him up."For God's sake, don't drop me," cries Webster, nervously. "Perhaps we had better give up the idea!""Not a bit of it! Get up on the chair; I shall have better purchase of you.""And what am I to do?" asks Lenore, beginning to laugh by anticipation. "Have I no rôle?""Oh, you must be nurserymaid, don't you know?" says Scrope, panting, and clasping the Major's legs as he stands on the chair; "and give him the bottle when he holloas. There, take that hearth-brush, and shoot it out at him; that will do as well as anything else.""But a bottle does not shoot out ," objects Lenore, whose acquaintance with the ways and appurtenances of infancy, though meagre, is apparently more exact than the young man's."What does that signify?" says Scrope, breathlessly, having with one final effort heaved up his bearded baby. "One must leave something to the imagination.""For God's sake, mind the step!" cries Webster, gloomily, looking down with apprehensive eye from his unnatural elevation.It is nervous work, but they get through it triumphantly. Mr. Scrope staggers along, with labouring breath, and arms firmly clasped round his baby's tableclothed legs; who, for his part, clutching Scrope convulsively round the neck, while his bronzed face and beard emerge absurdly from his antimacassar, gives utterance to a series of the dismallest deep yells , supposed to represent the faint cries of infancy. Lenore walks gravely alongside, occasionally shooting out her hearthbrush at him: whether or not the audience discover that it is the mystic symbol of an "Alexandra" bottle will never be known till the Last Day. Having completed the circuit of the room, and made a playful feint of depositing his "pet " in Jemima's lap, Mr. Scrope and his coadjutors retire."I thought it was Dumb Scrambo," says Paul, drily, as Major Webster's last bellow dies on the ear."I suppose that only applies to articulate sounds," replies Jemima, who is on his other side. "Bah!" (wiping her eyes); "it is an insult to one's understanding to laugh, but one cannot help it. After all, it is not half so good as charades.""Paul should have been at the Ansons' the other night," says Sylvia, with a little coy hesitation and stumbling (both quite thrown away) over his name; then, turning to him:"You should have seen Lenore, as barmaid , running about and saying all sorts of impertinent things to the gentlemen, in a Breton cap. Do you know, she has gut an immensely becoming Breton cap! I tell her that it is too matronly for her, and that she ought to give it to me. Do you give your consent?" (opening and shutting her fan bashfully)."A barmaid! " repeats Paul, with a slightly clouded face. "Very entertaining, I daresay; and who were the gentlemen that she said impertinent things to?""You need not be jealous," interposes Jemima, with a rather dry laugh. "Only old Mr. Anson; he came in as Boots in a pea-jacket. Now, if there is an absurd sight in the world, it is an old fat man in a pea-coat.""Ah! true, so it was!" says Sylvia, languidly. "Inconstant , you know, was the word; that was inn , and constant" ——"How long they are in coming this time!" cries Jemima, hastily interrupting. "What can they be doing?""And constant? " says Paul, leaning forward, "while his eyes shine with a rather doubtful expression. "How was that acted?""I don't think I will tell you," says Sylvia, with charming archness. "You know, 'when the cat's away the mice will play.' Well, Lenore was supposed to be engaged to Charlie Scrope. Poor Charlie! he tormented me out of my life to act too, but I said, 'No! no! no! not my line at all!'""Well—but about Lenore?" interrupts Paul, impatiently."Oh yes, to be sure. Charlie was supposed to have been away fur five or six years, and to come back suddenly, and then they rushed into each other's arms; of course" (tapping him playfully with her fan), "it was only a stage embrace—cela va sans dire —but it made us all laugh!"The cloud deepens on the young man's forehead. "It must have been almost better than the barmaid," he says, grimly, turning away.Meanwhile, the ingenious troupe, still at fault for the right word, have hit upon another wrong one—"Wet .""You carry in a candle," says Major Webster to Lenore, thrusting the weapon indicated into her hand, "and pretend to catch fire; blow out the candle and drop it, and begin to scream like mad; and then, don't you know, we will all rush in with buckets, and put you out.""But must I scream much—or little?""Oh, the louder the better; and you must go on screaming till we come."Lenore docs exactly as she is bid Shrieking at the pitch of her high clear voice, imaginarily burning, and as inmaginarily being extinguished—with one of Mrs. Webster's best silver candlesticks lying dinted and doubled up at her feet, her joyous eyes seek her lover's face for applause; but as soon as they light on it, both her laughter and her screams together die. Unmindful of her assistants, she hurries back into the dining-room."You stopped much too soon," says Major Webster, reproachfully; "you ought to have gone on for a quarter of an hour longer.""Is your dress damaged? Did any of the wax fall on it?" asks Scrope, eagerly, falling on his knees before her, and catching hold of the silk. His back is turned to the others, who have already fallen into fresh wranglings and janglings; nobody sees him; he stoops his head hurriedly, and brushes one of her smart lace-flounces with the silky gold of his moustache."What are you doing?" she cries, angrily, twitching it away from his clasp."I am playing a Dumb Scrambo of my own," he says, lifting his eyes with a defiant flash to hers. "Why do you stop me? It amuses me, and it does you no harm.""I hate Dumb Scrambo!" she cries, passionately. "It is a vile game; why did you play at it?—who wanted you?—There wore plenty without you.""I played," says the young man, raising himself from his kneeling posture, and growing rather white under these amenities, "because I have a benighted idea that when you go to other people's houses you should conform to their amusements, and not consult only your own, as some people do.""Is that meant for a sneer at Paul?" asks Lenore, in a fury."Do you think," continues the young man, incisively, "that I enjoyed crawling along a beeswaxed floor in my dressclothes?"No answer."Do you think that I enjoyed hauling about that Jack Pudding," (with a glance at Major Webster's broad back) "for the amusement of half-a-dozen old women?""Of course you did, or you would not have done it," answers Lenore, brusquely."It, at least, had the good effect of rooting you out of your corner," says Scrope, with a bitter laugh. "Perhaps it was worth, while breaking one's back, and spoiling the knees of one's trousers, to accomplish such a result.""Why on earth could not you leave us there in peace?" cries the girl, angrily. "You might have sat in a corner till crack of doom, and I would not have put out a finger to move you.""You are in disgrace ," says the young man, speaking in a low voice, but with an eager flush; "I know it—so do you! we saw it in his face—in disgrace , because I poured an imaginary bucket of imaginary water over you? Such being the case, I wish you joy of your future life!"WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.We are in the omnibus, going home. There is not an earthly vehicle that makes a more deaving din than an omnibus—a sort of steam threshing-machine in one's head; yet we are all talking—at least not all—four of us—àqui mieux mieux ."Very stingy with their champagne; did not half fill one's glass.""Very bad oyster-sauce!—something oily about it!""The fricandeau was good; I am always fond of a fricandeau.""I think that, considering they have a three hundred guinea chef , and three in the kitchen beside, they might give one better bread-sauce.""I am sure Major Webster has got a temper! I saw him scowling at one of the footmen at dinner."These are some of the severe and spirited strictures that we are passing on the entertainment we have just quitted."I almost wish that we had asked Mrs. Webster to wait for us in the cloak-room, at the ball on Friday night, so that we might all go into the room together," says Sylvia, with what I feel , though I cannot see , to be a simper. "Of course I am really quite an efficient chaperone, but people make such stupid mistakes! The man who took me into dinner asked Miss Webster whether I was out! Just fancy!""How differently people see things!" I say, with my usual malevolence. "The man who took me into dinner asked me which was the elder, you or I?"Meanwhile Lenore says little, and Paul nothing, though they are
sitting side by side. "As we clatter and rumble with redoubled noise
through a village, a light from a window darts a ray into our
darkness. I see that Lenore's face is turned towards him, and that the
hand nearest him lies ungloved on her knee, as if wishing to be
clasped by his. Under cover of the others' clatter, I listen treacherously to their whispered talk:—"Paul, are you dead?""No.""Are you asleep? I cannot see your eyes."No.""Are you angry?"Yes.""What about?"No answer."Would you be less angry if I told you (stoop down your head) that I have been in Gehenna all the evening, and that I think him a greater bore than ever?"The next lamp-post that we pass reveals the white hand nestling in its owner's.CHAPTER V.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."IF there is a thing in all this wide world that gives me the horrors," says Sylvia, with a little shudder, "it is mutton dressed lamb fashion. I know my temptation lies in quite the other direction, to make a grandmother of myself!"This is at luncheon, on the day succeeding the Dumb "Scrambo; the friendly criticisms on the entertainment and the entertainers are being renewed and carried on with a spirit hardly less piquant than the sorrel sauce that is flavouring the interlocutors' cutlets."Poor Harriet Webster! a white book-muslin frock —one can call it nothing else—and a pink sash, low , too, nowadays, when no one thinks of being décolleté except at a ball!""She only wanted a rattle , and to have her sleeves tied up with coral, to be the complete infant," says Lenore, laughing maliciously. "If she had thought of it, Mr. Scrope, you might have carried her in last night instead of her brother; she would have been several stone lighter.""And the way she kept hoisting up those wretched little shoulders, too, to her ears,"says Jemima, putting in her oar. "I really trembled for the string of her tucker. I wonder her brother does not remonstrate.""Pooh!" cries Lenore, carelessly, "I do not suppose that he knows whether she has any shoulders or any tucker either—brothers never do!" A little pause while the first sharpness of hunger is appeased; then Lenore recommences: "What bushy black brows your lady had, Paul. Poor fellow! I did pity you; and they met so amicably in a tuft on the top of her Roman nose."I did not think much of Miss Jemima's friend," says Scrope, laughing; "he looked as if he had been run up by contract—hands like feet, and feet like fire-shovels.""And his wife?" says Jemima; "did you see her? No?—a little bunchy thing, who never says anything but 'Fancy!' and if you are very intimate with her, 'Just fancy!'""Men like her, I cannot imagine why," says Sylvia, languidly, "she has a way of looking down her nose .""Paul, why don't you speak?" cries Lenore, with a pout; "we have all said something clever; it is quite your turn!""Is it?" says Paul, lazily. "Mine is a long time hatching; it will come presently; but, you see, you do not know any of my best friends: so it will lose all its point, I am afraid.""I am sure we have not said anything that was not perfectly good-natured," says Sylvia, with an air of injured innocence; "and as to that, I have no doubt we are quite quits; I daresay they have made quite as many comments on us—not that they can say we are décolleté —as we have on them."A diversion is here effected by the depravity of Tommy, who, being dissatisfied with his dinner, insists on saying, "Thank God for my nasty pudding!" instead of the authorised form of thanksgiving. He is instantly degraded from his high chair, and borne off wriggling like an eel, and kicking the footman's shins."Let us go out," says Lenore, laying her hand on her lover's coat sleeves, as she passes out of the dining-room. "Let us go into the wood! I love a wood in winter. I love kicking the dead leaves! If you are good you shall kick them too!" Five minutes later she has joined him as he stands in the wintry garden puffing at his pipe. "Wait a minute!" she cries, her eyes flashing gleefully; "look at the children going out walking; did you ever see anything so be-comfortered and be-gartered? I must run and knock their hats over their eyes!" She springs away from his side, and in two seconds is back again. "It is such fun!" she says, breathlessly; "it makes them hate one so!"And now they are in the wood; above them the high brown boughs meet in wintry wedlock; each little fine twig, no longer hid by leafage, asserts itself, standing delicately out against the softly-travelling, sad-coloured clouds beyond. Underneath all the trees, dead children lie heaped; there is no wind to stir them. There they lie! one can hardly tell one from another now—the horse-chestnut's broad fan from the beech's pointed oval—massed together in one bronze-coloured death. They are over Lenore's ankles as, with all the delight of a child, she ploughs through them, kicking them up, laughing, and listing that her lover shall kick them too."What a good smell they have when one stirs them up," the cries, "something half-pungent! Smell, Paul, smell!" Paul obeys, and stands docilely inhaling the autumnal odour. "And now," she says, clasping her two hands round his arm, leaning a very considerable weight upon him as they again pace slowly onwards, "talk a great deal. I seem hardly to have heard your real voice yet; yesterday was all church and plum-pudding and scolding, and to-day we have done nothing but dissect the Websters; talk! talk! talk!""How can I talk?" he says, laughing; "you will not let me get a word in edgeways.""Tell me all about everything," she says, comprehensively, "Begin at the beginning, like a story—at the very moment you stepped off the Dinan boat—letters go for nothing. Were you very sea-sick? I believe you were, though you would not own it.""Frightfully, since you insist upon it," replies Le Mesurier with a mendacious smile. "I lay on deck on the small of my back, with a livid face, praying for shipwreck—that is the right feeling, is not it?—while, to add to my sufferings, everybody kept stumbling over my legs.""And when you got home," continues the girl, eagerly, taking this statement for what it is worth, "were they all very glad to see you? Did they all rush out to the door to meet you?""The butler came out, I believe; I do not think that even he ran ; certainly no one else did.""And when they saw you" (speaking very rapidly), "how did they look? Did they look odd? What did they say to you?""Oh, I don't know; much the same as they always say—nothing different—why should they? they did not know anything then; they said, 'Oh, here you are!' or something equally brilliant; and my father said, 'For God's sake, do not touch me! I have got it in both hands.' He meant the gout.""And then you kissed them all," says Lenore, a little envious at this part of the programme. "Do you kiss your father? Some grown-up men do.""Do they?" replies Paul, grimly. "How very unpleasant for both parties! No; I do not, certainly.""And—and was there no one there besides just your own people—just your father and sisters?" asks Lenore, with wily suavity."My cousin, of course!" (with a tone of airy nonchalance)."And" (laughing not quite so easily as before)—"and what was she doing?""My dear soul," (with slight symptoms of impatience), "it is six months ago; how the mischief can I remember?"—then, seeing her countenance fall a little—" stitching, I fancy; making a flannel petticoat for some old woman.""Which she ostentatiously thrust into a cupboard the moment you appeared," says Lenore, sarcastically, turning down the little red corners of her mouth—"'Did good by stealth, and blushed to find it fame.'"Paul lets this thrust pass in silence.And did you bring me on the tapis that night, or did you keep me till next morning?" (looking anxiously up in his face)."I kept you for several days," he answers, smiling—"very much against my will, I can tell you; but I knew that as long as IT remained in hi.s hands, there was no use broaching the subject.""But the girls had not the gout!—you told them, did not you?" (with great animation).Paul looks down, and his expression is embarrassed."Yes," he says, slowly, "I did.""And showed them my photograph?""Ye—es.""I hope you told them that my hair was not so dark as it looks there" (very anxiously). "Did not they think it pretty? Did not they say what a good figure I must have?""I daresay they would not have thought it polite to make personal remarks about you to me," Paul answers, looking thoroughly confused; "and they never are girls to say civil things, don't you know"Lenore puts up one dog-skin gloved hand and hides her mouth: it is the mouth that, in its altered and quivering lines, betrays mortification most."Did not they—did not they say anything? " she asks, in a blank voice."They looked at the name of the photographer on the back," he answers, with a smile of recollected annoyance, "and said, 'Oh, yes; he was a good man, they knew.' I remember that , because it made me so savage!""And—and your cousin? —what did she say?""She was not there.""But—but when you told her you were going to be married—what did she say then?""Pshaw!" cries he, impatiently, reddening slightly. "What extraordinary questions you do ask! What can it matter to you or me either what she said? She said the—the—usual thing, I suppose" (turning his head half away, and viciously knocking a big fungus-head off with his stick)."I do not believe a word of it," cries Lenore, in a fury. "Why do you hate talking about her? Why do you always slide away from the subject when I lead to it? You do not look as if you were telling truth? I believe she—she—she—wanted to marry you herself."Sometimes the innocent wear the pale livery of guilt, by some ingenious freak of nature. At this audacious statement Paul certainly looks whiter than his wont. "You are talking nonsense," he says, brusquely; "childish, unladylike nonsense," and so speaking, he drops her arm, and stalks on by himself.She rustles after him through the dead leaves, half-penitent, half-suspicious, till they reach a stile that gives egress from the wood into a meadow—a December meadow—a very different matter from one of June's buttercup gardens—a meadow flowerless, grey-coloured, and drenched. There, having overtaken him, she lays a hand on each of his arms. "Why will you insist on rousing my devil?" she says, impulsively. "Do you do it on purpose? I do not know whether other women have a devil, but I have, I know.""It is so remarkably easily roused," he answers, drily."There is not a gooder woman in the world than I am sometimes," she continues, naively. "Why will not you let me always be?""Let you," he repeats, laughing, a little ironically, but looking down with a mollified expression at her repentant fond face, freshened by the cool moist wind. "I am sure I do not know what I do to hinder you; I wish to heaven you would be!"CHAPTER VI.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.THAT evening fate, in the shape of a sleek little widow, wills that we shall have a small dinner-party. We should all have much preferred to have kept to our family circle, and, lounging in our chairs, have wooed little contraband sleeps, in recollection of our last night's fatigues, and preparation for those of the next. But Sylvia is obdurate."Say what you please," she says, pronouncing each wort very distinctly. "Call me a prude if you like—it will not be the first time—I cannot help it, but it does feel so odd , we three quite young women sitting down and hobnobbing with those two young men; nobody belonging to anybody else, don't you know.""I beg to say I do belong to somebody," interrupts Lenore, holding up her head."I am sure nobody can feel more kind and sisterly than I do to Paul," continues Sylvia, with an air of conscious modest merit; "but still there is no use denying that he is a comparative stranger, and I confess I should like him to see that we have some idea of civilisation."So to prove our civilisation, we enlarge our little circle by the addition of the three Websters, of a couple of stray marauding girls, and of three diffident foot-soldiers from the——Barracks."We used to have really nice regiments always," Sylvia says, in apology for these poor young gentlemen, before their arrival, as she stands with one round white elbow leant on the mantel-piece, looking up with her large appealing eyes to Paul—Sylvia's eyes have appealed and besought and implored all their life, but what for, nobody ever could make out—"really nice regiments—the Inniskillings, and the 9th Lancers, don't you know; but now we have only those nasty walking tilings."Paul laughs: "I like nasty walking things; I was one myself."There are no mistakes as to pairing to-day. I, who have no claim upon anybody—I, to whom it is absolutely indifferent who leads me, so that I ultimately reach the savoury haven of dinner, and Mr. Scrope, who also has no right to anybody present, march in together. During soup, he tries to make feverish and unnatural love to me, which I rightly attribute to the fact of Lenore's blue ribbons and sweet peas being fluttering and flowering opposite; but as I indignantly decline to be the victim of any such imposture, he relapses into a sulky silence, and I into my usual trite vein of moralizing.If people could but hear the comments made on them. For instance, if Miss Webster had but lurked behind the window-curtains at luncheon to-day, how clothed and lowered and quiet would her shoulders be. I look: they are still playfully shrugged and lifted in all their lean and virgin nakedness.It is evening. Tea has re-united those whom claret parted. The footmen have wheeled in the card-table, and are now clearing another table for a round game—that noisy refuge of those who cannot talk—whereat loud and inarticulate sounds, to the bray of the ass, the shrill clucking and calling of a
distracted hen-roost, take the place of low-voiced and rational conversation. We are all making our selection between the two games: there are far more candidates for the boisterous mirth of the one than for the silent dignity of the other. The infantry, and their attendant houris; the Websters, in short all the externes , distinctly decline a rubber.Major Webster has arrived at the age when a man insists on being classed among "the young people." Being ten years his sister's senior, he is almost as old for a man as she for a woman. He likes to get near the youngest girl in the company—he loves bread and butter, that surest sign of advancing age—to bank with her, look over her cards, and tell her all about himself. Paul chooses whist: I am amused to hear Lenore (the amount of whose knowledge of the game I am acquainted with) follow suit. Mr. Scrope does the same; so does Sylvia. As for me, I am nobody. I have been a spectator all my life. I am a spectator still. Lenore has walked over to a cabinet, close to where I am sitting, to look for some whist-markers. Scrope has followed her on the same pretence."Why do not you join the round game?" I hear her ask him, hurriedly, in a low voice. "I wish you would—three-lived commerce and a pony—just the game for a nice little schoolboy.""Just" (flushing a little and looking rather mulish)."Do! there's a good boy!" she says, almost imploringly, "I'm really in earnest.""I will play bézique, if you like," he says, eagerly; "let me get the little round table; you shall deal every time."She does not speak in answer, but only turns down the corners of her mouth, with an expression of the completest scorn."What axe you two whispering about over there?" cries Sylvia, playfully, from the table; "no whispering allowed!""Let us cut for partners," says Scrope, eagerly advancing."It is not much use," replies Lenore, bluntly; "for whoever I cut with, I mean to play with Paul."They begin. It is Sylvia's deal—Lenore to lead. It is some time before she realises this fact."Oh! is it me? What a bore! What on earth shall I play? I have no more idea——Paul, I wish you would suggest something?"Paul looks resolutely, gravely impenetrable."When in doubt, play trumps!" suggests Scrope, laughing."Trumps! " (with an expression of profound contempt). "Very likely!—as if I did not know that one ought always to keep them to the very end."Having half-played several cards, and withdrawn them—having- gazed imploringly at Paul, who ill-naturedly will not lift his eyes—having tried to look over Scrope's hand, she at length embarks on the ace of diamonds. The others play little ones to it, and the trick is hers."Oh! it is mine again, is it?" (with a tone of annoyance). "If I had thought of that, I would not have played it. Now it is all to come over again. I suppose" (looking vaguely round for counsel) "that it is not a bad plan to play all one's big ones out first, is it?"Paul conscientiously tries to veil the expression of extreme dissent that this proposition calls into his countenance, and so successfully, that the ace of hearts instantly and confidently follows his brother. He is succeeded by the ace of spades."You have every ace in the pack," Sylvia says, pettishly."That I have not!" answers Lenore, glancing up with a mischievous gaiety at Scrope. "You know better than that, do not you, Charlie?"At the unnecessary and illegal candour displayed by the first half of the sentence, Paul shudders slightly; but at the familiar abbreviation of his friend's name he forgets all about his cards. He would not look at his betrothed before, when she sought mute counsel from him. He looks at her quickly enough now, with an expression of the most unfeigned, displeased surprise. But, unluckily, she does not see it. Her gaze has strayed to the other table, and she is whispering to Scrope."Look at the Major—we always call him 'The Major,' as if there was only one in the world. He is telling that little Miss beside him how a cricket-ball once hit him in the left eye, and asking her to look in and see the mark.""How on earth can you tell at this distance?" asks Scrope, eagerly, answering in the same tone, and playing at haphazard the first card that comes."I know his little ways," she says, laughing. "Once; I used to be invited to look into his eye. Ah! 'Nous avons changé tout cela .' I am too old now.""Would you mind going on, when you are quite ready?" Paul asks, with an extreme politeness of tone a little contradicted by the unamiable expression of his countenance. Let those who blame him recollect that he loved strict whist, and the rides of the game, with a love hardly inferior to that of the renowned Mrs. Battle."My turn!" cries Lenore, returning to the consideration of her cards. "You do not say so! It is always my turn. Now what next? Have spades ever been out before? Surely not."She herself, as I have before observed, led the ace three minutes ago, and Sylvia threw away her queen on it. She now boldly advances her king, which is naturally trumped. At this catastrophe she expresses the extremest surprise, which she calls upon Paul to share. In another quarter of an hour, not only the game, but the rubber is ended."Absolutely thrown away! " cries Paul, tossing down his last card, with a gesture of unrestrained irritation. "Two by honours, and excellent playing cards! It is enough to make a saint swear!""I do not know what you mean!" cried Lenore, reddening, "I am sure I did nothing wrong, did I?" (appealing to her adversaries). "I did not revoke, and I returned his lead whenever I remembered what it was, and I led out all my big things. One cannot expect to do much with those little nasty twos and threes!""Let us change partners," cries Scrope, his broad blue eyes flashing eagerly. "I am the worst player in Europe.""By all means," says Lenore, with empressement , glaring angrily across at Paul, though there are tears in her treacherous eyes. "I should like nothing better.""Not for worlds! " says Sylvia, with a little emphasis on the words, rising, and gathering together her gloves, fan, and scent-bottle. "I would not expose my poor little manœuvres to Paul's criticism for any earthly consideration; I do not mind you ; you are a child; you are nobody!"The guests are gone—"Good-night time" has come—we discreetly issue forth into the hall, and drink claret and sherry-and-water, while Paul and Lenore are saying it in the drawing-room. They do not, however, speak very low, as I overhear them."One thing is certain, Paul," says Lenore, playfully, but with a sort of uneasy dignity in her tone, "and that is, that when we are married we will not play cards; I wish you would not be cross to me before people . I do not mind when we are by ourselves.""I wish you would not call men by their Christian names under my very nose,"Paul answers, in a tone that sounds half-jealous, half-ashamed."Do you?" (rather coquettishly)."Lenore, how many men do you call by their Christian names?"She laughs mischievously. "Ever so many; but I only do as I am done by; almost every man I know calls me Lenore. No! no!! no!!!" (her tone suddenly changing to one of repentant alarm); "do not look so furious—I am only joking; nobody does that I am aware of—hardly anybody!"CHAPTER VII.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."A CHILD might play with me to-night, I feel so bland," says Lenore. "Tommy, Bobby, now is your time; never, probably, will you find Aunty Lenore in such a frame of mind again; drive her hair-pins into her skull, throttle her with your fat arms, ride rough-shod over her prostrate body; she will not utter a groan!"It is the day following Sylvia's dinner-party. Lenore is sitting on the white hearthrug of our sister's boudoir, an immoral-looking little upstairs room. Looped rose curtains; lazy low chairs; mirrors gleaming through festooned white muslin; flowers that give out their scent delicately yet heavily to the warmed air; and outside the storm-rain scouring the pane, and the wind shaking the shutters with its strong rude hands. "Had ever any one better cause to be happy than I?" says the girl, -while her eyes dance in the firelight. I am nineteen, I am handsome, I am going to a ball, and shall dance all night, and eat ices, and sit in corners with the dearest fellow in all the world, who is extremely pleased with me.""Instinct tells mo that he dances like a pair of tongs," reply I, amiably.Lenore reddens."Poor Jemima!" she says, with a sort of resentful pity."No wonder you say spiteful things! You are twenty-nine; you are first with nobody! how can you bear to go on living? what can you have to think about all day and all night?""Think about!" repeat I, cynically. "Oh, I do not know. Sometimes my latter end, and sometimes my dinner.""Poor old Jemima!""It is a mercy," continue I, reflectively, "that one's palate outlives one's heart ; one can still relish red mullet when one has lost all appetite for moonshine.""Bravo, Miss Herrick!" cries a voice, as Scrope emerges from behind the portière , which hides a little inner room, and lounges with something of his old sleepy manner to the fire. We both start."Who gave you leave to come here?" asks Lenore, sharply. "Why did not you cough, or sneeze, or sigh, to let us know you were there, instead of meanly listening to all we had to say?""Neither of you said anything either confidential, or that demanded contradiction," replies the young man, leaning his back against the chimney-piece, and looking down with insouciant defiance on the girl at his feet. You , Miss Lenore, modestly observed that you were nineteen and very handsome, while Miss Jemima remarked that red mullet were better than moonshine, and that Le Mesurier danced like a pair of tongs;in both cases I have the good fortune to agree with her.""You have, have you?""You are roasting all the life out of that bit of deutzia in your dress," says the young man, indicating with a slight motion of the hand the white flower that, resting on Lenore's breast, contrasts the dark folds of her serge gown; "suppose you give it me?""Suppose I do not!""You will really, won't you?" (stooping forward a little, and stretching out his hand to receive the demanded gift)."Most certainly not!""All right!" (resuming his former position, and speaking with languid indifference); "it is a half-withered little vegetable, and I am not sure that I would take it now if you offered it me; but all the same, I have a conviction that before the evening is over it will be mine.""You have, have you?" cries Lenore, with flashing eyes; "sooner than that you should ever have it—look here!"She runs to the window, unbolts the shutters, and opening the casement throws the flower out into the wild sleet. Thrice the winter's cold gust drives it back against her, but the third time it disappears. Then she shuts the window, and returns to the fire."What a fine thing it is to have a spirit!" says Scrope, walking to the door. He does not look particularly vexed, but his cheek is flushed.When he is gone, I retire behind the portière to write letters; Lenore maintains her former position, thinking, smiling to herself, and curling the pug's tight fawn tail round her fingers. In about ten minutes the door re-opens, and Mr. Scrope again enters. His boots are miry, his shooting-coat is drenched, large rain drops shine and glisten on his bare gold curls, but in his hand he holds the bit of deutzia, muddied, stained, dis-petaled almost past recognition, but still the identical spray that floated out on the storm blast through the opened window."My presentiments seldom deceive me," says the young man, advancing to the fire, speaking with his old drawl, and wiping the luckless flower with his pocket-handkerchief; "feel how wet I am " (extending his coat sleeve).Silence."I am sorry I was so long," continues he, spreading his hands to the blaze; but it was ill-work grubbing among the dark wet garden-borders; the rain put out my eyes, and hissed in my ears, but, don't you know one hates to be beaten?"I peep at them through the portière . Lenore has sprung to her feet, and stands facing him. "Give it me back!" she cries, imperiously."Most certainly not, as you tersely observed just now""Give it me this instant! " with a stamp, advancing a step nearer, and trying to snatch it out of his hand."Au contraire " (holding it high above her head), "I mean to dry it in silver paper, and inscribe upon it, 'Souvenir from Miss Lenore!'""I will give you any other instead of it," says Lenore, dropping her Xantippe tone, and growing conciliatory. "I will even pin it in your coat to-night. There!""Thanks. I have contracted a particular penchant for this one."She does not repeat her entreaties, but I see her face working."Why are you so anxious to have it back?" asks Scrope, tormentingly, standing close to her on the hearthrug; "don't snatch—it is unladylike—it is wet, it is limp, it is deader than a door-nail.""Paul gave it me!" cries the girl, "bursting into a storm of tears. "You know he did; and he will be so angry when he sees you with it."He tosses it contemptuously to her: "Take it! I would not have it as a gift. You told me once that you never cried, and this is the second time in two days that I have seen you in tears."They have forgotten all about me. He is leaning his elbow on the mantelshelf, and staring morosely at her, as she wipes her eyes."The second time !" (looking up at him with the tears still sparkling on her lashes). "What do you mean?""Do you think I did not see your red eyes at luncheon yesterday?" asks Scrope, scornfully. "You sat with your back to the light, and laughed more than usual, but you did not deceive me ."She turns half away, looking put out at the accusation, which she is unable to rebut."What had you been quarrelling about?" asks the young man, eagerly; "as usual, about me?""You are right," she answers, turning her great angry grey eyes upon him; "it was about you; it is always about you; if it were not for you, we should never have a word! Why do you insist on thrusting yourself between him and me? Why do you not go away? There are a dozen other places where, I daresay, you would be welcome. Why cannot you leave this one, where you must see that you are in the way?""May I ask how?" His voice is cold, but it is the cold of strangled emotion."Did not I tell you a hundred times at Dinan what a bore and a nuisance I thought you?" asks the girl, half in bitter jest, half in earnest. "Why do you make me say these rude things to you over again?"He looks at her steadfastly. "You mean them now; you did not mean them then.""Did not I?" (indignantly) "ask Jemima.""Lenore" (his lips growing white), "you said 'go,' but as I stand here, I swear your eyes said 'stay.'""They did not!" she cries, passionately; "they never did; if they had—if they ever had been so unfaithful to him, I would have torn them out!""Did you think me a bore and a nuisance , when I lay at your feet those summer mornings under the chestnuts on Mont Parnasse, and read 'Manfred' to you?""That I did," she answers, with vicious emphasis. "Why I slept half the time, and dislocated my jaw with yawning the other half! Not one man in a hundred can read poetry, and you" (bursting out into angry laughter)—" you rolled your R's , and ranted with the best of them."Mr. Scrope turns sharply away, to hide his bitter mortification."Why do not you go?" continues Lenore, with her startling candour; "it cannot be very amusing to you being here now; the partridges are so wild that you cannot get near them, and Sylvia never has any pheasants—go! go!"Again he turns and faces her. "Are you serious? he says, "while all his boyish face twitches. "I know you never stick at saying anything that will hurt your fellow-creatures' feelings, but do you really mean that you wish me to leave this house?""I do, distinctly .""That the sight of me takes away your appetite, or his, which is it?""Both.""Miss Lenore" (dropping his sneering tone, and trying to take her hand), "I have been impertinent to you. I own it. I had no right to sneer at him behind his back—it was mean and womanish of me; but—but—you were a little friendly to me at Dinan, and it is hard to be shelved all in a minute.""At Dinan you were never anything more than a pis aller .""If I promise never to address you unless you first speak to me," says the young fellow, entreatingly; "not to look at you more than I can help; to be no more to you than the footman who hands you soup, will you let me stay then?""Fiddlesticks!" replies she, with plain common sense; "nobody can efface themselves in the way you describe; staying in the house with a person one must be brought into constant contact with them. I say again—I say it three times—go! go! GO!""I will go, then," answers Scrope, steadying his voice with a great effort, and speaking with cold quiet; "but I will not go unpaid. Yes; I will go, but on one only condition.""What is it?"That you dance with me to-night—not a beggarly once , as you might with Webster, or any other bowing acquaintance, but three—four times.""I will do nothing of the kind, I will have no bargaining with you," replies Lenore, with dignity."Then I will stay," cries Scrope, with angry excitement. "Miss Lenore, it is not your house; you cannot have me turned out of doors, much as you would wish it; eyesore as I am to you, I will stay!""Do!" she says, with a contemptuous sneer; "it will be a gentlemanlike act, of a piece with the rest of your conduct."("That was a nasty one," think I, from behind the portière .)There, is a moment's silence."Say no more bitter things," says Scrope, in a changed rough voice; "if you tried from now till the judgment-day, you never could beat that last; and the worst of it is that it last true; it was ungentlemanlike; but when one has gone mad, one is not particular about one's manners, as perhaps you will discover some fine day."Lenore is silent."Make your mind easy, I will go: to-night if you wish.""There is no such wonderful hurry: to-morrow will do perfectly.""To-morrow, then.""Thanks.""Lenore" (speaking with cutting emphasis), "you are the handsomest woman in the world, and the one who has the knack of saying the nastiest things; if your face drives men mad, your tongue brings them back to sanity pretty quickly; other women's sharp speeches pour off one like water: yours bite and sting.""Perhaps" (indifferently).A little stillness.Again I peep. Scrope has sat clown by the table: his elbows rest on the Utrecht velvet cover, among all Sylvia's silly little knick-knacks: his hands shade his face."Don't look so tragic!" says my sister, in a mollified voice, sidling up to him; "I own that I thought of myself first; I always do; it is my way; but if you could have sense to perceive it, you would see that it is quite as much for your interest as mine that you should go;—my dear boy" (laying her hand on his coat-sleeve), "I have a horrible suspicion that you are crying! please disabuse me of it.""Nothing is further from my thoughts," says Scrope, lifting his head and showing his beautiful face, undisfigured, indeed, by tears, but paled and altered by anger and pain. "Good God!" (looking at her fiercely) "a man would be a fool to cry about you; would you ever cease laughing and jeering at him?"Stop raving at me," cries Lenore, whose patience is fast oozing out, "I have done nothing: you have been a fool, and you must pay for it; perhaps—" (speaking very slowly, as if the words were not sweet to her lips), "I wish to be quite fair—perhaps—at Dinan—I helped you to be so—a little."He does not speak."Charlie! look here!" (speaking with a soothing, sisterly tone), "you know, and I know, and Jemima knows, and I am afraid Paul knows, that sixty times a day you are on the verge of making a fool of yourself; is not it better that you should go, before you tumble over the verge?""All right," answers he, impatiently, shaking off her hand: "I am going: having gained that point, I think the least you might do is to leave me alone.""But—but you will come to the ball to-night?""No" (very curtly)."You must , it will look so odd!""Odd it may look, then: at the present moment" (laughing disagreeably), "my whole life looks oddly enough, I can tell you.""But supposing I give you one dance! a quadrille?" (un-able, woman-like, to let well alone, and kneeling down on the floor beside him)."I would not walk through a quadrille with you" (speaking very loftily) "if you were to go down on your knees to me!""As I am doing at the present moment," replies Lenore, laughing. "A valse, then?""Are you serious? Do you mean it?" (catching hold of her two hands, while his eyes light up) "or are you only making a fool of me, as you have been doing without intermission for the last six months?""One never knows what may happen," replies the girl, oracularly, already rather repenting her concession; "perhaps—the fag end—the very fag end of a galop, if you will not expect to take me into tea afterwards.""Do not I" cry I, dropping my pen, and hurrying from my lurking-place. "Lenore, for the first time in your life, take advice! let this poor boy go to-night!"As I had surmised, they had forgotten my existence. Both look at me with the partial fondness with which it is usually an interloper's fate to be regarded."Meddlesome Matty!" cries my sister, with her usual amenity, "who asked your opinion?""Miss Jemima," says Scrope, reproachfully, "I thought you were my friend!""So I am," I say, smiling and turning to him; "if she dances with you once, twice, a dozen times to-night, how much the better will you be to-morrow, You will have set us all by the ears, while you—#x2014;" I pause.Neither speaks."It is useless disguising from ourselves," continue I, with my usual excellent common sense, "that Paul will be displeased.""Let him be displeased then, if he can be so irrational!" cries Lenore, cheeks on fire and eyes burning; "but no! what am I talking about? Paul has perfect confidence in, me: if I were to dance all night with Charlie Scrope, or Charlie anybody else, he would not mind, he would understand.""Time will show," reply I, mystically, walking to the door."I will give you four dances, four round ones—there!" says Lenore, with a brilliant smile and a triumphant glance at me as I leave the room; "Vogue la galère!"CHAPTER VIII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.It is time to go to the ball; all are ready: all are in the hall save Lenore. The men have each two pairs of white kid gloves in their pocket; one has plain gold studs, the other diamond and black enamel; but, oh, how poor, how small are man's highest adornments compared to woman's! At his best, in his dress of greatest ceremony, he is but a skimping, black-forked biped, compared to the indefinite volume, the many-coloured majesty, of beflounced, belaced, beflowered woman."Did you tell her we were all waiting?" asks Sylvia, in a tone of impatience."I did," replies Jemima, stepping leisurely downstairs with a large mat, which her train has carried down from the upper regions, attached to her tail."And what did she say?""She said, 'Hurry no man's cattle!'""Was she nearly ready?""I don't know.""What was she doing?""She was advancing and retreating before her long glass, ascertaining whether her petticoats were all of a length.""There is plenty of time," says Scrope; "not ten yet. I remember once going to a ball in the country, and finding myself the first person there. It was an awful sensation!""Are you sure that I should not look better with a fichu? " says Sylvia, in an anxious aside, to her sister, getting out of earshot of the men, and craning her throat to get a view, over her shoulder-blades, at the back of her own neck. "Am I too décolletée behind? You know that there is nothing in life I have such a horror of as being called a 'frisky matron!'""It does look rather juvenile , perhaps," replies Jemima, unkindly saying the exact reverse of what she knows is expected of her.Sylvia's countenance falls a little."'Juvenile! " Oh, that was not what I meant in the least! I asked Charlie Scrope what he thought" (smiling a little), "and he said, 'You look awfully jolly! ' He said it quite loud . I am sure I don't know what Paul could have thought. I suppose one ought not to have asked him his opinion, poor boy, because he always thinks one looks nice, whatever one has on.""Does he?""Jemima," (lowering her voice, and speaking with eager sincerity), "promise to tell me everything that you hear anybody say of me to-night, and I will promise totell you everything I hear anybody say of you ."Jemima does not answer; her eyes are fixed on the stairs on which a vision has appeared, above whose head two lady's, maids are triumphantly holding flat candlesticks, to aid the bright gaslight which is already illumining her; a vision, like a summer night, dark, yet softly splendid. Lenore, all in black, with great silver lilies starring her hair, shining on her breast, garlanding her skirts. As she comes stepping daintily down, she does not look conscious—very handsome people seldom do; it is a prerogative reserved for faintly and doubtfully pretty ones. In her hand she carries a huge bouquet of white and purple flowers. All stare at her; but she seems to see only Paul. She goes straight up to him, her eyes shining like soft lamps, and her cheeks all rosy with happiness."Thank you so much," she says, in a low voice. "I was surprised—and yet not surprised—when Nicholls came to my room and said, 'Here's a bouquet for you, ma'am.' I knew in a minute, of course. I did not even take the trouble to ask whom it was from; I knew , naturally."As she talks, Paul's complexion varies and his countenance changes; but she goes on, without giving him time to speak."How did you come to know all my favourite flowers? was it intuition or did I ever tell you? I forget. Violets, Roman narcissi, white hyacinths—all the scents that I am most wild about. There!" (holding up the bouquet to his face) "you may have one sniff, one little sniff at it—only a little one, mind!""Lenore," says Paul, in a mortified voice, looking red and miserable, "it was not I. I know nothing about it. To tell you the truth, I never thought of such a thing!"Had they been alone he would have added fond apologies; would have told her—what was the truth—that had ho thought they would have given her pleasure, he would have bought her a thousand bouquets, each much bigger than a haystack; would have sent to Kamschatka for them, did bigger, fairer flowers grow there than here; but, as three people are by, his pride restrains him."Not you? " repeats Lenore, in a blank voice, as her arm and the now valueless posy drop to her side. "Who was it, then? Oh, of course," (following Scrope, who has turned to the fire to hide the scarlet tinge that has spread from the crown of his head to the nape of his neck) "it was you! I am right this time! Thanks so much for thinking of me."She stretches out her hand to him, but her voice quivers.These little disappointments are sometimes acute, as a needle, though but a small weapon, can give a sharp prick.There is nothing further to delay the cloaking and shawling, which forthwith takes place. Paul and Lenore stand together alone for a minute."They have no longer the same smell," says the girl, eyeing her nosegay with a disenchanted look; "the narcissi's petals are already beginning to yellow and the maiden hair to shrivel. Oh, you bad, bad Paul! just as I began to think that you must really be getting a little fond of me!""Don't talk such nonsense," replies Paul, brusquely; "cannot you see with half an eye, that I am in a greater rage with myself than you can possibly be with me? But Lenore" hesitating a little), "now that you know that I —fool that I was—did not get it for you, are you still going to take it?""Of course I am," replies Lenore, decisively; "though it the bouquet of disappointment, it gives a nice finish to one's toilet; if" (with a coquettish pout) "one is not provided with legitimate bouquets one must console oneself with illegitimate ones.""It is an Infirmary Ball; one of those balls, therefore, at which, in theory , gentle and simple meet and frolic happy equality and unity; at which, in practice , the gentle glide gracefully about at the top of the room, and the simple plunge and caper at the bottom. There is more air, more space, more everything that is desirable, at the lower end near the doors, but to remain at that end is to confess an affinity with the butchers, the bakers, the haberdashers, of the good city of Norley. At the expense of any amount of elbowing, pushing, bruising, one must work one's way up to where one's peers sit enthroned on red-cloth benches. They are rather late. Slowly they work up. Paul escorts Lenore; Scrope, Sylvia; Jemima, herself. A galop is playing, and a hundred, two hundred people, are floundering, flying, and bounding round, as nature and their dancing-master have taught them. Little women burying their noses in big men's coat-sleeves; big women trying not to rest their chins on the top of little men's heads; men who hold their partner's hand out, like a pump-handle, sawing the air with it up and down; men who hold their partner's hand on their own hip, describing an acute angle with the elbow; men who hug their partners like polar bears; men who hold their partners uncomfortably tumbling out of their arms, as if they were afraid of coming near them; men who run round their partners: men who kick; men who scratch; men who knock knees;—every variety, in fact, of the human animal, rushing violently round, doing their best to make themselves giddy and tear their clothes."Are you going to dance this with me, or are you not?" asks Lenore, impatiently; "because, if not, I will ask some one else—I mean. I will make some one else ask me.""Of course I am.""What are you waiting for, then? why don't you start? I am mad to begin! Tum te tum! if they play this air when I am in my coffin, I shall jump up and galop in my shroud."In a second more, the black and silver gown has joined the merry mad rout of reds and blues and greens and whites. After half a dozen turns Lenore pants a little, and says, "Stop."''That means that I dance badly," says Paul, releasing her from his arms."It means that I am never long-winded: doctors often say that I ought not to dance.""Not really?" incredulously looking at her cheeks, carnationed by the movement of the dance—at her great clear eyes. "I say, Lenore, do I dance very atrociously? It is a thing that I do not do once in a month of Sundays.""Not very ," replies Lenore, rather slowly; "you have not quite got into my step yet, but that will come." (Then, seeing him look a little mortified) "You are not like Major Webster, who leaps his own height into the air every step he takes, and gets round the room in three bounds , like a kangaroo."'Paul laughs. "That is modest praise."Meanwhile Sylvia has been safely piloted to the top of the room, and enthroned between Mrs. "Webster and another tided dowager. Jemima and Miss Webster remain standing. To take a seat is virtually to confess yourself shelved; to remain standing, is an advertisement that you are still to be had."You won't take a turn, I suppose?" Scrope says to Mrs. Prodgers, as he prepares to saunter away.She has so often announced her intention of not dancing that he thinks the invitation—in itself dissuasively worded—may be safely hazarded. But human prescience is often at fault."Would you mind holding my bouquet for me, dear Mrs. Webster?" says Sylvia, getting down with some alacrity from her bench. "Thanks so much! You see" (with a little affected shrug), "I am fated not to be left in peace. It seems a little hard upon the girls, doesn't it? but one cannot pass on one's partners, can one? they would not like it. I assure you I had no more idea of dancing—but one gets so tired of saying 'No,' 'No,' 'No,'—such an old friend too—you need not smile—he is, really!""Quite right, my dear, quite right!" replies Mrs. Webster, nodding good-humouredly. She is very comfortably perched herself, and she has long given up her daughter as a bad job. "I only wish that Miss Jemima could find a partner too—where is James?" (standing up on the raised foot-board, whence she can get a commanding view over the company's heads); "he was here a minute ago, and he had no partner then—his had thrown him over—I am sure he would be most happy!""Oh! no, no, no, thanks!" replies Jemima, in a frenzy at the thought of being crammed down James's unwilling throat. "I am quite happy, I assure you! I like looking on; it amuses me, and some one will be sure to turn up just now."Miss Webster smiles; she always does: she has smiled through eight and thirty years of hope deferred. Callow boys and fat old married men are her sheet-anchor, and she is on the look-out for such now.The dance ends; the sound of scampering and shuffling ceases suddenly; people's voices drop from bawling pitch to their natural key; everybody streams to the doors. The house seems to have been built for the express purpose of farthering love-making. From the ball-room long corridors diverge in every direction, dimly lit; and out of these corridors open many quiet rooms, also dimly lit."Let us go into the passages!" cries Lenore, "and I will show you all the holes and corners, where I perpetrated my worst atrocities in flirtation last year.""On the same principle, I suppose," replies Paul, laughing, "which makes a man always take his second wife to visit the tomb of his first?"They find a bench, retired, yet not lonely, where, in shade themselves, they can see men and girls, men and girls, men and girls, go trooping by; couples flirting, couples not flirting, couples trying to flirt, couples trying not to flirt. It is a bench that only holds two people; well armed, well cushioned, where, half hidden behind Lenore's spread fan, they lean together and whisper gaily."Paul! Paul! do you see that girl?—how dirty the body of her dress is?""Cannot say that I remarked it.""It is , though; as dirty as the ground. She and her sisters always make a point of coming to these balls in filthy dresses, to mark the distinction between themselves and the clean, crisp, townspeople.""It is patrician dirt, is it? I respect it.""Do you see that big person in pink? Last year she went to the Assembly in a wreath of mistletoe ; you may imagine the consequences."Paul laughs."Her partner always gets very drunk. Last time I saw him was in the Ansons' supper-room; he was sitting on a lump of ice, crying bitterly.""Lenore, why are you hiding your face?""Hush! hush! young Alison is coming this way; he would be sure to ask me to dance, and dancing with him is like going into a battle , without the glory."Young Anson passes safely by, looking neither to the right hand nor the left."I breathe again. Paul!" (edging a little nearer to him, and dropping her voice, more for the pleasure of whispering than from any dread of being overheard);"Paul, do you mean to let me dance when we are married?""H'm! I shall see.""We shall not be able to go to many balls," says Lenore, sighing, "for we shall have no clothes.""Speak for yourself.""We must stay at home, and have tea and shrimps; of course, we shall not be able to afford dinner.""Shall not we?" (looking rather aghast). "Does dinner cost more than tea and shrimps?""Of course it does; shrimps are only fourpence a pint?" Paul shudders."Could not you make it prawns?""Certainly not; tea and shrimps it must be—perhaps watercresses in the height of the season—and after tea, you will read the paper in carpet slippers—not the Times —we shall not be able to afford the Times —but some penny paper—and I shall sit opposite you, with my hair flat to my head, and low down over ray ears —is not that it?—hemming a duster!""I do not believe you can hem."The music has struck up again: Lancers, this time. Fewer couples trail and saunter by: most have returned to the ballroom. The fiddles' sharp loud squeak comes more softly to their ears; the merry cadence and marked time of the Lancers; then the little pause in the music, that tells one, without one's seeing, that the girls are all courtesying, and the men, with arms linked together, are galloping madly round, like savages before a wooden god.Lenore's eyes dance softly, too, in this dusk place."Lenore, I have a favour to ask you.""Not a very big one, I hope.""You will think it immense.""What is it?""That you will dance with no one but me, to-night."He had expected her to accede with eager alacrity, but on the contrary, she says nothing."I know that I dance badly, vilely ," continues Paul, colouring a little. "I have long suspected it, and to-night" (laughing a little) "I learned it for a certainty , from your face, and from the eagerness with which you engaged me in conversation in the pauses of the dance, to hinder me from starting afresh. But why should we dance? Could we be better off than we are now?""Not easily," she says, and says it truly; but she still evades replying to his request."I want to have a feast of your society to-night," says Paul, earnestly "think what a fast I have had!—six months! We seem to know each other so little yet, and even there " (giving a vague nod to express Sylvia's abode), "jolly as it is, we never seem to get five minutes' talk, without Jemima bouncing in at one door, or Sylvia ambling in at another, or those imps of Satan rushing in and playing the devil's tattoo on one's shins.""Children of Belial!" says Lenore, tersely. "Good heavens, Paul! how I hate the young of the human species! Don't you?"Paul looks rather shocked. "Don't say that—it is unwomanly.""Of course," retorts she, sarcastically, "to a man they may be imps of Satan, but to the ideal woman they must always be cherubs—biting, kicking, scratching cherubs—but cherubs always. By-the-by, Paul" (with a sudden change of tone), "how is the ideal woman? Have you seen her lately?"Paul turns his head away, and says, "Fiddlesticks!""Paul, Paul! I have an idea! How red you are! Look me in the face—don't turn the back of your head to me. Is it she that wears her hair flat, and eschews frisettes?"Paul turns round as bidden. His face is undeniably red; he is not laughing, and his eyes are rather defiant. "What if it is?""Does she wear a poke bonnet?""Perhaps!""And a grey cloak down to her heels?""Well?""I know all about her," says Lenore, resentfully, her eyes flashing and cheeks ablaze; "a puritanical little prig!""I do not see what good it does you abusing a person you have never seen," says Paul, in a rather surly voice, "nor what it has to say to whether you are willing to sacrifice this one evening to me or not.""Certainly not!" replies the girl, angrily; "why should I? What have you done to deserve it? Yesterday you scolded me till I cried—everybody saw my red eyes; to-day you forgot the common civility of getting me a bouquet; and you are always trotting out another woman's virtues and beauties at my expense. Certainly not! I will dance like a Mœnad with all my old friends."Paul's forehead wrinkles into a frown, and his mouth turns down, as is his way when extremely vexed. "All right! Do!" he says, in a constrained voice. She had spoken with petulant half-meaning; had expected to be coaxed, entreated, scolded even, out of her perverse determination; but ho employs neither coaxings, entreaties, nor scoldings—he acquiesces with dumb pride. They sit side by side in sullen silence, till disturbed by the sound of approaching voices, feet, and the long rustle and swish of a woman's infinite gown."You must take me back to the ball-room," Sylvia is saying, as she flutters her fan and smiles; "you must indeed. If people come out and find us sauntering about here they will be sure to say that I am flirting with you, and there is nothing in life that I should dislike so much as that—oh! here you are!"Both are too sulky to answer."Not been dancing? Very wise of you! Look how much better you have come off than I!—in ribbons, absolutely in tatters. And Charlie has got a yard and a half of me in his pocket, have not you?" She looks up at him playfully, with round complacent eyes, and then stops suddenly.To even Sylvia's comprehension it is evident that he has not heard a word she has been saying; his eyes are fixed with steady intentness on Lenore. Paul is gazing vacantly down the long vista of the fast refilling corridors. "Are you engaged for the next dance, Miss Lenore?"'What is it?' (nonchalantly) "a quadrille?""It is a valse."She peeps at Paul, out of the corner of one eye; not a sign of relenting on the ill-tempered gravity of his face. Well! she can be as cross and sulky as he, at a pinch."No—I am not.""Will you let me have it?""Certainly.""Shall I be likely to find you here still after I have taken Mrs. Prodgers back to the ball-room?""I will not trouble you," replies Sylvia, rather offended at the slight hint of anxiety to be rid of her, unintentionally implied in these last words. "I am going" (with a coquettish smile) "to put myself under Paul's protection. Do you hear, Paul? I am going to put myself under your protection. You are not going to dance? No? Neither will I. We will sit here and criticise everybody—yes, we will talk you both well over" (shaking her bouquet at Scrope); "if your ears burn you will know what to attribute it to."Lenore has risen, and while Sylvia is speaking she bends and whispers maliciously to Paul, "Pleasant meditations on poke bonnets and flat heads to you!"He does not take the slightest notice.She puts her hand on Scrope's arm, and walks off. Twice, thrice, she looks back, but not once has she the satisfaction of detecting her lover's eyes wistfully seeking hers. Silently they enter the ball-room and join the just beginning whirl. Lenore is thoroughly out of tune—angry with herself, enraged with Paul, furious with Scrope. If any hole can be picked in his performance, he may be quite sure that she will not spare him. She is, however, deprived of that satisfaction. Scrope's performance is as much above praise as Paul's was below blame. He dances superbly. It is a small accomplishment, and does not add much to a man's social value, but in ball-room it is the giver of great joy. Once in his arms, a delightful sense of security and strength comes over Scrope's partner; a blessed certainly of immunity from jostling; of being borne along steadily, rapidly, buoyantly, with the swift smoothness of a swallow's flight; all trouble taken off her hands, and only pleasure left. Lenore loves dancing intensely ; with an intensity, indeed, seldom met with among sad and sober Englishwomen. On her, the mere music, motion, and measure of the dance have an effect verging on intoxication. Down the long room they fly together; the floor seems nothing to them; they arc floating on air, while the music swells loud and sighs faint, bursts into mad merriment and dies in voluptuous complaints. Lenore has forgotten her anger—has forgotten even Paul; all feelings are merged in one of acute sensuous enjoyment—a feeling languid, yet exciting; luxurious, yet exhilarating. Many couples who set off at the same time as they did are standing still to rest, panting and breathless; but they still fly on, with untired joyous grace."Shall we stop? Am I tiring you?" Scrope asks."No, no! Go on, go on!""I wish to heavens it could go on for ever! " says the young man, losing his head, and foolishly whispering into the white ear that is so temptingly close to his face.The spell is broken."Stop!" says Lenoro imperatively. He obeys, and stands gravely beside her, his broad chest heaving a little with his late exertions; some strong suppressed excitement giving an expression, painful yet eminently becoming to his straight-cut Greek face."I thought you said you were not tired?""No more I am.""Why did you say 'stop' then?""Because you were beginning to be a fool.""I began that long ago; six months ago, in church; in Guingamp cathedral—if you wish to be exact.""You went on being a fool, then?""I said that I wished this valse could last for ever, and I stick to it," says the young man, doggedly. "I do wish it.""Tastes differ," says Lenore, scornfully. "I know nothing that I should dislike more than an eternity of capering with you."He bites his lip hard, but attempts no retort."Shall we take another turn?" says Lenore, presently; mollified by his silence, after an interval spent by her in tapping with her feet and beating time to the music. "That is to say, if you will promise not to be a fool.""I promise nothing.""'Well, then, we must risk it, I suppose," replies she, with a careless laugh. "Mind, it is no compliment to you. It is solely for my own satisfaction; for though you may be a fool, you dance like a seraph, and I cannot bear to lose a bar of this."Away, again, light as a feather; as if blown by the breath of the music. Once off—her anger unroused again by any rash remarks from her partner—the same sense of delicious enervation as before, steals over Lenore. It is like floating on a summer sea, as the music whispers, whispers, then laughs out and triumphs, in a loud glad clash.And Scrope—every dog has his day, they say, and this is his. It is a wretched little day; but still it is his. She may be Paul's for all after life—nay, she will be, of course; who can hinder her? But for these divine mad minutes she is his! It is not Paul's arm that is round her waist; it is not Paul's heart against which hers is panting; it is not Paul's shoulder on which the milk-white beauty of her arm is lying.All earthly pleasures must end, and a valse is, in its very essence, one of the shortest. The music ceases. As they turn towards the door they come face to face with Paul. He makes as though he would pass them without speaking; but Lenore addresses him:"What have you done with Sylvia?""She is dancing.""And you? Why arc not you?""Because I hate it!"(emphatically)."You might have given Jemima a turn; she very seldom gets a partner, and she likes dancing.""Even with me ?"(with a sneer)."I wish you a better temper," says Lenore hastily, moving on.They pass out into the passage."Why have you come here?" cries the girl fretfully; "it is draughty. I shiver; let us go back to Sylvia—to Mrs. "Webster—anywhere!"""You do not shiver when you are with other men," says Scrope, resentfully."Other men do not stare at one, as if they were going to eat one!" cries the girl, indignantly. "Good heavens, Charlie! how much better I liked you when you were only a stupid, silent, sulky boy, before you adopted these unpleasant man's airs."In defiance of appearances, Scrope stands stock still; he is young enough to be galled by allusions to his age."Lenore," he says, almost imperatively, "stop gibing at file; after to-night, I give you carte blanche to abuse me as much as you please behind my back—to mimic me for your friends' amusement—to show me up in as humiliating a light as it pleases you—you are quite capable of it—but, for totight, 
he civil""Mend your own manners, then," cries the girl, tartly. "Who gave you leave to call me 'Lenore?" For the last few days I have remarked that you have been slurring over the 'Miss;' please to replace my style and title immediately.""Is it worth while," asks the young fellow, more calmly, but with great bitterness, "is it worth while accustoming oneself to call you 'Miss,' when you will so soon be 'Mrs.?' For all my future life, I swear to you, I will try to think of you only as 'Mrs. Le Mesurier;' but, for to-night, be Lenore , plain Lenore!"For all answer, she bursts out laughing. "Excuse me; it is rude, I know; but you reminded me so forcibly of the tale of the man at a ball, who, when the music stopped suddenly, was heard saying to his partner, at the top of his voice: 'Do not call me Mr. Smith; call me 'plain William !' and, as he was remarkably ugly, he was called 'plain William' ever after."CHAPTER IX.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.IN the meantime, Mrs. Prodgers has been restored to her eminent position on the bench: she has been danced and talked and walked about, into a state of even more than her usual complaisance.Jemima still stands where she left her."Have you been dancing, dear? Yes? Oh, I am so glad —I thought you would. I don't know what has come to the people to-night; they would tear one in pieces, if one would let them. One thing I do set my face against, and that is, those passages. I said to young Anson, 'There is no one fonder of laughing and talking, and fun, than I am, but if you talk from now till Doomsday you will not persuade me to sit out-with you.' I daresay there is no harm in it really , but people do let their tongues run so, when a person is young and tolerable looking."Jemima makes no answer.Sylvia's conversation is like a Gregorian chant; there is a certain sameness about it.Miss Webster has been valsing with an Eton boy, in a round jacket: her shins are black with bruise, her elbow is scratched, but at least she has not been a wallflower.Another galop strikes up. Sylvia's talk drops into silence; she fiddles with her bouquet, and tries to look as if she would not dance if she were asked. Men hurry hither and thither, seeking for their promised partners; raising and dashing in the same instant false hopes in unengaged girls, by making apparently straight for them, staring hard at them, and then flying off at a tangent on discovering that they are not the right ones. Jemima scans the crowd to see whether she can discover any one likely to ask her (in many women the love of dancing survives the probability of being invited), but finding no one, resigns herself with philosophy to her fate. Other people's enjoyment is not so good as one's own, but it is perhaps better than none. It is some people's lot to be spectators through life. She looks on. The pink calico; the laurels, the mirrors, the pretty rose-red ladies, the plunging grocers and floundering groceresses; a tremendous thud !'— two people fallen like one log; now sprawling in a confused heap of broad-cloth and illusion on the floor; the lady has ingeniously wound herself, like swaddling clothes, round her squire's legs: she is unwound, feels for her head, settles her wreath, and off again! There are so many people, and they go so quickly, that it is difficult to follow any one: a blue couple, a pink couple, a white couple; they dazzle the eyeballs with the celerity with which they shoot across them! A black couple—taller than most of the others; the soft sparkle of silver flowers flashing like meteors down the room.Why, it is Lenore! Lenore and Scrope again!"I thought I had understood that your sister's fiancé was a plain man," says an old woman, who, unable to find room on a bench, is standing behind Jemima, and tapping her on her bare shoulder to attract her attention."Quite the contrary" (with a complimentary smile). "Have you ever seen him?" asks Jemima."Is not it he with whom she is dancing?""Oh, dear no!""Really?" What a stupid mistake! I thought it must be, because I have always seen them together. A cousin, no doubt?"Jemima does not relieve her curiosity. She affects not to hear.Turning her head aside a little, she finds Paul at her elbow. Judging by his face, he has heard, apparently."Oh, there, you are!" cries Sylvia, catching sight of him at the same moment and resuming her animation. "You are in disgrace, do you know deep disgrace? You have not asked me to dance once to-night," (looking at him with large round eyes, and smiling archly).Paul smiles too, but not very cheerfully."My dancing is such that it is only on very old acquaintance 
that I dare inflict it.""I saw you dancing with Lenore."He shrugs his shoulders."I believe I did shamble round the room once or twice, but it was not a very successful experiment."After the dance, which is surely ten minutes longer than any galop that ever was played before, after a prolonged stroll in the corridors, after tea, Lenore returns to her chaperone; returns, laughing and flushed, but with a look of uneasy excitement 
underlying the surface merriment of her face.Paul has been waiting, with no outward sign of impatience on his grave sad face. He goes up to her."May I have five minutes' talk with you?" he asks formally.She takes his arm, and they walk off.Neither speaks till they reach the bench on which, in the earlier and happier part of the evening, they had sat together, gaily chattering. Then Paul addresses her with cutting, cold politeness.May I ask, Lenore, what is inducing you to make yourself 
so remarkable with Scrope to-night? Is it solely for your own satisfaction, or for the double pleasure of amusing yourself 
and annoying me?"The opening is not conciliatory. The colour rushes red and headlong to Lenore's cheeks: she flings up her proud head."I killed two birds with one stone," she says, in angry jest; "he dances like an archangel , and it makes you jealous."'I do not doubt your first assertion," says Paul, more coldly than ever, "and I fully agree with your last; perhaps I am more prone to jealousy than other men. I have not been so used to women and their ways. But I confess I do not enjoy seeing my future wife hauled about by a man, who is (as is evident to the most casual observer) making passionate and unrestrained love to her."She is about to interrupt him, but he stops her."I confess I do not relish seeing him pointed out as occupying 
the position which, till to-night, I supposed was mine.""What do you mean?""I mean"(in a tone where the persuasive is quite swamped in the imperative) "that I distinctly object to your dancing with Scrope.""That is unfortunate," retorts Leuore, to whose ears the imperative has heen, from her youth up, an unknown mood, and whose gorge has always risen at the faintest attempt at coercion; "for I have every intention of dancing with him again—once—twice—if not more.""After the opinion I have just expressed?" cries Paul, his anger effectually breaking through the armour of his coldness, voice raised, and grey eyes lightening."Most decidedly," she answers with distinct emphasis. "I am not in the habit of breaking my word, and last night I promised him that, on condition that he leaves Sylvia's house to-morrow, I would valse four times with him to-night—and Take four times with him I will!""You promised him?" repeats Paul, hardly any longer master of his indignation. "Am I to understand that you have been making terms—bargaining with him? How ought his comings or goings to affect you?""In this way," she answers, her lips quivering with anger, but articulating with slow clearness. "I have, or fancy I have, a considerable regard for you and a slight regard for him, and I have no wish to sea you kick each other downstairs
—a dénoument which is only a question of time as long as you are in the same house.""Lenore!" (snatching her hand, and holding it with almost painful tightness, while his eyes glow bright and deeply angry in this dim place,) "are you mad, or are you bent on driving me mad? After what has often passed between us about that
fellow, can you dare to tell me to my face that you have a regard for him?" Whom the Gods wish to destroy they first deprive of understanding."Dare! "she says,-while her eyes meet his unflinchingly, though within, her spirit quails—her heart yearns to him in his honest anger. "What an ugly word! Yes, I do, dare! why should not I?" He is handsome, and I love to look at beautiful things and people; he admires me blindly, and admiration is food and drink to me; he can see no fault in me, and I hate to be eternally carped at, and picked holes in!""I see," says Paul, dropping her hand, and speaking in a tone of smothered resentment, which (if she could but have understood it) was more alarming than his outspoken anger, "I understand; you cannot see our unsuitability more clearly than I do; from the first, I felt it profoundly, and every day I live I feel it more. But Lenore, why " (grasping her arm with unconscious fierceness), "why—if, from the first, you only meant to torment me—why did you make me love you? There were hundreds of other victims that would have done you more credit. Why could not you leave me alone?""Leave you alone! "(turning as white as a sheet); "what do you mean?""I mean," he answers firmly, "what you know as well as I do, that you could have hindered me from loving you, if you had wished; I was not given to falling in love; till I met you I hated ladies' society; I avoided women; I did not understand them, and they thought me a bore. I left them alone, and they left me alone; until you—solely for the gratification of your own vanity, as I now see—made me love you, against my wish, against my better judgment, as for the same reason, no doubt, you have now made Scrope."She sits, with her head bent, silent; she cannot command her voice to answer."He is a more creditable conquest than I, I own," continues 
Paul, bitterly; "but for all that you will be the ruin of him. When he joined me at Dinan he was as nice a boy and as good a fellow as ever lived; I looked upon him as a brother, and he —he swore by me! You have made him hate me! You have made me detest the sight of him! I congratulate you on your handiwork."She lifts her eyes to him, all the softness gone out of them, scintillating with anger. "Have you done?" she asks, in a choked voice; "have you insulted me enough for one day?""I have not insulted you," he answers, resolutely, "unless God's truth be an insult; 1 never was a good hand at telling smooth lies; my love for you has never been blind enough to hinder my seeing that you are, in some respects, different from what I could wish you to be; if it is an insult to tell you so, I can only say it would have been a thousand times better if we had never met."A pain like a knife goes through her HEART, but she makes no sign."I quite agree with you," she answers, commanding her voice into calmness by an immense effort; "will you be so kind as to take me back to Sylvia?"He gives her his arm and they begin to retrace their steps; but before they have gone six paces he turns aside into one of the rooms that open out of the passage. It is empty; he shuts the door. His soul is in a tumult; full, not indeed of the unnamed pain of Lenore's, but of confusion and doubt. If he marries this woman he will be a miserable man; he has long suspected it, and choked back the suspicion; to-night he has realised it—but yet—but yet—she is as beautiful as a summer moonrise—he cannot give her up without an effort. They are as much alone as if they were on a desert island; he stands facing her."Lenore," he says, earnestly, "let us understand one another. If this is only a silly quarrel, for Heaven's sake let us make it up; if it is only a capricious way of trying how much I can stand, I tell you candidly that I am at the end of my tether; I will not bear a feather's weight more! Lenore, am I unreasonable? I like a quiet life, and I want to trust my wife absolutely, and to believe in her as I believe in God. Tell me, did you mean the things you said just now, or were you only angry? If you were, I am the last person that has any right to blame you. Oh, my dear, think before you answer me! Our whole two lives hang upon it."She looks at him. His face is stern and resolute and deeply angered; but is it not also tender? She is all but melted; in a second more she would have been sobbing on his heart, but in the instant of hesitation his former words, "You made me love you," recur to her, bringing profound resentment with them. "I did mean them," she answers
passionately. "I do mean them; it is so pleasant to me to find any one to like me spontaneously that I naturally prize their society."His face pales and changes, it is no longer tender; it is only stern."All right," he says coldly; "you are at least explicit. It has come to this, then, enore—you must choose between Scrope and me. I am far from saying that he is not a fitter mate for you than I. He is young, he is good-looking, he is rich, he has everything to catch a woman's eye and gain a woman's heart: and I——" (looking down and sighing), "well, I suppose I have not much. It has been as great a wonder to me as to the rest of the world what you could have seen in me—you know, I told you before I'm not up to woman's ways—but one thing is certain," (lifting his head again, and speaking with firm emphasis.) "I will go shares with no man ; I will have all or none . As long as you are my betrothed wife I forbid you to dance with Scrope.""And I decline to be forbidden," she cries, maddened by rage—by the internal knowledge of being in the wrong, and —oh, far worst, cruellest of all—by the conviction that he does not love her well enough to take her, limits and all— that he will have her on his own terms or not at all, that he is going—if she persist in her pride—to give her up, and that the giving her up will not cost him his life.—will not break his heart, or even cause it any very mortal pain. "I deny your right to employ such a word to me; if I were a hundred times your wife I should refuse to be ordered about like a dog. If you expect the tame docility of a slave you had better go to your cousin for it, for you certainly will not get it from me."He bows gravely."It is fortunate, at least, that we have discovered the discrepancy of our ideas of marriage before it is too late. Thank you, at least, for telling me now, instead of later.""Yes," she answers, breathing hard and short; her face altered and contorted by the fatal excitement that is hurrying her to her destruction; "if I made you love me, as you generously say, I will, at least, not make you many me."He stands mute, all his face white and quivering, unable to master himself enough to reply to her gibes with calmness, and not willing to descend to the unmanliness of recrimination. Then at length he speaks, with a slow and bitter smile:"You have given me a lesson that I shall not forget in a hurry. I confess that I had not thought myself a vain mar., but to-night has proved me to have been egregiously misled bv my own conceit. Do you know—you will hardly believe me—laugh at me, I give you leave—but for the last six months I have been reproaching myself with the thought that, well and heartily as I loved you, you loved me even better—that you were giving more than you received? I am disabused! Lenore," (speaking very slowly, and planting each word like a sword-thrust in her heart) "you are incapable of loving anyone but yourself—anything but your own will. I have done with you!"As he speaks, unmindful of the usages of society, forgetting that she has asked him to take her back to her chaperone, he turns to leave her; at the door he pauses to take one goodbye 
look at the fair proud woman ho has resigned. Her eyes are gazing vacantly at him, and her lips seem moving. In a moment more he is gone. She remains in the same position in which he left her: she does not move a finger. Her gnat wide eyes keep staring at the door by which he went out, and her lips repeating his last words, "I have done with you—done with you—done with you!" They do not convey the slightest meaning to her mind. By dint of saying them over and over again, they grow to sound unfamiliar, grotesque. She half laughs. How long she remains in this semi-stunned state she does not know; the fiddles squeak distantly, and the people pass and repass, but she heeds neither. She is recalled to herself at last by the entrance of a man, who first looks in uncertainly, and then comes in joyfully— Scrope."Why, here you are!" he cries, cheerfully. "I have been hunting high and low for you! I thought you were with Le Mesurier; this is our dance—Good God!" (with, an
abrupt change of tone) "what has happened?"His voice brings her back to her right mind—brings the bitter, bitter truth rolling over her soul like a black flood, Paul gone—gone for good!—gone with a look of inexorable displeasure on his face, and she herself has thrown him away."What has happened?" she says, in a sharp, harsh voice. "Do you ask that? Why, just this," (laughing rather wildly) "I have been amusing myself cutting my own throat. That is what has happened, and I have to thank you for it."He looks at her in unbounded astonishment. Has she gone mad, as her words seem to imply?"What do you mean?""I mean," she answers, speaking more collectedly, "that Paul is gone—he does not like me any longer—he has done with me/ "(falling unconsciously into his own form of expression)."WHAT!""Don't look glad! "she cries, excitedly. "How dare you? If you look glad I shall kill you!""I am not looking glad. What should I look glad for? I don't know what you are talking about.""You have got your wish," she says rising and speaking with slow vindictiveness. "You have parted us! It is what you have been aiming at all along. I hope you are pleased.""Do you mean to say that you have been quarrelling about me again?""Yes, I do!" she answers, panting, and looking at him always with dilated eyes; "you knew we should. That was why you remained here when I begged you to go, when any gentleman would have died sooner than stay."The young man bites his lip till it bleeds; he clenches his hands, convulsively; he writhes under her insults; but he makes no retort."Was it because you danced with me?" he asks, quietly, after an interval."You know it was," she answers, petulantly. "Why do you keep worrying me with these questions? He told me not to dance with you, and I said I would; I thought it was fine to have a spirit—you have always told me, all of you, what a fine spirit I had. Well, God knows" (laughing, harshly) "I have been spirited enough to-night!"A little silence."If he had but known," she says, looking scornfully at her companion, "how small the sacrifice was that he asked of me, he would not have insisted so much upon it."Scrope's endurance fails a little."You are making mountains of mole-hills," he says, impatiently. "As far as I can understand, you have had a little misunderstanding—I do not see how any one could well live with you without having them—a misunderstanding which you will make up within the first five minutes of your next meeting—that is all.""It is not all!" she answers, persistently. "We have had a hundred such misunderstandings, as you describe—they were always my fault, always—and made them up again; but this was different; when he turned at the door and looked at me, I felt that it was all over, with me." As she speaks, she sinks upon the sofa again; her arms fall heavily to her side; the listlessness of despair is expressed in her whole attitude."Fiddlesticks!" replies Scrope, brusquely. "A man throw a girl over to whom he is passionately attached, because she says a few nasty things to him—more especially" (smiling, a little maliciously) "when she has rather got into a habit of saying nasty things to everybody! A very likely tale. No, no; though you are engaged to Paul, and I am not, I think I know him a little better than you do, still."She shakes her head; his words convey neither conviction nor comfort to her mind."Listen!" says the young man, eagerly, sitting down on the sofa beside her. "Since I came into this room, you have been unciviller to me than ever woman was to man before; once or twice I have felt as if I should like to kill you, or myself, or both; but you said one true thing—it is I that have brought this on you; and so, I suppose "(rather ruefully), "the least I can do is to try and put things straight again for you; I will go and look for im—he cannot have gone far; most likely" (smiling a little derisively) "I shall find him in the supper-room—and I will bring him back to you, see if I don't.""Will you?" she says, with a bitter smile. "There will be two to that bargain!"Before she can say more he is gone.The minutes pass: five, ten: she sits with her eyes riveted on the door, saying over to herself: "There is no hope— there is no hope; but all the while, hope is there. After a space, which the clock announces to be a quarter of an hour, but which is marked on the dial-plate of her heart as ten years, Scrope re-enters—alone."I could not find him, anywhere," he says, advancing, with his eyes on the ground; "he has gone. For Heaven's sake, keep up!" (seeing her face change and quiver convulsively). "Don't look so miserable! It is only the delay of a few hours—it will be all right to-morrow morning.""It will never be all right again," she cries, bursting into violent weeping, and throwing her head down on the hard horsehair bolster of the sofa. "Oh, Paul! Paul!"The sight of her misery sets him beside himself. He flings a himself on his knees beside her, catches hold of one of her hands, that is hanging down limp and nerveless, and rashly trusting to her absorption kisses it over and over again. After all, it is only white kid that gets the benefit of his caresses.His action rouses her—she sits upright; the lightning flashes at him from her drowned eyes; the hot carnation scorches up the tears on her cheeks."How dare you?" she cries wildly, tearing her hand out of his grasp. "I shall always hate my hand for having been kissed by you—you , who have brought me to this! If I did not know that it was useless to ask any favour of you, I would beg you, at least, to relieve me of the sight of you."He rises to his feet; a spasm contracts his angry beautiful face."I'm going, never fear. I begin to agree with you, that I cannot be a gentleman, or I should have gone long ago." After a pause: "I have sent for my things from your sister's house; I shall go to London by the next train.""Thank God, at least for that," she says, fiercely. "The last and only boon I have to ask of you is, that I may never set eyes on you again."He bows: "I promise you that you shall not, unless you send for me!"She laughs insultingly: "You will wait some time, if you wait for that.""Lenore!" (taking her hand, whether she will or no, while his eyes burn, savage and passionate, into hers), "you will make some one murder you, some day. Good-bye!"CHAPTER X.WHAT JEMILIA SAYS."QUITE incomprehensible," says Sylvia, slightly shaking her head, and turning the tap of the urn on to the recipient teapot.We are at breakfast; breakfast after a ball is a languid feast: one looks green, one is yawning, one drinks two cups of tea instead of one. From another evil, to which some people are subject, I am free—I never suffer from the cramps that result from over-dancing. Sylvia and I are the only ones that have yet made our appearance: after all, there are only two more to appear—Paul and Lenore—for Mr. Scrope has gone overnight, or rather this morning, and it is apropos of his departure that Sylvia is, for the fiftieth time, expressing her astonishment, her displeasure, her remorse."So ill-bred," she continues, nibbling a piece of toast; "so unlike him. I have always said what a particularly gentleman-like boy Charlie Scrope was! Do you know, Jemima, it has struck me once or twice that perhaps he was hurt at my refusing so point-blank to sit out in the corridors with him? Very unreasonable of him if he was so, for I meant nothing personal to him; I said the same to them all."I shake my head with an air of superior information."It was not quite such a sudden thought as all that; earlier in the day he had settled to go.""And never mentioned it to me?" cries my sister, raising her voice a little, and colouring. "Most extraordinary! Now I come to think of it, Jemima, he has been very odd and distrait for a week past: several times when I spoke to him, he answered quite à tort et à travers, and once or twice he did not answer at all."I shrug my shoulders."They are all alike; determination of Lenore to the brain; when Lenore is in the room they never answer me. I am quite used to it; are not you? For the last five years I have walked through life with a gooseberry-bush in my hand.""She is very nice-looking, of course," says Sylvia, in a rather demurring voice, not seeming particularly to relish the being put, by implication, in the same boat with me. "I am sure I am the last person to gainsay that; nobody can accuse me of not being willing to admit other people's good looks; but there is no denying that she is on too large a scale to suit some people's tastes: many men prefer something more petite and mignonne.""Do they?" say I, sceptically. "I do not know. It seems to me that most men like a woman that there is a good deal of.""I do not think I quite liked the way she did her hair last night," says Sylvia, taking some honey and looking at it pensively, as it slides in a long string from the spoon; "too much scratched off her face.""With what clever stroke of caustic wit or incisive irony I might have parried this thrust will never now be certainly known, for at this moment a footman enters with a note, which he hands to Sylvia. She opens it and reads; apparently it does not take long to peruse."Are all the people run mad?" she cries, in a tone of peevish astonishment, tossing it over to me. I pick it up:—"DEAR MRS. PRODGERS,—I must apologise to you for leaving your house so suddenly and at so untimely an hour; but the fact is, I am unavoidably called away. Thank you over and over again for all the kindness and hospitality you have shown me."I remain, yours very truly,"PAUL LE MESURIEU.""Is Mr. Le Mesurier gone?" cry I to the footman, who is in the act of leaving the room."Yes, 'm.""What time did he go?""About seven, 'm. I heard him telling the driver that he must catch the 7.25 up-train from Norley.""I wonder did he and Charlie travel together?" say I, sotto voce , tickled, despite myself, by the notion of the rivals boxed up together, within the narrow precincts of a smoking-carriage, for all the lung transit between Norley and London."Did he leave nothing besides this?" cries Sylvia, in indignant excitement, holding up the little billet between her finger and thumb; "no message—nothing?""I believe 'm, there was a letter for Miss Lenore.""Where is it?—what has become of it? Bring it here.""If you please, 'm, I think Nicholls took it up to Miss Lenore an hour ago."He retires, inwardly amused, interested, compassionate, no doubt; outwardly as absolutely indifferent to the joys, the sorrows, the deaths, the marriages, the jiltings, and being of his family, as is incumbent on any servant who wishes to keep his situation.The urn sputters and fizzes; the pug sits on his haunches, with his blear eyes rolling, and gives a short suppressed bark, that means, "Muffin." We stare at one another."I thought there was something-wrong last night, when Lenore said he had gone home with a headache," say I, with that sort of back-handed prophecy—that "told you-so" wisdom
—for which-women are so remarkable."So did I," says Sylvia, determined not to be behindhand in sapience.Again we stare at one another, with our toast dropped from our lingers, and our tea quickly cooling in the frosty morning air."I think I will go and see how she is getting on,"I say, rising."So will I," says Sylvia, rising too.This is not quite what I wish; but it cannot be helped. As we pass the nursery, the children, hearing our footsteps, shoot out like bombshells, and join us.By the time we reach Lenore's door we form a quite considerable cortége , both as to noise and numbers.I knock—no answer. I knock again. "Lenore, may I come in?" Still no answer. I try the handle—it is locked. I announce the fact."How very odd!" says Sylvia, rattling the handle in her turn. "Lenore! Lenore! we are all come to see you. Let us in!"I do not myself think this form of request likely to invite compliance, but whether it is or not, it meets with no better success than its predecessors."Do you think she can have got out of the window?" suggests 
my sister, beginning to look rather tragic."Absurd! Why should she?"Again we knock and rattle, each one in turn, and then all together. No result."Suppose you look through the keyhole, Jemima?" says Sylvia.I comply. A keyhole is an unsatisfactory vehicle for exercising 
sight. At my first glance, I see nothing; at my second, I dimly discern what looks like a rose-coloured heap lying on the hearthrug—Lenore has a rose-coloured dressing-gown."She is lying on the hearthrug," I announce, in a whisper. "Poor soul! I am afraid that she is taking it sadly to heart.""Lying on the hearthrug!" repeats Sylvia, turning rather pale, and clutching my arm. "Good heavens! Jemima, I hope she has not—has not—put—put an end to herself?""Fiddlesticks!" cry I, angrily. "Why should she?" How could she? Swallowed the poker, I suppose, or cut her throat with a small-tooth comb."Sylvia applies her eye, in turn, to the keyhole."Lenore!" (raising her voice) "why are you lying on the hearthrug? What are you doing? You are frightening us all out of our wits. Open the door this instant!"We hear a noise inside; in a moment more the door is flung roughly open, and Lenore confronts us in her dressing-gown—her undressed hair falling in a long, bright brown shower about her face, which is ash-white. Her eyes are red, and her eyelids redder—the first are half and the latter double their normal size."What do you want?" she says, hoarsely. "Why are you making this noise? What has brought you all here?"A daunted silence falls upon us for a moment—then Sylvia speaks:"Nothing particular, dear; we only wanted to know what has made Paul take himself off so suddenly, and we thought you might be able to tell us.""I neither know nor care," she answers, fiercely; but I see both lips and eyelids twitching."Aunty Lenore, how red your nose is!" cries Bobby, with all that delicacy for other's feelings, that charming reticence, so characteristic of infancy—staring at her the while, with eyes as black and round as the plums in a Christmas pudding. The last straw breaks the camel's back."Had not you better send for the servants and the stablemen, 
the dogs and the parrot?" cries Lenore, turning savagely to Sylvia. "It is a pity that you should not have every living thing in the house to gape at me.""Go downstairs," say I, pleadingly, "and take the children with you. I will be down directly; perhaps she will let me speak to her myself."With many demurrings, both of word and look, Sylvia complies, and retires with her offspring. I follow Lenore into her room, and close the door."Is it true?" I say compassionately, taking her hot reluctant hand."Is what true?""That he is gone?""I really cannot say; I have not been to look for him,"
she answers in a devil-may-care voice, averting her eyes."Lenore!" I cry reproachfully, "what is the good of keeping up this affectation with me? It is all very well before Sylvia; but have you forgotten that night at Morlaix, when you were so happy, and when you came and told me all about it?""I remember," she answers, with a hard laugh; "and how pleased you were at being waked out of your beauty-sleep, and how kind and complimentary you were about him.""I was not kind," I answer, rather crestfallen. "I was sleepy, and very ill-natured, and rather envious; but I am not ill-natured now. I would help you, if I knew how; and though you are determined to hide it from me, I know what you are feeling.""Then you know more than I do myself," replies my sister, quite collectedly. "I give you my word of honour, at the present moment I feel absolutely nothing."I am not generally short of words, but I can find none now."When I first got that ," she continues, nodding her head towards a note, which lies open on the dressing-table—"you know I had been buoying myself up with hope all night, because he came back here, instead of going straight away— I thought it a good sign—but when I got that I think I must have gone mad for five minutes—do people ever go mad for such a short time?—I found myself down on the hearthrug, beating my head against the floor. That was wise, was not it? So likely to bring him back. Jemima!" grasping my arm with her burning hand), "I am going to tell you a secret; if I could have found anything to do it with, I should have tried to put an end to myself. I should have done it in a bungling, journeyman way, and very likely, when I got into the other world, I should have been sorry that I had not stayed here; still, I should have tried; but you see" (laughing) "it is difficult for the best-intentioned person to commit suicide with a cake of Windsor soap or a back-hair glass!""Lenore!" I cry angrily, "you frighten me! Why do not you cry? Why do you laugh? I wish you would not look so odd!""Do I look odd?" she says, rising and going over to the long cheval glass. "Well—yes!" (making a derisive bow to her own swollen disfigured image) "a charming-looking person! —the belle of the ball!. I always told Paul" (a sharp con-traction of the muscles of her face as she speaks his name) that I looked nothing without my plaits."I stand stupidly staring at her, with my hands clasped."If you want to ask any questions, now is your time," she continues, calmly; "it will be back on me just now—rushing, tearing back; but for the moment I feel as little as you do, or, if possible less; I say over 'Paul is gone!' and then 'Charlie is gone!' and the one fact seems as little afflicting as the other.""Lenore, are you speaking truth I cry, incredulously. "You look as if you were! Tell me, if you are sure you can bear to do it, how was it? You know I am quite in the dark—how did it come about?""Incompatibility of opinion about Mr. Scrope," she answers with a forced laugh; then sinking down on the floor, hiding her face in the folds of my gown like a child. "I do nut think I will tell you, after all!" she says, moaning; "when one's ship has gone down, what is the good of going into the details of the wreck?" At the last word she break a into tumultuous weeping."Perhaps it has not gone down," say I, eagerly. "Who knows? Let me see the note. May I?" (stretching out my hand to take it)."If you like " (then laughing again painfully between her sobs); "it is not so affectionate that one need be ashamed of showing it."I pick it up eagerly. It is not very tidily written— scratchily rather, and shakily—several of the little words are left out:—"December 28th, 51/2 A.M."I would not have come back here last night, if I could have helped it, but it was unavoidable. I shall, at least, not intrude upon your sight again, as I shall be gone hours before you are up. I will send back your letters in a day or two; also, if you insist upon it, your photographs. Do not send back anything of mine—it is the last favour I ask of you.— P. LE M."I touch Lenore's heaving shoulder. "Look up!" I say, cheerfully. "I am in better spirits. There is hope!"She lifts her heavy head. "Hope of what?"Poor soul! The tears are running flat races down her cheeks, coursing down her nose, and making hot wet spots on the breast of her smart rose dressing-gown."He is angry," I say, smiling; "there is always hope when a man is angry."She does not answer in words, but she draws herself up into a kneeling posture, and clutches my arm with painful tightness, while a little red creeps into her cheeks; there is already plenty in her nose and eyes. With her loose streaming hair, and upward wet eyes, she looks a Magdalen all over. The old painters, if you remark, have a knack of making their Magdalens' noses a little red."If you wish it, and are willing to take him on his own terms, I believe you may get him back."Still she says nothing; only the clasp on my arm tightens, till I wriggle uncomfortably under it."You must, of course, write at once," I say, in a matter-of-fact voice; "and tell him that you are sorry, and that you will not do it —whatever it was—again.""Say I am sorry! " cries Lenore, starting to her feet; "eat dirt, and go, like a whipped child, with its finger in its mouth, and say, ' I'll be good!' Not if I know it!"She no longer looks like a Magdalen, or, if she does, it is very restive one"Very well," say I, coolly; "if you prefer your pride to your lover, of course it is a matter of taste which is best worth keeping; I have no more to say."No answer."I see," continue I, with affected enthusiasm, "you are conscious that you were in the right, and that he was so completely in the wrong that the first advance must come from him. I understand, of course! I respect you.""Do not," cries Lenore, gruffly. "I was not in the right —am I ever? But the knowing that one is in the wrong does not make it any the easier to say it.""There are so many ways of implying a thing without exactly saying it."Silence."My dear child," I say, stretching out my hand to take one of hers, which is twisting and turning its fellow about; "the question is, how can you live best: with your dignity and without Paul, or with Paul and without your dignity?"She falls on her knees beside me again; she buries her face in my lap."Jemima, never tell anybody, and, if you are asked, say that, it is not so; and never remind me, when you get angry, that I have said it: but—but" (very indistinctly) "I would oat all the dirt that ever was in all the world to get him back again—there!" (looking up and colouring violently). "Was there ever a case on record of anybody having said anything so mean?"I shrug my shoulders. "What does it matter about being mean, so as one is happy?" say I, with a philosophy of doubtful morality if carried out to its final consequences. "Write, write , WRITE; and, if possible" (picking up the note again and laughing), "write with a better pen than he did, Lenore" (examining it more narrowly). "I do believe he cried over it Look! what a suspicious blot over the
'P.'!""Only a sputtering pen or bad blotting-paper," replies Lenore. But she is laughing too, and there is an alertness in her gait as she walks across the room in strong contrast to the heavy droop of her attitude five minutes ago. "Jemima" (her poor red eyes sparkling again, and a tender tremor about the quivering corners of her mouth), "I will write. God knows what will come of it, or how I shall bear the waiting for the answer; but—I will write.""Do," say I; and then I draw an arm-chair to the fire, and Lenore sits down to the writing-table. The opening sentences seem to be hatched with difficulty, but after them her pen runs glibly enough: it is going to be a longer letter than his. "Lenore," say I, presently, turning my head round, and speaking diffidently, "I think that, on the supposition that this may not bring him back—a most improbable one, but still possible—I—I (do not be angry)—I would not make it too affectionate." She flushes scarlet, reads it hastily over, then tears it into a thousand bits, and, running over to the lire, tosses the fragments in. "Nor too cold," I subjoin, rather startled at the effect of my caution. "Do not you understand?" I continue, eagerly. "The kind of letter you should write is one that, if he is so disposed, will bring him back again; and that, if he is not so disposed, will not make you hot to think of having sent it."To compose such a letter as I have thus described seems a hard task. The hearth is strewn with little shreds of paper before one, that hits the golden mean between the fond and the frigid, is written fairly out without blots or erasures."Will you read it?" asks my sister, holding it out rather reluctantly to me, when it is at length finished. "I think I had rather you did not, but you may, if you wish."I shake my head, and swallow down my curiosity: "Why should I? It is between you and him; what has a third person to do with it?"She turns away relieved, folds it up, directs it, and fastens the envelope. "Jemima," she says, clasping my arms with her two hot slender hands, while her great solemn eyes fix themselves, feverish and miserably excited, on mine, "the responsibility of this lies with you. I do not know whether it is affectionate or not; I cannot judge—I hardly know what is in it; but if it fail, the shame of it will kill me."CHAPTER XI.WHAT J E M I M A SAYS.AT the lowest calculation there must be forty-eight hours between the sending of any letter by post and the receiving of the answer. In most cases sixteen or eighteen of these hours are slidden over in sleep; but in a great anxiety who can sleep? In heavy grief one may sleep—probably one will; when hope has stolen out of sight, and despair sits by us with veiled head, then one sleeps most deeply. Sometimes, in slumber, God gives us back our dead: him that but yesterday we coldly kissed in his strait shroud, we see coming towards us with life-coloured lips and open eyes: the dead never come back to us dead: always they are alive—talking, smiling, occupied in some commonplace employment, making some foolish tender jest. But sleep refuses to come to the troubled, who have yet an uneasy hope: she will not be made use of merely as a bridge over obnoxious hours: she will be loved and wooed for herself, or else she will stand relentlessly apart. I think that there are very few of the thousands of minutes that constitute those forty-eight hours that do not find Lenore consciously, broadly wakeful. She refuses all proposals that tend to divert her thoughts by exercise or employment: she will not walk—she will not drive; she will not even come downstairs. All day long she sits in the window-seat in her room—sits there, with drooped figure and carelessly dressed hair: her eyes fixed alternately on the brown winter outside, or the avenue by which all carriages and all foot-passengers must approach the house, and on the watch which lies on the table before her; as if by looking, looking, she could make the slow hands pass more Swiftly over the dial-plate. Oh, unwise Lenore! to wish to hurry the feet of the swift minutes! They may seem unsweet, nay most bitter, according to our present gauge of sweet and sour; but oh! are they worse—are they worse than the deep timeless grave, and the leaden-coloured shores of Eternity, towards which, in their flitting, they carry us? Once, coming in suddenly, I find her with all Paul's letters strewn round her: she is reading them all through in order—from the first seasick note he wrote her from Jersey on his homeward journey, to the three scrawling, galloping lines which, less than a week ago, announced the train and the hour which were to bring him back to her. I think, poor soul! she is trying to extract more love than is in them, from the loving phrases that fill them. The short winter day treads heavily past to his rest, and the night comes—the winter night in its dull endlessness —then the dim, late morning light. Lenore makes no complaint, and cuts me short when I begin inquiries; but I know she has not slept. The postman comes and goes without any special interest attaching to him: it is impossible that he can bring anything yet.Another day walks past with lagging feet. Lenore will not move, will not eat: all her life seems to have passed into the eyes which grow to the face of the watch that ticks ever before her. She has turned Paul's picture, which hangs opposite her bed, to the wall; when I ask her why she has done it, she answers that, unless he is hers, she has no business to look at him.The second slow day dies: its life is so faint and dark that there is but little difference between it and its death. Sylvia and I dine tête-à-tête , and get over our dinner with a surprising and feminine celerity. It is astonishing how the presence of even one man prolongs the duration of dinner: is it from the comparative immensity of man's appetite, or from the stimulus and gentle fillip that his company gives to conversation? We yawn through the evening, and at ten retire to such warm depths of silky sleep as one experiences only in frosty weather.It is rarely indeed that other's griefs keep one awake. Our letters arrive mostly at half-past seven: it is some time before that hour, and in my curtained and shuttered room absolute darkness still reigns, when I drowsily hear a footstep passing along the corridor outside my door. From some half-conscious, half-dreamful impulse, I jump up and run to the door, open it, and look out into the black chilliness out side."Lenore, is that you?""Yes.""Where are you going?" (my teeth chattering so as to make me almost entirely unintelligible)."What is that to you?" Tired of her incivilities, sleepy and shivering, I prepare to shut the door in a huff'. "I am going to see whether the postman is dead , that he is so long in coming," she says, in a quick excited voice."It is not nearly time for him!—it is the middle of the night!""It must be time for him," she says, petulantly; "it must be three years since he was here last?""You will be frozen," I say, laying my hand, in the dark on the thin shawl that covers her shoulders; "have my sealskin!" She does not heed me."Jemima!" (I cannot see her face, but I hear the quick sobbing breaths with which she speaks)—"if it does not come to-day, my reason will tell me that it is because he is not at home, and that it has had to be forwarded to him; but all the same—reason or no reason—if it does not come, I shall go mad!"Before I can reply, she is gone. I shiver back into bed: I find it as deeply, downily warm as I left it; but the delicious langour, the semi-unconsciousness, fast melting into total unconsciousness, that such warmth and softness woo, declines to come again. I find myself, with my head raised every minute from the pillow, listening for that back-coming footfall. It seems a long time coming; perhaps it is only half an hour really: at last I hear it—I spring to the door."Well?"A grey figure runs past me, with its head bent, but answers nothing. I snatch up a dressing-gown, and run, ventre à terre , after it, half-afraid of finding the door locked, when I reach ray sister's room. It is not—it is ajar; I enter. The sick dwarf light creeps in by the latticed window-panes; the dead fire's ashes lie whitely grey upon the hearth; the table is grey, the chairs are grey, and on one of them a grey figure lies still and stiff, with grey hands covering its face.
"What is it?—what is it?" I cry, horribly excited, running up to her. She drops her hands into her lap; in the dim light I see her great shining eyes, brimming over with anger and despair, flame into mine."It is all your fault!" she says, hoarsely; "you did it! I have lain down in the gutter, and he has walked over me, and it is your doing!""What!""If you had left me alone, if you had not meddled—you were always a meddler, always—I might have gone through my life, hating myself, knowing that I had been my own death, finding no taste in anything; but at least I should not have had to get red whenever I thought of myself—at least I should not have made overtures that have been declined. I should not have asked a man to marry me, and been politely, but firmly, rejected —— Good God!" (breaking off suddenly, and clenching her hands above her head)—"it cannot be me that this has happened to—it must be somebody else. I that always held my head so high!""What are you talking about?" I stammer; "he cannot —he has not""Has not he?" she answers, bitterly. "There!—read! Can you see?" (walking over to the curtain and pulling it back). "——' My dear Miss Herrick! ' When I got as far as that I knew it was all over with me! His 'dear Miss Herrick!' 'My dear Miss Herrick!'—' my dear Mr. Le Mesurier!' Oh, my God!" She throws herself on the floor, and buries her face in the carpet, while her hands dig themselves into it, like those of a man in the death-agony. After all, why should the soul's death be accompanied with throes less bitter than the body's?"How can I read it?" I cry, impatiently, "you are holding it!" and, indeed, as she lies prostrate on the floor, it is crumpled up in one of her clenched hands. She raises herself, 
and straightens out the creased paper."Look!"she says, striking it with her forefinger. "See how straight the lines run—how firmly the letters are formed—it might be a thesis instead of a death-warrant! Do you see any blots here ?—do you think he cried over this ?""Give it me!" I say, eagerly stretching out my hand; "let me see it!""Never! "she answers, tearing it sharply across, and then again across, and then again; "it is between him and me— the last thing that ever will be!"I kneel down beside her in silence in the cold grey dawn, and put my arm round her."Be satisfied with knowing the upshot!" she says, with a dreary smile. "He says it very kindly, very prettily, in a very good bold hand, and he takes six pages to say it in; but, all the same, the drift is, 'I have had enough of you!'""Is it possible?" I exclaim, with a gasp, and a, bitter sense of regret at my share in the business."It was not his real reason for leaving me," says Lenore, sitting on the floor, and rambling on to herself, half under her breath. "It was only a blind—how dull of me to be taken in!—a pretext for getting back to her . Yes, I understand— I understand. I suppose I do get wearisome after a time— but"(with a long low moan), "it was such a little, little time!"A pause."She made good use of those six months, did not she? — did not cry at him, and throw herself at his head, as I did; but stole up to him, modestly, with her eyes down, so that he did not find it out—she always was his beau ideal of feminine excellence—yes, yes" (running dreamily over in her mind his long-past phrases) "' eyes like a shot partridge '—' not at all clever'—' does not say much'—' very loving.' — Yes! his beau ideal! meek, dowdy, mealymouthed! He would have kept to her always, if I had let him alone. I am glad I didn't. I had my day!—I had my day!"Her hands embrace her knees; she begins to rock gently backwards and forwards."Stole him away! bit by bit—bit by bit!" she continues, sighing softly. "Jemima!" (her tone altering, and her eyes glittering with a passion of despairing jealousy), "that cousin is a sweet woman—I know she is—charitable as Dorcas—patient as Griselda—she will help him in everything good, and hinder him in everything ill. If I thought she was a bad woman, and that he would repent it, I could bear it better! Oh, my God! he will never be punished!—men never are! Every day of his life he will be gladder and gladder that he is rid of me—he will tell her so—while I— while I——" She raises her voice wildly at the last words."Stop!" I cry, angry and frightened. "Don't look so odd! For God's sake, see him as he is—look at him as other people do—a man your inferior in every respect, and who never really loved you!"No sooner are the words out of my mouth, than I see that I have been guilty of one of my many breaches of tact."How dare you say that?" she cries, griping my arm. "If you wish to say such things, say them to some one else! —do not venture to say them to me! If you are going to tell such cruel lies, leave my room this instant!—Never really loved me ! Much you know about it—you whom nobody ever loved! Do you think I could have been mistaken!——I,
who was-with him all day—who watched his face every minute? He did love me! he did ! he DID! Not blindly, not foolishly: he saw—he could not help seeing—that every second thing I did, every second word I said, was wrong and unladylike; but he was making me better—every day he was making me better! If he had married me I should have been a good woman, and he would have taken me to heaven with him!""I am not so sure that he is going there himself!" I say, spitefully."Say that you did not mean it—say that you do not think it really !" continues my sister, with an anguish of entreaty in her tone, and in the haggard loveliness of her face. "You know" (with a wild smile), "he has taken away the present and the future! If you take away the past, too—if you take away that day at Huelgoat—that day—that day" (wandering off into memory again) "when I knelt on the cushion of little marsh flowers by the brook, and the children went by to pick bilberries: if you take away that day, and the days at Morlaix, and the day when we stood by Châteaubriand's tomb, and saw the waves and the sea-mews below us, and planned how we should walk on through life, and to heaven together—if you take them away from me, what is there left me but to curse God and die?"I shudder, and cry, "Hush—hush!" but she pays no attention 
to me."She might as well have left him to me," she continues presently, pushing Paul's betrothal ring absently up and down her linger; "she could have done so well without him! She is a good religious woman, and has another happy world to look forward to, while I—I have only this. You see, Jemima, it is only we wicked people that can lose all at one blow.""My child!—my child!" I cry, snatching her two hands; "what are you talking about? I do not want to preach to you, and you would not listen to me if I did, but you frighten me! it is like daring God to do worse to you. How can you have lost all as long as you are still within the bounds of His great clemency—as long as you are still outside Hell's gates?""Am I ?" she says, with a nickering, haggard smile; "are you so sure of that? As I came along the meadows this morning, I have an idea that I had a good notion how they feel down below. Bah!" (jumping up, and walking to the window) "do not look so scared! not sleeping and not eating makes one light-headed. I am getting quite rantipole. Get me something to drink—cognac—sal-volatile—it does not matter what, so as it is strong!"I hurry back to my own room, pour some sal-volatile and water into a glass, and return with it to her. I find her lying languidly back in an arm-chair, pale and worn-out, but with open eyes and a set stony face. She drinks eagerly, and then gives a long low sigh."Poor soul!— poor soul!" I say pitifully, stroking her loose tossed hair. "I daresay you think it is easy enough to bear other people's troubles, and as you said just now, since I never was loved myself, I cannot enter into your feelings; but still, do you know, Lenore, I think no one can well be sorrier for you than I am?""Really!" (with an air of most weary indifference)."Lenore, you are not a weak woman—I know that; don't let him have the satisfaction of thinking that you take it to heart! Show him what stuff you are made of, by bearing it bravely!""Make an effort, in fact, like Mrs. Dombey," says my sister, smiling sarcastically; "or, rather, un like Mrs. Dombey. Never fear! Have you lived with me nineteen years, and have you yet to learn that I am not the sort of woman to go about with my pocket-handkerchief to my eyes, whimpering because I have been jilted ?—yes, let us call things by their right names—jilted !" As she speaks, a deep carnation flush of shame spreads over her white cheeks. "Go now," she says imperatively; "leave me! There, you need not look towards the windows as if you thought I was going to throw myself out of one of them—see, they are all bolted—and I would not make such a clumsy ending for the world."I move, unwillingly and slow, towards the door. She calls after me:"Jemima, if ever you tell anyone how you have seen me, and what things you have heard from me during the last forty-eight hours, I shall kill you. Let them think I have had influenza—mumps—any disease you choose; but let no one ever guess that I have been pining three whole days for love . Bah! it makes me laugh to think of it!""Are you sure I can do nothing for you?" I ask, staring uncomfortably at her forlorn wild face."Certain!" she answers, emphatically. "I must fight it by myself; it is a case where neither man, woman, nor child can help me!""If neither man, woman, nor child can help you," I say, hesitatingly, yet eagerly, "why not go to God ?"She shrugs her shoulders: "It is a sort of trouble that God would not care about!""What are you saying?" I cry. "Is God, like a man, capricious in His pity?""I think so," she answers, listlessly; "at least, I know He does not pity me."I am too shocked to make any rejoinder."I have set up an idol in the place of God," she says, gravely. ''Can I expect God to be sorry because it is knocked down? There—go! You are a good woman in your way, and I rather like you, but you'll never make your fortune as a preacher!"Sadly I obey her, During the long weary day I go about heartsore and anxious. I do not go near her room myself, nor do I allow any one else to do so; but my heart is gnawed by a painful curiosity, to know what terrible death-light of the soul is raging within those quiet walls.As Sylvia and I sit moping and flat by the drawing-room fire before dinner, what is my surprise to see the door open and admit Lenore, who enters with a brisk step and a matter-of-fact 
air!"Good morning, Sylvia; rather late in the day to say 'good morning'—is not it? I have registered a vow never to go to a ball again; it has taken me three whole days to recover from that last one!"She says it rather as if it were a lesson learnt by rote, but she looks alert and upright; her cheeks are coloured with pink, and her eyes are neither lacklustre nor wet."Aunty Lenore!" cries Bobby, who has been raging round the room with a luckless kitten (mewing with pain and exasperation, and with all its claws out) clutched round the neck with strangling tightness in his cruel little arms. He drops the kitten, which instantly makes off with its tail straight up. "Aunty Lenore!" rushing at her, and boister-ously embracing her knees, to the injury of her crisp muslin dress: then, with a sudden and ingenious connection of ideas, "Where is Uncle Paul?"With a sudden impulse she pushes the child violently away. I see her face-writhe, and the pupils of her eyes darken and flash; but in an instant, controlling herself, she speaks calmly:"He is gone! He is not 'Uncle Paul' any longer—and —and—don't bother about him!"As we pass through the hall to dinner, I see a letter, in Lenore's handwriting, lying on the hall-table. I glance inquisitively at it; it is addressed to—"Charles Scrope, Esq.,"Limmer's Hotel."CHAPTER XII.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.IF I imagine that Lenore's composed cheerfulness and equable serenity are the results of a strain so strong, as to be unable to be kept up beyond one evening, I am mistaken. I find her the same the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that . She talks more than usual: ordinarily indeed, she is too lazy to take the trouble of talking merely for the sake of contributing her share to the general stock that forms family conversation, but now she talks resolutely to any one who will talk to her. She lounges away less time than usual in her own room; always she is to be seen in the general sitting-rooms, by all comers and goers, working and reading tranquilly. She drives out with Sylvia to pay morning calls; she walks out with me into the village, carrying broth and jelly. Sometimes I try to surprise her face off guard , to see her features fall into the haggard lines of hopeless angry grief in which I saw them so lately; but I fail; her face seems to be never in dishabille. She actually plays with the children !—gambols which, I confess, remind me of the millennium, when, we are told, the weaned child shall play on the cockatrice's den. On the third day, I am sitting pondering these things in the drawing-room, which Lenore has just left with a light and buoyant tread. Sylvia, with one of her spasmodic fits of maternity upon her, is trying, with alternate peevish coaxings and caressing abuse, to lead or rather push, pull, and mildly flagellate her offspring along the rosy path of learning. In this case it is theological learning, as represented by the "Peep of Day." Bobby is leaning against her knee, while in the corner—why such peculiar ignominy should attach to the corners of a room tradition saith not—stands Tommy, committing to memory these soothing lines—
"Now if I fightAnd scratch and bite,In passions fallAnd bad names call,Full well I know"Where I shall go."Now and again, as the thought of the gloomy regions whither his iniquities are hurrying him comes home to his mind, he blubbers suppressedly. What amplest enlargement on the horrors of hell could equal that portentous hint?—"Full well I knowWhere I shall go!"Sylvia to Bobby: "Has God been kind to dogs?"Bobby to Sylvia, doubtfully: "Ye—es."His round eyes are fixed on Toby the pug, basking in the fire warmth, and chasing the lively flea through the preserves of his soft fawn hind-quarters, and his mind is wandering
from the typical dog of the fable to the actual dog of real life."Is the dog's body like yours?"Bobby (thinking it safe to stick to the affirmative): "Yes.""The dog's body like yours ! What are you thinking of, child? Are you covered all over with black hair, and have you got a big bushy tail?"Bobby glances down uncertainly at his small person, but seeing no caudal appendage, shakes his head."Are the chicken's legs like yours?"Silence.Mrs. Prodgers is reduced to answering herself from the enlightened page before her: "No, the chicken has very thin dark legs."Bobby does not appear sufficiently impressed with gratitude for the essential difference between his own fat chubby supporters 
and those of the benighted chicken. He is still watching 
Toby, who has abandoned the flea chase, and runs barking towards the door."Mother, dear, there is a ring at the door bell."Prospect of emancipation, and consequent elation of tone."Nonsense, darling; attend to your lesson. Has the pig a—"Whether the next word was soul or tail, gizzard or imagination, transpires not."But there was, really , mother. I hear Morris going to open the hall door."Mrs. Prodgers listens. "So there is!"She jumps up hastily, while the "Peep of Day," with all its mingled treasures of piety and natural history, rolls unregarded on the floor, as she stands before the pier-glass, tweaking the black ribbon bow that ornaments her head, and smoothing away the hair behind her ears. By the time the butler's solid footstep is heard nearing the room she is à quatre épingles . The door opens; "Mr. Scrope." My mouth opens too; my jaw falls. The stocking I am knitting tumbles into my lap."Charlie! " cries Sylvia, with a little scream, half real, half affected, of surprise, running forward, with her hands clasped.Mr. Scrope enters, looking rather sheepish and somewhat dishevelled. There are black marks under his eyes; his yellow curls are tossed and dim; he looks unslept and night-travelled."You did not expect to see me, did you?" he says, with a rather embarrassed laugh. "Thought you had got me clear off—that you were rid of me at last? But you see I have turned up again, like a bad sixpence.""It is a surprise, of course," answers Sylvia, looking modestly down, and fondling Bobby; "but—but quite a pleasant one. We were getting to hate each other, as only two sisters tête-à-tête can; were not we, Jemima?"His face falls."Two sisters?"Nobody explains; I, from malice, Sylvia from pre-occupation."The fact is," continues Scrope, seeing that some explanation is looked for from him, "that I—that I thought—in fact, I found that I could get away for a day or two, so I thought I would run down and look you all up.""Why did not you telegraph? Why not write? I would have sent to meet you?" asks Sylvia, raising her bashful eyes."What scatterbrained things men are!"He does not heed her; his eyes are wandering round the room."Are you looking for Lenore?" I ask, in a matter-of-fact voice. "She is in the library, writing letters. I will tell her you are here.""Do not," he cries, eagerly, almost pushing me back into my chair. "I will not give you the trouble; I will go and rind her myself.""How very extraordinary!" says Sylvia, as the door closes upon him, smiling consciously, and leaning her elbow on the mantelpiece. "What can have brought him back? I have not the least idea; have you, Jemima? Poor, dear old boy, how pale he looked! I was so glad you were in the room. By-the-by, did I get very red? I felt as if I were turning all the colours of the rainbow.""I do not know; I dare say.""Be sure you do not leave me alone in the room with him," 
she continues volubly. "I shall always keep the children with me; there are no better chaperons in the world than children."CHAPTER XIII.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.As the young man opens the library door a rush of cold air meets him; it is a bitter frost, black and pinching, yet one of the wide sash windows is thrown high up, and she whom he seeks is leaning out into the hard dull air. Her elbows rest on the sill; her dark, winter dress hangs in heavy, close folds about her, and her bright blonde head leans languidly against the window frame. The blotting-book is unopened, nor is any pen dipped in the ink. Lenore's correspondence will keep, apparently. Hearing the noise ho makes in entering she raises herself quickly, as one ashamed of her listless attitude, and they stand face to face."You sent for me," says Scrope—abruptly, without any preliminary hand-shakings, or "How do you do?"—" and I am come."She nods familiarly to him, and smiles a little. "I knew you would.""I was not in London; your letter followed me to the South of Ireland—the instant I got it I set off—I have been travelling night and day ever since. More fool I, you will say probably."Again she smiles, coldly and sweetly."Since you have said it, I need not.""And now that I am here," he says, brusquely, "what do you want with, me? Tell me quickly."Instead of complying, she turns her head round again, and looks out at the frosty black trees, while her fingers play little tunes on the sill."Tell me," he says, coming nearer to her, and breathing quick and hard. "What You will not speak? I know you—you would keep me on the rack a year, if you could. Why did you write and say, 'Come back.' It was for no good, I'll be sworn, or it would not be you who did it, whatever 
it was. Speak out, and put me out of my misery."Then she speaks, but her words, at first sight, seem to have but small connection with his questions:"Have you been in the drawing-room?" she asks, while the cold wind blows in on her cheek, and puts no additional colour into it. "Have you heard Bobby say his hymn?— such a pretty one! Yes " (putting her finger on her forehead) "this is it:—
' Now if I fightAnd scratch and bite,In passions fallAnd bad names call,Full well I knowWhere I shall go.'Does not it describe me exactly? I laughed so immoderately that Sylvia said I was irreverent, and I had to leave the room." She throws herself into an arm-chair, and begins to laugh violently."What are you talking about?" he says, looking at her in half scared amazement; "are you mad?" She stops laughing."Last time we met," she says, gravely, "at the ball, don't you know?—how I hate balls!—I have an idea that I fought and scratched and bit; at least I know I
'In passions fellAnd bad names called—'I called you a great many ugly names, and you did not like it; you were very angry. Well, I have sent for you all this way, just to say that—that—I am sorry.""What !" cries the young man, breaking into ungovernable 
fury, "is this the fool's errand you have sent for me on? —to laugh in my face, and quote air idiotic nursery rhyme to me? By God, Lenore, it is too bad! For the last seven— eight months I have been your butt, a football for you to kick about; but I tell you I am sick of the part. I throw it up; find some one else to take it, if you can."He turns toward the door; his broad chest is heaving; his strong hands are clenched; his deep blue eyes flash and darken with uncontrolled anger—a passion much more becoming to men's hard faces than soft and sawny love."Stay!" she cries, rising hastily, and putting her back against the door to prevent his egress; "sit down, and, whatever you say, speak lower, for I have no special desire to be overheard. I had another reason for sending for you; but— but—I am ashamed to tell it you.""What is it?"Big, upstanding, and exasperated, he does not look a man to be trifled with; but, after all, a man may not knock a woman down, so she may shoot all her little arrows at him with a smile and a quiet mind, and fear nothing. Her eyes drop to the carpet at her feet, and a colour burns like fire on her cheeks."I sent for you to—to—to—ask you to marry me."At the last words she raises her eyes, and looks him in the face. A deep and utter silence. He has staggered back against the wall, and is staring at her with wide disbelieving eyes of utter astonishment."I have no reason for supposing that you wish to marry me," she says collectedly, though her face is scarlet. "You never told me so; it is only an instinct—an instinct that perhaps has led me astray." Still complete silence. "It is not leap-year, is it?" she says, with a forced laugh. "No! Well, then, I have no excuse—none, except that I wished it; and you know, from a child, I have always asked for what I wished; and always—no, not always —not always ," (stifling a sigh) "but generally I have got it.""And—and Le Mesurier says Scrope, at last, in a rough and altered voice, trying to stand steadily on his feet, while his knees shake under him, and the room whirls round him."What about him?" she cries sharply. "Why do you drag him in? If it was anybody's part to mention him it was mine. You will hear no more of him; he is gone—it is all off, you know that; it was all off before you left—only, I suppose, it gives you pleasure to hear it again.""And you ?" says the young man, staring into her calm face, while he stammers and stutters; "you—you—do not care; you—you are not cut up about it?"She turns her face suddenly aside, but only for an instant; in a moment she is looking at him again—looking at (him, and smiling."Cut up !" she says, laughing. "What an expression! It is only men that are cut up ! Do I look very downhearted? Do you see any willow in my hand? No, no! I am not the sort of person that is ever cut up much about anything."Still he looks at her with a bewildered face, paled and quivering, as one but freshly waked from a heavenly dream, that knows not whether he yet sleeps or wakes; afraid to grasp within his hand the immense and utter bliss that her words seem to set within his reach, lest it should melt away like fairy gold. His emotion does not communicate itself to her; rather, it makes her more composed."Well," she says, with a pretty chilly mocking smile, "you have not yet answered me. How cruel to keep me in suspense! Does it require so much time to decide? The matter lies in a nutshell. Do you wish to marry me, or do you not?""Do I wish to go to heaven? Did Dives in hell wish for that cup of cold water?" cries the young man, passionately, waking with a leap out of his trance, and flinging his happy arms around her.She shudders, and pulls herself away."Bah!" she says coldly, retreating several paces from him; "do not let us have any flowers of rhetoric; and it is too early days to he affectionate. If Dives had got his cup of cold water he would have taken it quietly, like a gentleman, and not snatched it.""You were not in earnest, then?" cries the young man, fiercely, with a revulsion of feeling as bitter as his former triumph had been heavenly sweet. "I was a fool to be taken in! It was only an unfeeling, unwomanly joke. Will you be kind enough" (coming close to her and breathing heavily) "to tell me where the wit is—where the point?—for upon my soul I do not see it.""There is no wit—there is no point," she answers, with perfect gravity and unflinching seriousness. "What wit or point need there be in naked truth? As I stand here" 
(clasping her hands, and looking full into the fierce beauty of his face,) "I am in earnest. I wish you to marry me. I ask you! It is unmaidenly—immodest of me—I know that, and so do you, but—I ask you!""God above!" he says, in a whisper of intense excitement; "is it possible, Lenore?" (catching her roughly by the hand). "Turn your face to the light; let me see your eyes—I do not believe your words; it seems so unnatural to hear any kind ones from your lips. God! when I think that it is less than a week ago that I saw you standing here together, and you giving him such soft kind looks, to get one of which I would have sacrificed twenty years of my life, and thought it a cheap bargain—you , who never threw me anything but mocks and jeers and ugly names—I cannot, believe it. Say what you will to me—swear it, asseverate it—I cannot, I cannot!"She does not answer: for the moment, I think, she finds speech difficult; she stands rigidly still; her face turned towards the bitter-winter landscape, with lips tightly compressed, 
as one resolved not to weep."When I think," continues the young man vehemently, "of how you smiled—of how happy you looked if he only touched in passing the border of your gown, less than a week ago—less than a week ago—can I believe that such love has all gone? Gone ? Where can it have gone to? Tell me that! Does love disappear like a morning mist?""Hush!" she says, hoarsely, putting her fingers in her ears. "How many times must I tell you not to drag him in? If I ever cared for him"(she stops, for a second, unable to manage her voice), "if I ever cared for him, that was between him and me; you had no concern in it; but now it is all over, dead ; and when things are dead what is there to do but to bury and forget them? Take me or leave me, as you choose, that is your business—I know which you would do if you were wise—but for God's sake leave that old story alone. It is my old story, not yours , and.I—I have a short memory," smiling faintly, "I am fast forgetting it.""But are you," he cries, with a painful scepticism, hardly to be wondered at, "are you sure of that? Are you sure that if you saw him coming in now, this minute , at that door, you would not run to him—as you ran out into the cold to meet him that first night he came—and leave me to cut the brilliant figure I have always done, ever since the unlucky day at Guingamp, where I first saw you?"At his words she shivers again, and shrinks, as if touched by a hot iron. "What are you talking about?" she cries, passionately. "Why do you persist in indulging in these idiotic suppositions? He will not come back, I tell you. Do dead people ever push up their coffin-lids, and come walking back again? If they do, I never saw them. Well, they are more likely to come back than he is—much more likely. He is done with ," spreading out her hands, "so for God's sake try and help me to forget that there ever was such a person, instead of always throwing him in my teeth." At the last words she catches her breath sobbingly, but resolutely forces back the tears that come crowding thickly under her hot lids. He stares at her stupidly still. "He only liked me when I was on my good behaviour," she continues, with a hard-won smile, "and you know how seldom that is. I had an idea that you would take me whether I behaved well or ill, or not at all; and so—and so—I sent for you."She stretches out her hand to him, smiling friendly, and he, catching it between both his own broad ones, covers it with silent kisses; then, after a while, speaks slowly, and diffidently, blushing like a school girl:"And you—you can tolerate the idea of being my wife? You—like me a little?""Like you?" she says carelessly, with a forced laugh. "Of course I do. What a question! Have not I asked you to marry me? What better proof could I give? Why should not I like you? You are young, good-looking, and a parti . Of course I like you."He does not look very much satisfied with this expression of faith."You do not believe me?" she says, interrogatively. "well, I have already given you one proof; I will give you another. I have asked you to marry me. I now ask you to marry me soon . I'm aware," laughing, "that it is not usual for such a proposition to come from the lady, but as I have begun by taking the initiative I suppose I must go on."The look of wild, incredulous astonishment intensifies on his face and in his bold bright eyes. Are his ears faithful carriers of the-words entrusted to them, or does his brain interpret them untruly?"Lenore," he says impetuously, throwing himself on his knees beside her, as she sits, leaning back in an arm-chair; "forgive me for being such a fool, such an unmannerly brute, as to disbelieve what you say to me, but are you sure —I will not be angry if it is so—upon my soul I will try not to be— but are you sure that it is not a joke ?—that you have not made me the subject of a bet; that this is not some trap that you are drawing me into? Confess—confess that it looks like it. Five days ago, you told me that the only boon you had to ask of me was that you might never see my face again— and, by heaven, if ever any woman looked as if she meant what she said you did then—and now—now did I hear aright? —I am afraid to think so—you ask me to marry you soon ?"She hangs her head a little, as if ashamed, but says nothing."Is it any wonder," he continues, excitedly, "that when I have been crying for the moon for the last six months, and hating my life and myself, and even all my own people, because I could not get it, that when it falls down on a sudden at my feet I should wish to know what brought it there?—is it any wonder that I should wish to see the dessous des cartes?""There is no dessous ," she says gravely. "What can I say? I am sick of asseverating! As I believe in God, and am unutterably afraid of him," (looking solemnly up and shuddering,) "I am speaking truth! What reason can I give? I have none. I am tired of being Lenore Herrick, that is all. It is a name that has brought me no luck; perhaps Lenore Scrope will bring me better.""God grant that it may!" he says, earnestly, drawing her towards him, into his arms and to his broad breast. "Sweet, give me one kiss, and I shall believe you."So she gives him one kiss. Only five days ago! Only five days ago!CHAPTER XIV.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.MR. SCROPE returns to the drawing-room, as he left it, alone. As he enters, we both look up and smile, as one does smile with vague complacency at the sight of anything young and specially comely."Did you find her?" I ask, as I kneel before the fire, giving it a vigorous and searching poke, for his benefit."Yes."He says merely this—almost the shortest of all monosyllables; but there is something in the tone in which he says it that makes me pause, poker in hand, from my noisy toil, to examine him more narrowly."You have been quarrelling, as usual, I suppose?" I say, with a wily attempt to come at the matter of their conversation without seeming too indecently curious."Lenore always quarrels with everybody," says Sylvia, patting the pug's fat stomach, as he lies on his back, with his eyes rolling awfully and a bit of rosy tongue showing between his black lips, in a state of Sybaritic enjoyment on her lap, "I tell her it is her way of flirting. She always maintains that she cannot flirt—does not know how; but of course that is nonsense. I suppose we can all do a little in that way, if "we try?"—holding her smooth head rather on one side, and looking arch."Has she been saying anything unusually exasperating?" I ask, as, under my successful labours, the frosty fire spires and races upwards. "Never mind if she has; she is not in very good tune just now, poor soul, and one can hardly wonder at it."While he speaks, Mr. Scrope has been stalking up and down in a fidgety way, making the boards creak. At my words he stops, and says abruptly, "Why?""Have not you heard? Oh, of course not! Stupid of me! She would not be likely to mention it herself—it is not a very pleasant subject to talk about—but her engagement is all off, and she is naturally rather low about it.""She is not in the least low; I never saw her in better spirits in my life," says Scrope, with a brusqueness that amounts to incivility; and having delivered himself of this speech, he marches off to the window and turns his back to us."It must be your coming, then, that has cheered her," says Sylvia, laughing lackadaisically; "and indeed to tell you the truth, at the risk of making you atrociously conceited, I must say I don't wonder at it . It is a shockingly fast sentiment, I suppose, but there is something in the timbre of a man's voice that quite invigorates me; I suppose it is always having been so much used to men's society. I get on with them so much better than with women; I understand them , and they understand me .""Have you had any talk with her?" I ask, rising precipitately, and following him to the embrasure of the window, perfectly heedless of the fact that my sister is comfortably mounted on her pet hobby—self , and is cantering complacently away on him. "Did she say anything to you?""Listen!" he says, putting a hand on each of my shoulders, quite unconscious of the familiarity of the action—and indeed they might be posts for all he knows about them—and looking me redly and triumphantly in the face. "She has been saying this to me: 'I will marry you as soon as you like!'""WHAT!!!!!!" Six marks of admiration but poorly render the expression I throw into this innocent monosyllable. I feel my face becoming a series of round Os —astonishment stretching and opening every feature beyond its natural destiny."Why do you keep staring at me?" says the young man, petulantly, giving me a little shake; "why do you stand with your mouth wide open? Why should not I marry? What is there to prevent me? Does not everybody do it? What is there so very surprising in it?"Still I maintain an absolute silence; his hands have dropped from my shoulders, but I still stand before him, like a block of stupid stone. Neither does Sylvia speak; she is affecting to blow her nose, and has covered the more part of her face with her pocket handkerchief; what yet remains is excessively red. For once her hobby-horse has given her a nasty fall."Why do you stare at me like a wild beast?" cries Scrope angrily. "Is this the way you always take a piece of news? Pleasant for the person who tells you, if it is. If I had told you that she had just fallen down dead in the next room you could not look at me with greater dismay."I cannot contradict it. Sputtering and breathless, I still face him, trying hard to speak; but in all the wide range of good, noble, and useful words that the English tongue affords, I can find not one that suits the present crisis."Why don't you say something? " says the young man, with cheeks on fire and lightning eye. "The most disagreeable sentence you could invent would be better than this. Oh, come! I cannot stand it any longer—to be stared at by two perfectly silent women with their mouths open; it would make"—laughing fiercely—"it would make the bravest man in Europe run like a hare!"He turns quickly to the door as he speaks. Then I find my tongue; its hinges are not well oiled, and it does not run smoothly, but it goes somehow. I catch hold of his arm or his coat tail—I am not quite sure which, in my excitement. "Stop, stop!" I cry, incoherently; "don't be cross!—I mean to say something—I am going to say something—but—but—you take my breath away! It is so sudden —so unnaturally sudden!""Unnaturally? " repeats he, tartly; the painful consciousness that I have hit upon the joints of his harness making him defend the weak part with all the greater acrimony. "Why unnaturally , pray?" If it does not seem too sudden to her or to me, I do not see why it need appear so to any one else.""But—but—are you cure you are not mistaken?" I say, disbelievingly, mindful of the tear-swollen desperate face I had seen lying among its tossed hair on my sister's bedroom floor; "are you quite sure she said those words? She is an odd girl—Lenore—very odd, and sometimes she has a random way of talking; I do not think she quite knows always what she is saying.""Thank you," replies he, bowing, formally, though his face flames. "You are—if not polite—at least candid. I understand. A woman must be slightly deranged to consent to be my wife."My wits are still too far out wool-gathering for me to be able to summon them back to compose some civil explanation and apology."You disbelieve me still?" cries my future brother-in-law, greatly exasperated by my silence. "All right! do—it does me no harm; but if it should happen to strike you at any time that I may, by accident , be speaking truth, you have only to send for Lenore, and ask her.""Poor dear Lenore!" says Sylvia, speaking for the first time, and smiling sweetly. "She has not been long in consoling herself, has she? I am quite glad."Mrs. Prodgers has finished blowing her nose, and her face has laid aside its transient redness, but she now holds her head quite straight, nor does she look at all arch. "You know, Jemima, if you remember, you laughed at me—but I always maintained that Paul Le Mesurier did not care two straws about her. I am sure I am the last person to pretend to unusual clear-sightedness, but one has one's instincts!""It is sudden, of course!" burst out Scrope, boyishly, not paying any attention to my sister, but looking straight and defiantly at me. "What is the good of telling me that? How can I help it? Tell me that January is colder than July—I know it is; but it is not my fault. If I had had my way it would not have been sudden—it would have happened full six months ago. No one ought to know that better than you.""Ought I?" say I vaguely. "I dare say—but to tell you the truth—so many incoherences about Lenore—her eyes, her ankles, and her inhumanities—have been poured into my ears, that I get them muddled together; I cannot, at a moment's notice, assign to each lover his own several Jeremiad.""You are spiteful," replies the young fellow, laughing a little, but looking offended. "If had known how little you "were listening to me I would not have talked to you about her.""Poorest, dearest Lenore!" repeats Sylvia, smiling a little patronisingly. "Quite the dearest thing in the world, and, mercifully for her, incapable of fretting much about anything or anybody. What a gift!—if she could but give one the receipt"—sighing and pensively passing through her fingers the beads of a great jet rope, that she wears round her neck."Jemima!" says Scrope, impulsively, putting his hand again fraternally on my shoulder. "I do not suppose that they will do me any good—not a barleycorn; but still I have a morbid desire for your good wishes; they will be tardy and lugubrious, I am aware, but such as they are, give them me. If I " (reproachfully) "had heard that you were going to be married I should not have been so slow or so dismal in offering mine.""That is a very safe position," reply I, drily; "if you had seen me flying towards the moon you would have complimented me on the ease and grace with which I flapped my wings. I do wish you good luck—there!—but whether you will get it or not is another matter.""But—but—you—think it will be?" says Scrope, with his whole eager heart in his voice. "Now that you have shut your mouth, and that your eyes no longer look as if they were falling out of your head, and that you can talk rationally—you believe it?""Upon my honour I cannot say," reply I, laughing uncomfortably. "Lenore, as Sylvia truly observed just now, is quite the dearest thing in the world, but sometimes she goes round and round, like the sails of a windmill. I have a good mind to go and ask her myself." So I go.CHAPTER XV.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.UP and down, up and down, up and down, with her hands behind her back, I find her marching in the ordered solitude of her own room, as I had expected."Good heavens!" say I, entering, with my shoulders raised nearly to my ears, and my hands spread out.She stops in her persevering trudge, looks me coolly over, and says,"Après?"I throw my eyes up to the ceiling, and shake my head several times, but words utter I none."You have heard, I suppose," she says quietly. "I see he is running all over the house button-holing everybody, as the Ancient Mariner did the Wedding Guest. I hope he has told Morris, and William, and Frederic—it would be a sad oversight if he has not.""It is true, then?" I say, gasping. "When he told me I would not believe it—I said so—I said I would ask you myself.""You might have saved yourself the trouble of the journey upstairs," replies she, calmly, "but as you are not 'fat and scant of breath,' like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, I suppose it does not matter much.""Good heavens!" say I, for the second time."Try a new ejaculation," suggests my sister, smiling; "I am tired of that one.""And—and—and your reason?""Reason? " repeats she, laughing rather harshly. "What extraordinary questions you do ask! Is not it on the surface? I am in love , to be sure—deeply in love."I am on the verge of being delivered of a third "Good heavens!" but, recollecting myself, suppress it."If you remember, you did not approve of my first choice," says Lenore, with a bitter smile; "are you any better pleased with my second?""Much better," I answer emphatically; "far better—only it is horribly and indecently sudden—that is all!"Silence ."As for the other," I continue, "you are right. I never could understand what you saw in him: a long nose, a yard of scarlet beard, and a sulky temper, seemed to me his whole stock-in-trade."For one second her eyes flash with a furious pain, then grow quiet."Exactly," she says, composedly. "Now in the case of the present nose there is nothing to be desired, is there?—nice and short, and runs straight down the middle of his face, without deviating a hair's breadth to right or left; such nice curls, too, all over his head, as if they were put in curl papers every night—and such dear little teeth!""For shame!" cry I, indignantly; "you are describing a doll . Lenore! Lenore! what are you made of? Beauty and love are thrown away upon you, and you have a perverted taste for ugliness and indifference."She shrugs her shoulders."One may abuse one's own property, I suppose. If you remember he is my doll now—curls and dear little teeth and all!"I turn away, pained and disgusted."Stay," she says, laying her hand on mine; "do not be cross. I am serious—look at me! I am sure I do not feel as if there were a joke to be got out of the whole of me."I look at her, as she tells me—look with uncomfortable misgivings at the bright beauty that has prospered her so little: her cheeks are crimson, and the hand which holds mine burns, burns ."Attend to me," she says imploringly. "I am very much in earnest. I have done better this time, have not I? I have been more wise at last?"I shake my head. "How can I say?"This one is much more suitable to me, is not he? I—I" (laughing feverishly) "I begin to think that I did not care really for the other so much after all; it was only fancy —it was only my perversity. I wanted to get him because I thought nobody else could. I—I was not really fond of him, was I?"She looks with a sort of wild wistfulness into my face for confirmation of her words, but I do not think she finds any."He is much more suitable to me," she repeats vaguely, as if trying to convince herself by iteration; "much more in every respect. So much better-looking.""Immeasurably," say I emphatically; "not that I see what that has got to say to it.""And better off," she continues, still holding and unconsciously pressing my hand with her hot dry fingers. "We should have been miserably poor, Paul and I—miserably; and I hate poverty; I hate trying to make both ends meet. They will meet now and lay over without any difficulty, will not they?""I imagine so.""And in age, too," she goes on eagerly, "we are far better fitted; is it not so? Paul was old—older than his age even—old in himself.""He might well have been your father," I say, laughing vindictively, "except that no one would have accused you of emanating from so hard-featured a stock.""No," she says, not in the least attending to my sarcasm, "of course not; altogether, you see," smiling mechanically—"altogether, you see, Jemima, it is all for the best. I am nearly quite convinced of it now, and of course I shall grow more and more convinced every day, shall not I?"—looking at me with imploring inquiry.I make no response, and we both lapse into silence—a silence spent by Lenore in wandering aimlessly about, pulling the blinds up and down, disarranging the few wintry flowers in the vase on the toilet table, altering the furniture. At last she speaks with sudden abruptness:"It is to be soon—very soon!""He is wise there, I think," I answer, following her doubtfully about with my eyes. "Poor boy, he has not studied you for the last six months to no purpose; he knows what a weathercock you are, and is bent on making sure of you while you are in the vein. Who can tell when the wind may change?""You are mistaken," she says, quickly, "it was not his idea at all; it was my suggestion. I suppose" (laughing with the same forced and hollow sound that had before pained me)—"I suppose it is the first instance on record of such a proposition emanating from the lady, but it was. Yes, you may look as if you were going to eat me—I cannot help that—it was!""Good heavens!" repeat I, devoutly, lapsing unintentionally, for the third time, into my favourite ejaculation."Yes, soon—very soon!" she says, half to herself, pulling her rings on and off, lacing her fingers together and then again unlacing them; "and we will have a very smart wedding—very! I hate sneaking to church with only the clerk and the beadle, as if one were ashamed of oneself. "We will have all the neighbours, and men down from Gunter's, and a ball."I stare distrustfully at her: her eyes are sparkling like diamonds at night, the splendid carnation that fever gives paints her cheeks."And you will have it put in all the papers," she says, laughing restlessly; "all of them—you must not forget—a fine long flourishing paragraph—do you mind?—in all of them.""What an extraordinary thing to give a thought to!" I say, suspiciously. "If you had two columns of the Times devoted to you, how much good would it do you?""Good? Oh, none at all; but it is amusing. Flowers of newspaper eloquence are always entertaining, don't you know? And one likes one's friends—one's friends at a distance—to know what is happening to one."A light begins to break upon me, but it is such an unpleasant one that for the moment I ask no more questions. A pause. There are so many things—true, yet eminently disagreeable—to be said, that I hesitate which to begin upon. Lenore presently saves me the trouble."If—if—he were to see me now," she says, sitting down at my feet, and smiling excitedly up at me, "he could not think I was pining much for him, could he?"The unpleasant light grows clearer."When he sees the account of my wedding in the papers—so soon—so immediately—such a brilliant marriage, too; I am so glad it is a good one—he will realise" (laughing ironically) "how irreparable an injury his desertion has inflicted on me, will not he?""Is it possible? " say I, with, shocked emphasis. "I suspected it when you began to talk to me; I am sure of it now. Lenore! Lenore! you are going to be madder than all Bedlam and Hanwell together!""I am—am I?" speaking with listless inattention to my words, and still pursuing her own thoughts."Marrying one man to pique another always seemed to me the most thorough 'pulling your nose to vex your face,'" I continue, in great heat.No remark, no comment on my homely illustration."Suppose he does hear of your marriage; suppose he does read every paragraph in all the papers about it; suppose he reads that you had twelve bridesmaids, and that you went off in a coach-and-six, how much the worse will he be, or how much the better you?"Still no answer; but she listens."He will feel a little stab of pain, perhaps—of mortified vanity, more likely; but it will be a very little one, not big enough to spoil his dinner (he likes his dinner); while you, my poor soul, where will you be?"She has been lying with her head in my lap; at these last words she snatches it hurriedly up."What do you mean?" she cries, in a fury. "How dare you pity me? I am not a 'poor soul.' I am a very fortunate person—very much to be envied. Hundreds of people would change places with me; so would you, if you could.""H'm! I don't know."A pause."Lenore," say I, earnestly, putting my hand under her chin, and lifting her unwilling face towards mine, "listen to me, for I am talking sense. I never had a husband, which is more my misfortune than my fault, but all the same I know what I am about. If you marry Charlie now you will like him at last; I am sure of that. I do not believe in the most perversely faithful woman always hating, always having a distaste for a handsome, manly, loving husband. Yes, you will end by liking him even better than he does you. It is always the way. But you will have to go through purgatory first; and, what is more unfair, you will have to drag him through too, poor boy!""Bah!" she says, with a scornful laugh; "it is nothing when you are used to it. If I have not been there, I am sure I do not know where I have been, ever since that accursed ball. Shall I ever again hear those detestable fiddles squeaking, and those vile wind instruments blowing and blaring, without going mad? I doubt it—I doubt it!"—putting her hands wildly to her ears, as if to shut out sounds of utter pain and horror."You rather dislike him than otherwise now," pursue I, pushing my advantage; "you are always better pleased to see him leave a room than enter it; well, before your wedding tour is over, you will abhor him. It requires an immense stock of love at starting to support the dead sweet monotony of a honeymoon."She shudders."My dear child," I cry, with affectionate emphasis, "think better of it; if you must marry him—poor dear Charlie, I am sorry for him—at least put it off for six months; let us have a little time to breathe. If you will reflect a moment I think you will see, that to be handed on from one man to another within a week is hardly ladylike, hardly modest!"At the last word the deep red on her cheeks grows yet deeper; but by the hard defiant smile that curves her lips I know that I might as "well have spoken to the winter wind that is howling and gnashing its angry teeth outside."Jemima," she says calmly, "as I once before observed to you, you will never make your fortune in the pulpit; your sentiments are first-rate, but they make one drowsy. See, I am yawning, myself. As to modest , that is neither here nor there; you dragged in the word by the head and shoulders to prop your argument. As to ladylike , it is a matter of the most perfect indifference to me whether I am or not."To this I say nothing. I only walk away to the window."Do not dissuade me," she cries, falling from defiance to a tone of almost nervous entreaty, as she stands before me, twisting her hands. "Let me marry him in peace. Your little cut-and-dried saws are very neatly cut, very accurately dried, but they do not fit; you mean well, but one knows one's self best.""H'm!""Do you think," she continues, with irritable impatience, "that I can go on now in the old groove—the old groove that I kept so contentedly to before—before the earth opened and swallowed all I had?"No answer."Can I go on," she pursues, with deepening agitation, "watching you drop the stitches in your knitting—listening to Sylvia's weak cackle—hearing those awful children plunging and bellowing about? Do you know, Jemima, for the last few days, every time they have come blundering and shrieking into the room, I have felt inclined to scream out loud? I have not done it, because you would have put me into a madhouse if I had; but all the same, I have felt the inclination."I shake my head despondently."If he marries me," she says, her eyes wandering restlessly about, and speaking quickly and excitedly, "he will take me away to beautiful places, away from all the dreadful old things and people. It will be delightful—delightful! I shall begin all over again—my life over again! He will take me where there are no children—no Sylvias—no Jemimas—no self. Yes" (laughing uneasily), "I mean to leave myself behind. I mean to be a new, fresh person—a happy, prosperous person. I wish to be happy—I am determined to be happy. Jemima" (entreatingly) "for God's sake, do not hinder me!"CHAPTER XVI.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.No one can keep their mouth open for ever—not even Jemima Herrick—they must shut them at last. Mostly they shut them very soon. No passion is so shortlived as astonishment. "A nine days' wonder" is a hyperbolical expression. Who ever wondered at the awfullest murder, the most startling esclandre , the most unlooked-for turn of Fortune's quick, wheel, during nine whole days? If walking on your head were to come into fashion, within three days it would excite no surprise to see people pounding along the pavement on their hats and bonnets, with their boots in the air. The neighbourhood has been informed of Lenore's transfer from one lover to the other, and its "Ohs" and "Ahs," and head-shakings thereon are over and done with. After all, they have been fewer than might have been expected; people had so long made up their minds that Scrope was the right man, that few of them had arrived at the knowledge that he was the wrong one, before they were officially informed that he was the right one again. He has always been seen about with her; he is evidently her fittest mate in youth and comeliness; in this case all the sympathy goes with the successful lover. Does not he ride as straight as a die? Is not he as handsome as paint? Do not we know all his antecedents? Does not his property lie, does not his ugly old red abbey stand, in this our county? Paul, unknown, plain, and saturnine, commands neither good wishes nor regrets. It has been announced that the engagement was dissolved by mutual consent—a course always adopted by the friends of the lady when the gentleman cries off. Lenore, however, is no party to this deception. Everybody's presents have been returned to them, and again sent back. On the principle of "To him that hath shall be given," the rich Mrs. Scrope's wedding gifts are threefold greater and more numerous than those of the poor Mrs. Le Mesurier. On hearing of the change in her fortunes—if not for the better, at least for the more consequential—the Websters supplement their portly teapot with a cream-jug and sugar-basin to match. And Lenore, when she sees the teapot come back—the teapot out of which she was to have poured Paul's tea, in the little narrow house they had planned—she laughs violently."Do not let them send me any new congratulations—any of them," she says, drily; "tell them the old ones will do; they need only alter the initials , as I am doing with my pocket handkerchiefs."Scrope has no father, and Lenore no money, which two facts greatly facilitate the law arrangements. Whether indecently soon or not, the wedding day is drawing on. Lenore has thrown herself into the business of trousseau buying with an ardour more than feminine—with the artistic frenzy of a Frenchwoman, of a petite maîtresse enragée ."Finery always was my snare," she says, laughing. "I loved even my cotton gowns and gingham umbrellas tenderly, but now —if being married entails such a saturnalia of fine clothes, I should like to have a wedding every year."Lenore is very lively; she runs about the house all day singing; she walks, she rides, she plays billiards; she studies "Murray" and "Bradshaw" with avidity, making out routes to the ends of the earth; but she never sits still. Her cheeks are rosy red, and her eyes sparkle and glitter like beautifullest great sapphires."You are quite the most eager bride I ever saw," Sylvia says one day, with a doubtful compliment. "Poor Charlie toils after you in vain. I always imagined that impatience was the monopoly of the gentleman; I am sure" (sighing and looking down) "it was so in my case. I thought the days raced by—positively raced; if you remember, Jemima, I said so to you at the time?""Did you? I dare say.""Now Lenore, on the contrary, seems anxious to hurry them. Fancy!" casting up her eyes and hands to heaven."I am anxious," says the girl, smiling rather wistfully. "I mean to be so happy—I want to begin. I am sorry it is not en règle; but I cannot help that. How many more days are there? One, two, three, four, five—bah!" (taking up two parcels that lie on the hall-table) "a couple more ivory prayer-books! Jemima, if there come any more prayer-books you must send them back, and say that there is a glut of books of devotion."The wedding feast is to be gay and large; the house to be crowded and crammed from attic to cellar, chiefly with Scrope's people: mother, unmarried sister, married sister and husband, uncles, unmarried men-cousins."A perfect horde of barbarians!" says Sylvia, complacently swimming into the drawing-room, on the afternoon of the day on which they are expected, her little figure very upright, head slightly thrown back, and bust protruded, as is her way when the war-paint is on. "I have quite a good mind to run away and hide myself in a corner, and leave Tommy, as my deputy, to receive them. Will you, Tommy? How amusing it would be, and how astonished they would look!""One could hardly wonder at them," answers Jemima, drily. Jemima's head and bust are much as usual."As long as I have Charlie beside me, I don't mind," continues Mrs. Prodgers, looking at herself over her left shoulder in the glass, in one of Sylvy's strained and distorted attitudes; "he is my sheet anchor. Poor dear old Charlie!" (laughing a little) "to think of his going to be one's brother! It is too ridiculous!"It is the evening before the wedding; the lit rooms are gaily alive with many guests; not only those staying in the house, but also dinner guests. Many more are expected; some of them already uncloaking outside, for Sylvia has decreed a dance."We must have a band " she has said, meditatively, when making the arrangements. "There is no use doing a thing unless you do it well. Yes, a band; they can go so nicely in the recess under the stairs.""It is dreary work pounding over a carpet, to the tune of a piano, supported only by lemonade and negus," Jemima says."When people come on a first visit," says Sylvia sapiently, "they always come to criticise. Did you notice how they all looked me over from top to toe, when they came in to-day—pricing me, as it were? Well, I wish to be beyond criticism.""Don't have a band," cries Lenore, hastily; "if you do, I shall go to bed—that is all. I warn you! Those dreadful fiddles squeaking and shrieking, go right through my head. Have a piano, and I will promise to play for you from now till the Judgment Day."So a piano it is. The dancing has not yet begun, but we all stand about in an unsettled way, that shows that something is imminent. Detachments of people are being taken to be shown the wedding presents. The hot red roses have to-night left Lenore's cheeks; she is very white—deadly white, one would say; only that it is a dishonour to the warm, milk whiteness of living loveliness, to liken it to the hue that is our foe's ensign. She is pale, but her eyes outblaze the star that quivers and lightens in Mrs. Scrope's grey head."I am so glad you are not a Mourning Bride ," says Scrope's eldest sister, Mrs. Lascelles, a frisky young matron, pretty as hair like floss silk, Paris clothes falling off her soft fat shoulders, and English jewels, can make her, looking with a sort of inquisitive admiration at the restless pale beauty of her future sister-in-law's face. "Not that I can say anything" (laughing lightly); "I cried for three whole days before my wedding. Mamma said that my eyes looked as if they had been sewn in with red worsted; did not you mamma?"Mrs. Scrope smiles the placid smile of prosperous stall-fed maturity."I did more than that," continues the other, still laughing, "I cried for a fortnight afterwards! We went to Brittany " (making a disgusted face), "and Regy was ill all the way from Southampton to St. Malo. I tried to look as if he did not belong to me. I am sure even the waiters at the hotels were sorry for me—I looked so dejected!"At the mention of Brittany, Lenore winces, and then begins to talk quickly and laughingly:"Must one cry? I hope not. If it is indispensable I will try; but I am afraid I shall not succeed. I am not a good hand at crying. I never cry."They are to dance in the hall; the oak floor has been polished and doctored to the last pitch of slipperiness; the stags' heads have mistletoe wreaths. Plenty of light, plenty of warmth, plenty of space, plenty of men: what more can any rabidest dance-lover desire? To the general surprise, Lenore sits down to the piano; everybody remonstrates."Usurping my place," says Jemima, cheerfully, putting her hands on her sister's shoulders. "Off with you.""On the contrary," returns Lenore, with a perverse smile, "I mean to adorn this stool till two o'clock to-morrow morning. Go away—dance—caper about, if it amuses you; as for me, I hate it. Va t'en!""Come on!" cries Scrope, half in and half out of his grey gloves, and looking radiantly happy and handsome. "What do you mean by settling yourself there? Jemima is going to play; she always does; she likes it. Don't you, Jemima?"Jemima smiles grimly. All very well to be conscious that your life mission is to pipe for other people to dance, but a little hard to be expected to express enjoyment of the rôle!"I am not going to 'Come on! '" answers Lenore, pettishly. "I mean to stay here. Go away!""Go away! " cries the young fellow, leaning his arms on the piano, and looking desperately sentimental; "a very likely story!" "For Heaven's sake, put your head straight!" she says, crossly. "When you cock it on one side like that, you look like a bullfinch about to pipe. I hate dancing!—there!""Since when?" he asks incredulously. "Not long ago you told me that you loved it better than anything else in life.""Not so very long ago, when I was cutting my teeth, I loved sucking an india-rubber ring better than anything else in life. Do you insist on my sucking it still?" she says drily, turning over a heap of music. "Don't be a nuisance. Go away!"He goes. In five minutes, all, not incapacitated by age and fat, and some even that lie under these disabilities, are scampering round. As there are plenty of men, several of the chaperones condescend to tread a measure. Lenore plays on dreamily; it is an air that the band played at Dinan one night last summer; as the brisk, gay melody fills her ears, the room, the people, the wax lights vanish; she is in the Place Duguesclin again. How dark it is! The lights from the hotel show small and red; the sabots clump past. How close to our faces the green lime flowers swing?She is roused by an eager voice at her ear."One turn—only one! I have danced with everything that has any pretensions to age, weight, or ugliness. Pay me for it!—only one turn!"Scrope stands by her, panting a little. His broad chest heaves, and his wide blue eyes glitter with a passionate excitement. She shrugs her shoulders, but, as though it were too much trouble to argue the point, complies. Jemima takes her place and they set off. After flying silently round for a few minutes they stop. Scrope, even in stopping, unwilling to release her from his arms, gazes into her face with a pas-sionate rapture, to see whether the delight he feels is at all shared."I hate it!" she says irritably. "It tears my dress; it loosens my hair; it takes away my breath. Let us go to some cool place."They saunter away to the conservatory. The Chinese lan terns swing aloft, their flames spring up in dangerous proximity to the pink and green walls of their frail prisons. The daphnes and narcissi and lilies of the valley are uniting their various odours in one divinest harmony of scent, like a concert of noblest voices. Lenore throws herself wearily into a garden-chair and begins to fan herself."Let me fan you," says her lover tenderly, taking the fan out of her hand and leaning over her, "it will save you trouble. My darling, you look pale to-night.""My darling, you look red to-night ," retorts she, with a mockery more bitter than playful, glancing up at the flushed beauty of his face. "For Heaven's sake, don't let us register the variations in each other's complexions."An arrow shoots through the young man's bounding heart. Is she going to change her mind? Now that the prize is almost within his hand, must he lose it at this last moment?"Have I done anything to vex you?" he asks anxiously, kneeling down on the stone pavement at her feet. "You know how idiotically fond I am of you; for Heaven's sake, do not take advantage of it to play tricks with me! What is the matter with you to-night? You are out of spirits.""What do you mean?" she cries angrily. "I never was in better spirits in my life; everybody remarks it—everybody says how lively I am. I talk all day, and I laugh more than I ever did in my life before. Would you have one always grinning like a Cheshire cat?""You talk and laugh, it is true," he answers, with a grave air of anxiety, "but you are much thinner than you were. Look at this arm" (touching the round white limb, as it lies listlessly across her lap; "it is not half the size it was three weeks ago.""So much the better," she answers with a laugh; "my arms were much too big before. Sylvia was always abusing them; it is much more refined to have smaller arms.""You will be all right when we get to Italy," he says fondly; "you will like that, will not you? Oh! sweet!" (leaning over her, with a passion of irrepressible exultation); "can I believe that I am waking, when I think that long before this time to-morrow you will be my wife? —that at last—at last—we shall belong to one another, for always?"She shivers a little. "To-day is to-day, and to-morrow is to-morrow," she says, sententiously; "to-day, let us talk of to-day; we may both be dead by to-morrow.""Both! " (smiling a little); "that is hardly likely.""One of us, then; only the other day I read in the Times of a bride who was found dead in her bed on her wedding morning. Oh, my God!" (flinging out her arms, and then throwing her head down on her knees), "if I had but the very slightest chance of going to heaven, how I wish I could be found dead in my bed!""What are you talking about?" cries Scrope, shocked and astonished at this unlooked-for outburst. "Lenore! look me in the face and say you did not mean it. I know you have a random way of talking, sometimes—Jemima says so; but, do you know, when you say such things you break my heart?""Do I?" she says, lifting her wild white face, unsoftened by any tears. "I am glad. Why should not I break it? I have broken my own—you know that well enough—why should not you suffer too? As for me, I suffer—I suffer always—all day and all night. I am glad to hear of any one else being miserable too. What have I done, that I should have a monopoly of it?" He stares at her, in a stony silence. "There," she says, after a pause, with a sickly smile, pushing her hair off her forehead, "I am all right now! I was only—only—joking! Pay no attention to anything I said; I was only ranting. I think I have been overdoing myself a little the last few days. Suppose you go? I shall get well quicker if I am by myself."So he goes, slowly and heavily. She has taken all the lightness out of his feet and out of his heart; it feels like a pound of lead. He makes his way up to the piano. "Jemima," he says, in a low voice, "my sister will play for you; I want you to go to Lenore; she is not very well, I think—rather hysterical; she is in the conservatory, she would not let me stay with her."So Jemima goes.CHAPTER XVII.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."WHAT next?" think I, hurrying off, as bidden. "What new freak? Well, if I had been born with a silver spoon in my mouth I would not have spent my life in bewailing and lamenting that it was not a pewter one." In the conservatory no Lenore! Only two time-worn flirts of either sex shooting their blunt little old arrows at each other's tough hearts, under a red camellia. I do not know why I do it, but I pass along, through the flowers, to a door at the other end that gives upon the outer air, and opening it, look forth. It is snowing rather fast: great, shapeless flakes floating down with disorderly slowness; but it is not very dark. My knowledge of my sister has not been at fault, for, through the snow, I see her, at a little distance from me, walking quickly up and down a terrace walk, with her head bent and her hands clasped before her. "How good for a person with a weak chest!" I cry indignantly, skipping gingerly out on the toes of my white satin boots, and Hinging the tail of my gown adroitly over my head. "Anyone more unfit for death or more resolute to die than you, I have seldom had the pleasure of meeting."I put my arm within hers and drag her along, back into the lighted warmth of the conservatory. A great tier of orange trees and chrysanthemums hides us from the veteran lovers. I look at her: the snow-flakes rest thickly on her hair, on her flimsy dress; run in melted drops off her chilled white shoulders."It does not wet one much," she says, with a rather deprecating smile. "See, one can blow them away. How white they are? They will make the snowdrops that the school-children are to strew before me to-morrow look quite dirty, will not they?""Lunatic!" cry I, highly exasperated, shaking her; "fool! If I may be permitted to ask, what is the reason of this?""I was hot," she says, a little wildly, "stifled! Those flowers stifle me. Odious jonquils! Did ever any flowers smell so heavily? They are like the ones in that dreadful bouquet Charlie brought me for the ball."I am shaking and flicking, with my best lace pocket-handkerchief, the snow from off her dress, so make no answer."You know, from a child, I was fond of running out, bare-headed, into a shower; I liked to feel the great cool drops patter patter on my hair. I wish to God I could feel them now! Put your hand on my head" (lifting my cold, red hand, and placing it on the top of her own sleek head)."My good child," say I, startled, "you are in a fever!""Jemima," she says, taking down my hand again, and holding it hard pressed between her two hot white ones, while her glittering eyes burn on my face, "I am quite happy, as you know, perfectly. No one has more cause to be so. I am quite young; I am better looking than most people; tomorrow I shall be rich, very rich; which, after all, includes all the others; but, do you know, sometimes, within the last few days, I have thought—it is a ridiculous idea, of course, but sometimes I have thought I was going mad! How do people begin to go mad? Tell me!"Her voice has sunk to an awed whisper. "Fiddlestick!" cry I contemptuously; "do not be alarmed, only clever people go mad; no fear for you.""If anyone comes suddenly into a room, if anyone bangs a door, or speaks in a key at all louder than usual, I feel as if I must shriek out loud. I told you so the other day, if you remember, talking of the children; sometimes I am afraid of lifting my eyes to your or anyone else's face, for fear you should think they looked mad.""Nonsense," interrupt I again, now thoroughly angry; "it is all nerves! Nerves are troublesome things if you are not moderately careful of them, and you never give yours a chance; you never sit still, you never rest, and it is my belief that you never sleep.""Not if I can help it," she says, feverishly; "not if I can help it. Sometimes, when I feel myself falling asleep, I get out of bed, and walk about in the cold to wake myself thoroughly. I hate sleep; it is my enemy! As sure as ever I fall asleep I am back in Brittany with him; we are as—as we used to be.""If I were you," say I, with that sober eye to the main chance with which one regards life after five-and-twenty, "I should be glad to wake from such a dream to find how much more prosperous the reality is.""So I am, so I am!" she answers hastily, contradicting herself. "Of course it is prosperous, is it not? Everybody says so; you—you are not joking , are you, Jemima, when you say I am so prosperous?" (her eyes resting distrustfully on my face). "I am really , am I not? But sometimes I think, when I look at you, that you are pitying me. Heaven knows why! for nobody needs it less; if you are, do not—that is all! I hate being pitied; pity yourself instead.""Dreams or no dreams," say I, trying to lead her from a theme which is making her painfully excited, "you must sleep to-night, if we give you laudanum enough to make seven new sleepers. If you do not, mark my words, tomorrow you will look as yellow as the little orange in your wreath." No answer, only a vacant plucking at her dress. "Dead-white in the morning," say I, with a judicious adhesion to the subject of millinery, "is almost always fatally trying to the best complexions, particularly when in juxtaposition with snow." NO answer. "Only this morning you told me that you were determined to look your very handsomest.""So I am," she says, rousing herself, and speaking with quick interest; "so I am! You say right—I must look my best—I shall; one always does when one wishes; my veil Will be down, too, they will not see me very clearly, you know; but, however I look, you must be sure to have it put in the papers that I looked beautiful and—and radiantly happy. They say those sort of things now and then, do not they?""As to the being happy—never that I saw," reply I, snappishly. "A bride's happiness is taken for granted.""I do not know whether I ever mentioned it to you before," she says, with a hesitating strained smile, "but I should like the announcement put into a good many papers besides the Times —the Morning Post —Standard; but it must be in the Times , too, of course. People always read the births, deaths, and marriages in the Times , don't they?"She asks this last question with a keen anxiety that would have puzzled any looker-on to account for."Women do," reply I brusquely. "I do not think that men ever look at them.""What nonsense you talk!" she cries rudely. "Of course they do. They always glance over them, at the least, to see whether there is any name they know. I have seen them, a hundred times. I have seen Charlie——""What about Charlie?" cries the young man, appearing round the screen of flowers simultaneously with his name; "he has not done anything fresh, has he?" (trying to laugh, but yet speaking with a most anxious smile). "Jemima, how is she?—how are you now, my darling?" taking her in his arms with as little heed to my presence as if I also were a prim dumb camellia."How am I? " retorts she, pushing him away with a gesture of distaste, and then, as if bethinking herself, accepting his embrace. "Why, how should I be? Much as I have been any time these nineteen years, with the exception of the solitary week when I had the croup. Reassure yourself—I have not the croup now, and I never have any other diseases."He looks at her silently, with a pale passionate wistfulness."You mean to be kind," she says, in a constrained voice, with a sort of remorse, "and you really are a very good fellow. I do think so always, though I show it rather oddly now and then perhaps; but you must know that I have an inveterate aversion to being asked how I am. It is not confined to me. Many people have the same feeling. I really" (with a forced smile) "must draw up a list of prohibitions for you. 'You must not do this,' and 'You must not do that,' before we set off on our travels, or we shall inevitably come to blows before a week is over.""Do! " cries the young man eagerly, as one catching at a straw. "I do seem to be always blundering, don't I? and saying the wrong thing? One would think I did it on purpose; but, as I live, I do not. I shall get better, however," he continues, hastily, as if afraid of her taking advantage of his confession; "every day I shall get better. Being with you always, I shall grow to understand your character better. Dense as I am, I cannot help doing that, can I, Jemima?""I really do not know," reply I, turning away with a dry smile; "there are some very sharp corners and unexpected turns in it, I can assure you.""Jemima is right," says Lenore, gravely, gently unwinding his arms from about her. "You have got a very indifferent bargain, pleased as you are with it. To let you into a secret, you have overreached yourself. You will get a bad character of me from all the people I have spent my life with; I have the distinction of having everybody's ill word.""I dare say" (defiantly, while his eyes recklessly, boundlessly fond, grow to her calm, chill face)."It is not too late yet," she says, in a low voice that has yet nothing of the whisper in it; "it is one o'clock; I hear it striking. You have yet ten hours' grace.""Ten hours!" cries the young fellow, wildly, throwing his arms again about her, and straining her, whether she will or no, to his riotous heart. "Lenore! Lenore! the nearer the time grows the farther you seem to get away from me. Are you going to slip away from me altogether at the last moment, as you did out of my arms just now? But no!—why do I put such ideas into your head? It is too late. You could not throw me over now, if you wished. Reckless as you are of all conventionality, even you dare not do that.""What are you talking about?" she asks, petulantly, with a nervous laugh. "Why should I wish to throw you over? If I did, what could I do with all my fine clothes, and my otter-skin jacket? Do you think I could have strength of mind to send the Websters' teapot travelling back a second time?"He continues looking at her, and holding her, but says nothing."I like you," she says, looking round at me with a sort of nervous defiance. "I do not care who says I do not. I am proud of you—I—I—I love you. Do not I, Jemima? Have not I often told you that I do?""You have told me a great many things in your time," I say, oracularly, "some that were true and some that were not. I will tell you one thing in return, and that is, that if you do not go to bed now, this minute, to-morrow you will be yellower than any orange."CHAPTER XVIII.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.IT is a circumstance never to be enough deplored by the female world that marriages and drawing-rooms are broad daylight ceremonies. Mature necks and faces, that the great bold sun makes look as yellow as old law deeds or as the love letters of twenty years ago, would gleam creamily, waxily white, if illumined only by benevolent candles, that seem to see and make seen only beauties and slur over defects. Even the lilies and roses of youth—unlike the smooth perfection of their garden types—are conscious of little pits and specks and flaws when day holds his great searching lamp right into their faces. Day repudiates tulle and tarletane; they are none of his; and as he cannot rid himself of them he retaliates by behaving as glaringly and unhandsomely as he can to them. Nature is holding a wedding outside, too, apparently; at least, it is all white, white! Heaven has sent down a storm of diamonds in the night, as a marriage present to Lenore; wherever you look there is the glitter of myriad brilliants. Last night, at each iron gate, there was a high wide arch of evergreens, but during the dark hours the fairies carried the dingy things away, and replaced them by others of glistening white jewels. They are so bright, so bright, one cannot look at them; one turns away with winking eyes. I fancy that with some such lustre shine the archways through which the Faithful People go and come in the deathless white City of God.There is a nuptial stir and bustle in the house; everybody but the bride has been down to an early breakfast, and has gone up again to put their best clothes on. The maid servants are hurrying about the house in uniform grey gowns and white caps, all except the ladies' maids, who have the right of exercising individual will in the choice of their magnificence. The footmen have new liveries. The weddingbreakfast is laid out in the dining-room; I have been reconnoitring it. One has to look out of window to assure oneself that the season is winter. On the long glittering table summer and autumn hold their scented sway. Regiments of tall flowers—both white and vivid-coloured; shady fern forests, bunches of grapes, big as those fabulous ones swinging in gilt over an ale-house door, or as that mighty cluster represented in the illustrations to "Line upon Line," as borne between two stout Hebrews, slung upon a pole; odorous rough-skinned pines. I indulge in a pleased sigh, and glance at the carte . I draw a slight mental sketch of what my own share in the banquet will be. Truly, one waxes gluttonous in one's old age.Since then I have been pervading such of the ladies' rooms as intimacy gives me the entrée to. I have seen twelve passably fair maids, in twelve gauzy bonnets, each with a murdered robin sitting on the top, as a delicate tribute to the season. Pretty and clean and white the dozen look; but, alas! they will present but a drabby-grey appearance by-and-by out of doors, when contrasted with the wonderful blinding snowsheet. I am not a bridesmaid: I have not been invited, nor, if I had, would I have consented to intrude the washed-out pallor of my face among this plump pink rose garden.Now I have returned to the bride chamber, where Sylvia, fully dressed, and apparently labouring under some hallucination as to being herself the bride, has usurped the cheval glass; at least, on my entry, I find a pretty little figure in violet velvet and swansdown, with bust protruded and semidislocated neck, gyrating slowly before it."How extraordinary one docs feel in colours! " she is ejaculating, with a sort of uneasy complacency; "but for Lenore's sake nothing should have induced me. I feel quite like a fish out of water; I really can hardly believe it is my own face—it seems like some one else's. What a fright one does look, Jemima!"No contradiction from me."Does not one?""No, I don't think so," reply I consolingly; "nothing out of the way. I don't see much difference.""Violet always used to be considered my colour," returns Sylvia, apparently finding my form of comfort not very palatable; "always par excellence . How well I remember, the very last ball I ever went to with poor Tom—I was in violet lisse , with cowslips—overhearing some man ask, 'Who that lovely little woman in mauve was?" What a rage I was in!""And who was she?" ask I, with interest."Who was she? " (reddening). "What stupid questions you do ask, Jemima! Who was she? Why I , of course.""Mauve suits everybody, even me ," say I, peeping over Sylvia's shoulder at my own unusual lilac splendour; "it was well named the 'refuge of the destitute.'"Having discharged this Parthian shaft I turn away. The room is blocked with great imperials, packed and half-packed. A whole haberdasher's shop of finery is surging out of them, and a big white L. S. is on each of their shiny black lids. L. S. herself sits before the dressing-table, but—difficult as it is to help it—she is not looking at herself in the glass. Her eyes are on the ground and her brows gathered. She is fully dressed, with the exception of the wreath and veil;—all dead white—dead white, like the doll on the top of a twelfth-night cake; only that the doll invariably compensates for the colourlessness of her attire by cheeks that outshine the peony, and Lenore's cheeks are dead white too. To my mortification, I perceive, that in spite of Worth's gown, and old Mrs. Scrope's Flemish point, my sister is looking as little handsome as a thoroughly good-looking woman ever can look. Hardly a touch of pretty red, even on her lips, and a pinched blue look of cold and utter apathy about her face and whole attitude."If I am to arrange your wreath," say I, speaking sharply, "we had better begin; there is no use hurrying, and it takes some time to dispose it properly."She does not move or change her position."Will you be good enough," continue I, ironically, "to look round and convince yourself that this is not a funeral?"Still no answer."Lenore" (raising my voice), "are you dead? are you dumb? are you cataleptic? For heaven's sake, why do you not say something?""What should I say?" she answers, at length, raising her heavy eyes, and speaking with harsh irritability; "why should I speak? I have only one hour more of my own now" (glancing with a sort of tremulous shudder towards the clock); "surely I may spend it as I like.""That is better," rejoin I, not heeding the matter of her speech, but regarding her, with my head on one side, with an artist's eye. "When you speak you look ten percent, better. I must tell you in confidence that as you sat just now, with your shoulders up to your ears and your nose resting on your knees, you had a near escape of being that anomaly in nature, a plain bride."No reply."For mercy's sake, say something," I say, crossly; "do not lapse again into that utter silence! Dear me!" (taking the wreath gingerly out of its box) "how beautifully they do make these things nowadays! But for the scent, I really think they out-do nature."The wheels of the first carriage become audible; very faintly, by reason of the snow, but still audible, and Sylvia, after one final glance, shuffle, and whisk, swims out of the room. I become absorbed in an artistic agony, as I throw the lace, in a shower of costly flimsiness, over my sister's impassive head, and delicately insinuate the chilly nuptial flowers into their resting-place on the top of it.Carriage after carriage rolls up: doors are opened; steps let down. My curiosity gets the better of me. I leave my nearly finished task, and, running to the window, press my face against the frosted pane."The Websters," say I, narratively. "Ha! ha! ha! Old Mrs. Webster in a twin gown to Sylvia; even to the swansdown on the body and tunic! Poor dear Sylvia! she will never get over it; it will be the death of her."As I stand there, laughing, maliciously, I feel a hand on my shoulder. "What! are you come to look at them, too? Take care, they will see you. It shows a little want of imagination in Mrs. James making two dresses pin for pin alike, does not it?"I turn towards her; but, as soon as I catch a glimpse of her face my mirth dies, and I utter a horrid ejaculation. It is lividly white, and she is gasping."Open it wide!" she says, almost inaudibly. "I—I—I am stifling!""Good heavens!" cry I, apprehensively and dissuasively, "with my usual practical grasp of a subject. "You are not going to faint? Do not!—not till I get you a chair. You are so heavy—I never could hold you up."As I speak I am struggling with the hasp of the window, which is old, rusty, and evidently constructed with a view to never opening except after ten minutes of angry wrestling."Quick! quick!" she says, faintly, panting, "wider! wider ."But it is too late. As the frozen casement grates slowly on its hinges, her head, with all its smart paraphernalia of lace and flowers, falls back lifeless, and the whole weight of her body, in all the leaden inertness of Death's counterfeit, rests in my strained arms. No one knows, until they have tried it, how heavy dead and swooned persons are. I stagger under my sister's weight, and with much difficulty, and many bumps both to her and myself, get her down on the floor, where the little icy airs come and ruffle her useless laces and her soft tossed locks. Then I fly to the bell, open the door, and call mightily down the passage. "Louise!" I cry, "Louise!" as Sylvia's French maid comes floating airily along—not in the least hurrying herself, but rather throwing gallantries over her shoulder, as it were, to a strange valet in the middle distance. "Louise! Louise! Make haste! Mademoiselle Lenore is so ill! I do not know what has happened to her!—all of a sudden, too!—she has fainted, I think; I suppose it is a faint, is it not?" (looking nervously in her face) "not anything worse?"Louise gives a little yell, and says "My God!" in her mother tongue, in which flippant language that adjuration does not sound half so solemn. Then we kneel down, one on each side of her, sprinkle water in her face, considerably to the injury of her tucker—pour brandy down her unconscious throat—hold strong smelling-salts to her nostrils—roughly chafe her dead hands—use all the unpleasant asperities, in fact, that are supposed necessary to induce people to come back to that life which, as a rule, they are so loath to quit. But it is all to no purpose: she shows no sign of returning consciousness."I do not half like it," I say, looking apprehensively across at my coadjutor, and speaking in an unintentional whisper. "I have not a notion what to do next! Run, Louise, and ćell John to go as quickly as he can for Dr. Riley—and—and—I do not like being left here by myself with her—send Mrs. Prodgers.""What do you want with me?" cries Sylvia, pettishly, coming fussing in, a minute or two later; evidently in complete ignorance of the errand on which I have sent for her. "I wish you would not send such mysterious messages. I am so nervous already that I do not know what to do with myself! I declare, just now, when Lord Sligo was talking to me, I had no more idea what he was saying——Good God!" (catching sight of Lenore's stiff prostrate white figure), "what has happened? What has she done to herself now?""She has fainted," repeat I, briefly, "all of a sudden, before I could look round; and we cannot bring her to.""Good gracious, how dreadful!" cries Sylvia, kneeling daintily down on the floor too, not however, before she has plucked up her violet velvet skirts. "What does one do when people faint?—put cold keys down their backs—cut their stay-laces—hold looking-glasses before their mouths—oh no, of course, that is to see whether they are—heavens, Jemima," (her face blanching), "you do not think she is"——Mrs. Prodgers has an inveterate aversion for pronouncing the little four-lettered word, that, in its plain shortness, expresses the destiny of the nations."Nonsense!" cry I, angrily, again seizing the salts, and futilely holding them to her nose."Feel whether her heart beats," says Sylvia, looking very white, breathing rather short, and speaking in an awed whisper. "I am afraid to do it myself—I dare not!—you are feeling the wrong side, are not you?—they say it is nearly in the middle."Complying with these anatomical instructions, I feel. Yes, it beats. Life's little hammer is still knocking feebly against its neighbour ribs."She will be all right, just now, of course; it is only that we are not used to this sort of thing. I never was the least frightened myself," say I, doughtily, but not altogether truly."I wish her eyes were quite shut," says Sylvia, peering into Lenore's swooned face with the horrified curiosity of a child; "they look so dreadful showing a bit of the pupil.""The wedding will have to be put off, of course," say I, rising, and walking towards the clock; "half-past eleven now; it is very certain that she will not be well enough to be married before twelve.""But the people! " cries my sister, squatting in a dismayed purple heap on the floor, for the moment utterly oblivious of nervousness, swansdown, or even of the aptness of velvet to crease, unless sat upon straight. "They are all come; everybody is dressed; most of them are already at the church; the bishop has been there half an hour."I shake my head. "It cannot be helped.""And the breakfast!" cries Mrs. Prodgers, as a fresh and worse aspect of the calamity presents itself to her mind. "Of course, the cold things do not matter; they will be as good to-morrow, or the day after, as to-day; but the soups, the entrées!"I stifle a sigh. "There is no good in talking of it," I say, with forced philosophy. "You had better go at once and send them all away; there is no use in keeping them waiting in the cold. Charlie, too " (with an accent of compassion); "poor boy! what a bitter disappointment it will be to him!""As to that," says Sophia, with a slight relapse into the preening and Pouter-pigeon mood, "I do not suppose that a day's delay will kill him: men are often not sorry for a little reprieve in these cases. I am sure no one can feel more thoroughly upset than I do; if I were to follow my own inclinations I should sit down and have a good cry.""Do not follow them, then," I say brusquely; "or, at least, send the guests away first , and cry as much as you please afterwards."By the aid of Louise, and with many appeals on her part to the French God, skies, and Virgin, I heavily, and with difficulty, lift Lenore on to the bed. Hours have passed, the doctor has come, Sylvia has resumed her black gown and giant rosary, the last carriage has rolled away with snowy wheels, before Lenore lifts the quivering white of her lids, and looks round upon us languidly, one after another. There are only three of us—the elderly doctor, to whom from our earliest infancy we have been in the habit of exhibiting our tongues and pulses, I, who am nobody, and thirdly, a poor young man in a smart blue coat, with a kind, miserable, beautiful face, who has spent the last three hours and a half in clasping and kissing a limp white hand, which, had its owner been possessed of consciousness, would hardly have lain with such passive meekness in his fond grasp. As her eyes open he springs up joyfully to his feet and bends over her. I do the same. With a faint gesture of distaste she turns away from him to me, and speaks in a weak whisper:"I—I—I—am at home, am I not?""At home? Yes, to be sure.""I—I—I am not married?""No, not yet.""I am so glad!"Soon afterwards she relapses into unconsciousness. All that day, and most of the following night, she lies like a plucked snowdrop in January's sleety lap, reviving from one swoon only to fall into another. Towards midnight she grows better, and sinks into a natural and healthy sleep."I wish you would change your clothes," I say to Charlie, in a whisper, as we stand staring at her with shaded light, "they look such a mockery" (touching the fine blue broadcloth). "Your poor bouquet, too.""Not a very good omen, is it?" he says, with a melancholy smile, lifting with his finger the drooped and yellow head of his gardenia. "Bah! who cares for omens? Only old women.""Only old women," repeat I, mechanically."She was not well last night ," he continues eagerly, "was she? I told you she was not: it accounts for her talking so oddly, does not it? It shows" (peering anxiously into my face) "that she did not mean any of the things she said, does not it?"I say, "Of course," in a constrained voice, and try to turn away."Stay," he says, laying his broad hand on my shoulder, "do not go; I want to talk to you. I say she was not quite herself when she woke up first, was she?—did not know what she was saying—meant nothing?"I know that I am lying, but I answer: "Oh dear, no! of course not!""Was it my fancy?" continues he, with a painful red spreading even to his forehead; "one gets odd notions, and these damned candles" (striking one viciously with his forefinger) "cast such deceptive shadows—but it seemed to me, Jemima, that she turned away from me, as if—as if—she had rather not look at me. Did not she like my being here, do you think? She is so—so—maidenly; she thought I ought to have stayed outside?""Nonsense," say I, shortly. "It is evident that you have never fainted; you do not understand how slow people's wits are in coming back. I do not suppose that she knew you from me, or me from the doctor."He does not answer. I can hardly expect my logic to be very convincing, seeing that it has not convinced myself."Riley is not in the least surprised at this," I say, nodding slightly towards our patient. "When I told him about her not eating and not sleeping—it is my belief that she has not closed an eye for the last fortnight—he said that the only wonder was that it had not happened before.""Jemima," says the young fellow, turning me unceremoniously round so as to face him, while his eyes in their searching truth go through mine like swords, "tell me—I wish to know—what is it that has taken away her sleep and her appetite? Is it I?"It is not, as I am well aware, but I maintain a stupid silence."Do not answer me," he says, with a sudden change of mood, pushing me away from him. "I do not want an answer; it was an idiotic question; this fuss and bustle have been too much for her, have not they? and the hard weather has tried her. She will be all right again when once we get quietly off, will not she? Jemima—I say, Jemima—do you think there is a chance of our being able to have it tomorrow?"I shake my head. "I doubt it.""The day after, then?" (very wistfully).I have not the assurance to say "Yes," and I have not the heart to say "No," so I say, "We will see."CHAPTER XIX.WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.ALL the next day Lenore lies in bed, weak and white—it does not take much to pull her down—and, for the most part, silent. She asks for no one; expresses neither regrets nor self-congratulations on the subject of her deferred wedding—lies with her face, gentle and innocent as any saintly martyr's—what falsehoods faces do tell!—on the pillow, crowned by a bright brown glory of hair—an aureole given her by nature, not martyrdom. She is not ill, neither well; very still, and only turning restive under doses of brandied beef-tea, repeated ad nauseam . There are few of the minor diseases that are worse than beef-tea and brandy. The following day passes in much the same way; but on the third morning Jemima enters cheerfully:"Riley says you may get up."The communication does not seem to afford much satisfaction to the person to whom it is addressed. She turns her face away with a pettish jerk and hides it in the pillow."He says you may dress and come down as soon as you like.""As soon as I like? " repeats Lenore, ironically; "that would be a long time oft Why may not I stay here?"—(stretching out her arms lazily). "I am happy. I like to lie here all day long; the noises of the house seem so far off, and your footsteps outside sound so gently. I like to listen to the clocks one after another, and count them as they strike. I feel nothing—I think of nothing. I have not been so happy for years.""He says that staying in bed is very weakening.""Then I like being "weakened.""Nonsense! Please talk like a rational being."Never was toilet more slowly made than Lenore's—partly from weakness—for her illness, though brief, has told upon her; partly from a deep and innate unwillingness to return to the well and work-a-day world. At length there is no evading the fact that she is fully dressed; not only fully dressed, but established in an arm-chair before Sylvia's boudoir fire: a banner screen between her face and the flame; novels, workboxes, point lace, a pug—everything that is necessary to make a rational woman's happiness—within easy reach of her hands. There is one other addition, without which many rational women think happiness incomplete—a lover; and even he is not far off.As a man's heavy step sounds muffled along the carpeted passage, as a man's fingers close on the door-handle, Lenore turns her head resolutely to the other side—like a child averting its face from the inevitable rhubarb and magnesia—and rests her cheek on the back of her chair.He enters softly, and afraid even of breathing over-noisily, imagining she is asleep, stoops his waved gold head over her. He is soon undeceived."I wish," she says, in a most wide-awake voice, opening her beautiful petulant eyes full upon him, "that you would not come in in that creakily tiptoe way; nothing in the world fidgets me so much."He starts upright again in a hurry."It was a stupid trick," he says humbly, and then stops suddenly, afraid of rousing livelier wrath by further speech. As for her, she rolls her pretty pettish head from side to side, and affects not to see him. He grows tired at last of standing with his back to the mantelshelf, silent, and says, with eager tenderness, but in a rather frightened voice:"You are better?""Yes, I am better," she answers, quickly; "at least, so they say; but I am still far from well—very far; it will be long enough before I am strong again, and—and—and—up to anything.""Riley says that there is nothing like—like >change of air " (reddening guiltily)."Riley is an old woman" (reddening too)."Lenore!" throwing himself down on his knees, on the rug beside her, and, in so doing, giving an unconscious buffet to the pug's black face, who forthwith departs howling, unheeded, and with his tail uncurled. "Lenore! why need we have half the county to see us married? "Why need we put on smart clothes? Why cannot you come quietly to church with me to-morrow, in your common bonnet and shawl" (Scrope is unaware that shawls are, for the moment, extinct), "with only the clerk to say 'Amen.'""Where is the hurry?" she asks, tapping her foot impatiently on the fender. "You talk as if we were two old people, each with a leg in the grave. Supposing that we put it off for a year, we should still probably have fifty to gape opposite each other in.""Even if we were sure of the fifty," he says gently, "I should still grudge the one; can one be too long happy?"I never heard any one complain of being so. Do you like sickly women?" she says, abruptly, apparently half softened by his tone, and looking amicably at him. "I think I am radically sickly—see how half a day has pulled me down—my elbows stick out like promontories" (pulling up her sleeve to show one)—"if you married me you would have to be always cosseting me—trundling me about in a Bath-chair, and measuring out physic in a spoon for me."He is about to burst into a storm of protestations, but she interrupts him."Do you know what Jemima said, that day, when I told her I was going to marry you?""No.""Well, she said it was indecently soon.""I do not see what business it was of Jemima's," says the young man, looking rather surly."Neither do I; but, all the same, it is true—indecently soon—that is the very word that expresses it." As she speaks, her face becomes spread with a hot blush, and his own is not slow to repeat it in the deeper colours of manhood."What does this mean?" he asks, rising to his feet, while a look of utter fear makes the red in his cheeks give way. "What is this the preface to? Is it indecently sooner than it was yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that?""Do not be angry," she says, deprecatingly, stretching out her hand, on which his own diamonds are flashing. "You know you are always reasonable—you always mind what I say, even when it is not reasonable; that is why I like you."There is something of the turkey-cock about every woman; gobbling and swelling if a man is frightened and runs; small and silent if he stands still and cries "Shoo!" It is his turn now; there is no use in gobbling at him; he affects not to see her hand, and only says briefly, "Go on.""You know," she says, sitting upright in her chair and straining her neck backwards, so that her eyes may attain his face and watch it, "that I proposed to you—it is not a sort of thing that a man would be likely to forget. I try to think of it as little as possible, but it is true; and you accepted me;—I suppose" (laughing, awkwardly) "that you could not well have been so uncivil as to do otherwise.""Go on.""Well" (fidgeting uneasily), "I mean to marry you still—fully —but—but—it must be—not just yet—not now; a year—six months hence, perhaps—instead."Unwilling to witness the effect of her words, she has dropped her eyes at the last clause; but as the moments pass, and no sound comes, save that of a cinder falling from the grate, she looks up again."Have you no tongue?" she says, irritably; "are you never going to speak?""A year hence! " he says, in a low voice, turning a face, white as the face of the uncoloured dead, towards her. "That means never . Thank you for leading me so gently up to it. Do you think I do not see what you are aiming at? Do you think I have not watched it coming during the last fortnight? I have prayed not to see "(striking his hands together). "I have entreated God to let me be blind always. Good God!" (flinging his arms down on the chimneypiece, and hiding his face on them) "how do men bear these things? Who can teach me?""Bear what?" she cries, rising hastily to her feet, and putting her hand on his coat sleeve. "What are you talking about? What is there to bear?""So you have been tricking me all this time, have you?" he says, raising his ruffled head, and looking deliberately at her, with a resentful calm in face and voice. "At least, it can hardly be called trickery: it was so lamely done, a child might have seen through the deception."Silence."Of course you know best" (in the same polite, cold tone); "but would it not have been simpler, and come to much the same thing in the end, to have left me alone in the first instance?"Left him alone! The very question, in almost the same words, that Paul had once asked."I had gone clean away," he continues, in the same repressed and sedulously quiet voice. "Your polite speeches had effectually rid you of me. A man would not willingly listen twice to some of the compliments you paid me at that ball. I had no intention of coming back; why did you send for me?"Still no answer, no attempted defence."I can at least" (with a bitter smile, that sits ill on his fair smooth face) "pay you the compliment of saying that you are not a good liar. You are not apt at the trade; you bungle. Every day, and fifty tunes a day, your mouth has said to me, 'I like you—you are a good fellow—we shall be happy together;' and every day, and fifty times a day, your eyes and every movement of your body have said, 'I loathe you. I can hardly bring myself to speak civilly to you.'"Still silence."Did it ever occur to you" (taking her by both slender wrists) "to make a rough calculation how many falsehoods you have told me during this last month?""Stop!" she cries, wrenching away her hands from his grasp, which has more of the gaoler than the lover in it. "Stop! you are very bitter to me—very. I can hardly believe that it is you; but you speak truth. I have told you many, many lies, but at least I have told them to myself too. I have said them over and over again, in the hope that they would come true at last."He smiles a dry smile of utter incredulity."That was very probable.""You do not believe me?" she says, passionately. "Well, I take God to witness —you will hardly disbelieve me now—that ever since that day in the library, when I thrust myself so immodestly on you" (she is crimsoner than any closed daisy's petals at the words), "I have longed and striven with all my heart and soul and strength to—to—care for you—as—as—you wish to be cared for.""Well?""I have said over and over to myself all your good qualities, like a lesson. I have tried" (her face contracts with an agony of shame) "to wrench away all the love I ever had to give from—the—the person who once had it, and to give it to you instead.""Well?""Sometimes, when I was away from you, I thought I had succeeded; but when you came near me, when you touched me, good and kind and handsome as you are——"She stops abruptly."Go on," he says, in a hoarse whisper. "Do not let any consideration for my feelings stop you; it would not be youif you did—good and kind and handsome as I am " (ironically repeating her words)."It was too soon—too soon," she cries, clasping her hands in deep excitement, while the large scalding tears drop hotly over her cheeks. "Jemima was right, it was indecently soon. In the grief and shame of being so treated, I wonder, Charlie" (smiling painfully), "that you are so anxious to marry a jilted woman. I thought I could forget all in a minute, but I cannot; nobody could. If I were to go away to-day, and throw you over for ever, could you forget me all in a minute?""I would try my best," he says, with a fierce white smile. "Perhaps it would be more correct to say, 'I will try my best.'""Do you think I do not wish to forget?" she says, taking his hand of her own accord, while her wet eyes gaze wistfully upward, into the deep angry blue of his. "Do you think I remember on purpose? Does one enjoy not sleeping and not eating, and being in miserable uneasy pain all day and all night?"He keeps silence."I am no great prize at the best of times," she says, half sobbing. "My sisters—all my people—will tell you that; but what sort of woman should I have been if I could have jumped straight out of one man's arms into another's, quite easily and comfortably, without feeling any shame? It was bad enough to be able to do it at all. Oh, Charlie! Charlie! knowing what you did about me, how could you think me "worth taking? How could you take me?""How could I take you? " he says, with a harsh low laugh, as unlike the jocund sound of his usual boyish mirth as possible. "Do not you know that when a man is on starving he is Hot particular as to having a whole loaf? He says 'thank you' even for crumbs . I tell you, Lenore, that morning in Ireland, when I got your note, I had as little hope of ever holding you in my arms as my wife, as I had of holding one of God's angels. When I found that there was a chance of my so holding you, judge whether I was likely to throw it away."He has put one of his hands on each of her shoulders, and stands gazing steadfastly at her with a bitter yearning in his eyes."I knew that your soul was out of my reach," he continues, sadly; "that I should get only your body, and even that shrank away from me. Shall I ever forget those first two kisses that you gave me—that I made you give me? They were colder than ice."A little pause. The fire-flame quivers and talks to itself; the pug plucks up heart again, and, returning, lies down, with his nose resting on his bowed forelegs."I suppose it is all for the best," says Scrope, presently, with a forced smile; "at least it is as well to say so, is not it? I was so idiotically fond of you that, if you had been decently civil to me, I suppose I should have been happier than any man can be and live." No answer. "Do you know," he resumes, in a tone of deep and sombre excitement, "what has kept me up all this month, what has hindered me from cutting my own throat or yours—it was a toss-up which—what has made me smile and seem pleased at words that bit and looks that stung? Well, I will tell you—listen, and laugh if it amuses you; it is true, all the same. I knew ' (lifting his hands from her shoulders, and framing her drooped face with them,) "I knew that, if once I could get you all to myself, I could make you love me; you would do your best to thwart and hinder me, but I could make you. Lenore, I know it still.""Do you?" she says sadly. "I wish you could; but I doubt it.""Tell me," cries the young fellow, emboldened by her gentleness to take her once more in his arms, as if she were his own, "it will do me no good to hear—be tantalising, rather—but still I think it would ease my pain a little; tell me, if you had met me first —met me before you came across him —do you think you could have liked me a little then? Say 'yes,' if you can, Lenore!" (with a suffering accent of entreaty)."How do I know?" she says sharply, for once not shrinking from his contact—not straggling in his embrace, but rather coldly taking it for granted. "What is the good of looking back? It seems to me now, that if I had not met him I should have gone on always, as I had gone on before, laughing and amusing myself, and being happy in my way, and not loving anybody much . I never was one to fall in love easily —never!" (drawing herself up with a little movement of pride)."You fell in love with him easily enough," says Scrope, roughly."Yes," she answers, almost humbly, though her face flames, "you are right, so I did; it was a boast I had no right to make.""What on earth made you do it?""How can I tell? Perversity, I think; I always was perverse from a child; they said I should pay for it, sooner or later. I think I have now, have not I?" (smiling drearily). A moment's pause. "Other people cared for me of their own accord," she continues, sighing; "as for him, almost every word I said grated upon him; I had to fight and battle even for his toleration.""And that pleased you?""Does one ever care for the things that one can stretch out one's hand and take?" she asks, bitterly. "I do not, neither do you—that is evident, or you would not be here." After a little pause: "He thought very meanly of me from the first—very. He almost told me so in so many words, and I —I—well—I only meant to make him alter his mind; that was how it began. Bah!" (breaking off suddenly, with a tempest of angry pain in her voice,) "what does it matter how it began? Is not it enough that it did begin, that it went on, and that now it is ended?"At the last word her raised voice sinks clown, and dies in a sob. His hold upon her grows lax, he gives a long sigh of astonished indignant grief."If that was the way to your heart," he says with a sort of scorn, "no wonder I missed it." Silence. "Merciful heavens!" cries the young man, smiting his hands together in a sort of wondering frenzy, "did one ever hear the like? Must one hold you cheap, and have the ill manners to tell you so; must one cut you to the heart with frosty looks and words that stab like your own; must one love you tardily and leave you readily, before you will give one your affection? If so, Lenore, I tell you candidly that—stark staring mad about you as I have been for the last six months—I tell you candidly that I had rather be without it.""You are right," she says, coldly; "it is not worth having. After all, you agree with him; he thought it was not worth having, and so threw it away."The moments flash past; the little moments, that tarry not to listen to brisk wedding chimes, or the slow passing-bell. The two young people still stand opposite one another, each buried in thoughts, whereof it would be hard to say whose share was the bitterer. Scrope is the first to break the silence that has fallen on them."Tell me, Lenore," he says, breaking out into impetuous speech, "you have said so many disagreeable things to me in your time that one more will not matter; yes, tell me—I will promise not to burst out into violence, I will even try to look pleased " (smiling sardonically)—"is there—is there— any talk of his coming back? Have you any hope of it, that you are getting rid of me so quickly, all of a sudden?""What do you mean?" she says harshly, with a shrinking shiver, as if one had torn open a great gaping wound in her tender body. "Do you thing that if I had had any hope I should have sent for you? He is not one to speak lightly, to say one thing to-day and one to-morrow; I should wear out my ears with listening before I heard the wheels of his carriage coming back. No, no!" (with a low sobbing sigh) "I have no hope! It is humiliating to speak of hope in such a case, is not it? I suppose I should not, if I had any spirit.""If you have really done with him for ever , then," says the young man, in a voice which is still half doubting, "Lenore—I do not want to be glad at what makes you sorry; but how can I help it?—then, for God's sake come to me; what is there to stand between us? I know I can make you forget him; even to-day—perhaps you will laugh at me for saying so—you seem to hate me a shade less than you did. Oh, beloved! out of the great harvest of love that you lavished on him—him who did not care to take it, who hardly stooped to pick it up, who tossed it carelessly back to you— have not you saved one grain for me, who have been hungry and famished so long?"There are tears in his shaken voice, though none in his eyes; and indeed a man who weeps in wooing mostly damns himself. In a hairy blubbered face there must always be less of the moving than the ridiculous."Say 'yes,'" he cries, with a passionate agony of pleading, twining both his arms once more about her. "I will hold you here until you say it. I will let no sound but 'yes' pass those lips that have never yet given me a kind word or a kiss worth the taking.""What am I to say 'yes' to?" she asks, holding aloof from him, as much as may be, with the old gesture of shrinking distaste. "Am I to say that I will marry you? Well, I said that a month ago; that is settled. Why must we go over all the old story again?""But do we mean the same thing?" asks Scrope, with distrustful vehemence. "That is the question. Will you marry me now—at once , without any senseless, causeless delay?"She has drawn herself away from him, and now turns, and walking to the window, looks blankly out on the drear, white, snow world—on the long sharp icicles hanging from the eaves."Speak," he says, his voice sharpened and roughened, following her to the other side of the room. "I am waiting —I will wait on you as long as you please; but if I keep you here to the Judgment Day I will not go unanswered! Will you marry me to-morrow? —great Heavens! if it had not been for this unhappy contretemps , by to-morrow you would have been four days my wife!—or will you not?"She is trembling all over, and her cold white face is twitched with pain and wet with unwiped tears."Not to-morrow! " she says, with an involuntary shudder; "not so soon—not quite so soon. Let me have time to draw my breath! I am not well; as I live I am not well. See how thin I have grown" (holding out a hand, on which the wandering veins and the small bones indicate their places more clearly than they did last year). "I, who" (smiling) "used to be so afraid of growing too fat! I do not think I need be afraid of that now, need I? Let me get quite well quite strong first. I shall be better worth your taking then.""Lenore!" cries the young man, seizing her by the arm, in an access of sudden and uncontrollable passion, "did you ever in all your life think of anyone but yourself? What business have you to spoil my life for me? "What business have you to make me a laughing-stock for everybody?—tell me that?""I have no business—none," she answers, drooping her long neck and sobbing."Will you marry me to-morrow , Lenore?" (speaking with the stern quiet of self-constraint)."Not to-morrow—not to-morrow," she answers wildly, turning her head restlessly from side to side. "I meant really to have married you on Tuesday—you cannot doubt that? Had I not my wedding-dress on? But see how ill the thought has made me. Give me six months. In six months I shall get used to the idea; perhaps I shall get the better of my temper. Six months is a long time; things that happened six months ago seem a long way off" (her eyes straying dreamily out to the still white trees and the square church tower)."I see how it is," he says fiercely; "I have been very patient with you, and you think I shall be patient always. You are mistaken; I am sick of patience; I have done with it. I will marry you now or never ."At his words, her swimming eyes flash, and the wet carnation flowers hotly on her cheeks."Do you wish," she cries, violently, "for a wife who hates your touch?—who dreads being left alone with you?—who never hears your footstep without longing to fly out of sight —out of earshot of you? If you do, you have odd taste!"He clenches his hands, and his teeth close hard on his under lip, but he does not trust himself to speak."Is not it my own interest to be fond of you—to marry you?" she continues, in strong excitement. "Are not you rich and prosperous? and have not I all my life been in love with ease and wealth and pleasure? Is it from choice that I wake all night? I am sick of being unhappy, and fretting, and hating everybody. God knows I would be happy if I could! Be patient a little longer—only a little."But he only answers—"Now or never .""Well, then, it must be never! " she answers, vehemently —"there—you have said it yourself; it is your doing, not mine. It is you who have thrown me over—not I you.""Very well," he answers, in a husky whisper, hastily averting his face, to hinder her from seeing the havoc that despair is working on its beauty; "you are right; it shall be never/"Utter silence for a space: silence as deep as if they had been dead."Lenore," he says at length, turning towards her for the last time his clay-white face and the indignant agony of his eyes, "you make one say ugly things to you. "Were you ever anything but a curse to any one that you had to do with? You have cursed full six months of my life, but you shall curse no more of it. I will do without you. There is no lesson so hard that one cannot learn it in time, and I will."She is silent."Even for a good woman, who had loved one, and whom one had lost by death, one would not mourn for ever," he continues, in the same rough unsteady whisper; "how much less for you, who have never given me anything but unladylike insults—unwomanly gibes! Good-bye, Lenore! Yes, good-bye! But before I go, give me one kiss—one real kiss. Since they were to have been all mine, spare me one."So speaking he stoops, and for an instant lays his lips upon her unwilling mouth. Then he goes. Thus she is rid of all her lovers,PART III.NIGHT."GOOD night, good sleep, good rest from sorrow,To these that shall not have good morrow;Ye gods, be gentle to all these.Nay, if death be not, how shall they be?Nay, is there help in heaven? it may beAll things and lords of things shall cease."CHAPTER IWHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.AFTER Life's little hot day, comes Death's long cool night; whether of the two is the pleasanter? Well, we shall know anon. Oh! patient friends, you have come with me so far, come with me yet a little further. I will not keep you. long. Already the shadows stretch themselves; the faint-coloured even cometh. Summer is here again—early summer, early June, as when first, oh reader, you and I met and panted together through the "endless days," when even night brought not darkness. Down in England, the meadows have a lilac tinge over them, from the ripe heavy-headed grasses, and the horse-chestnut flower's spikes have changed into little prickly green balls. But we are not in England, oh reader, you and I; we are in Switzerland, in the high cold valley of the Engadin.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.We are at the end of our day's journey, have stiffly descended from the huge dusty carriage in which we have crampedly sat all the long and shining day. To-morrow we shall reach our final destination, Pontresina. Meanwhile here we are, up among the mountains, the torrents, the pines, at this loveliest village of Bergun. An hour has passed since our arrival, and we have dined, if you can apply that sacred word to the empty form of tapping with our knives a black boned chicken's skeleton, and sipping a nauseous wine of the country, black as Tartarus, and with a flavour that is agreeably compounded of pills, slate-pencil, and ink. There is no denying—degrading as it is to the supremacy of mind over body—that a bad dinner has a depressing effect. Not one of us three but feels cross and empty. Sylvia tries to sit upon a hard-bottomed, straight-backed chair, as if it were one of her own padded easy ones, and fails. Lenore stalks to the window and looks over the balcony. I think that people grow after they are thought grown up, oftener than is usually supposed. Lenore has certainly grown within the last six months, or perhaps it is only her loss of flesh that gives her such a tall look. She used to have a good deal of the shapely solidity that constitutes a person's claim to be a fine woman —rather a butcher's term of commendation, at best;—shapely she must always be, but fine she is no longer; only very slender and willowy. I pick up the visitors' book, read the dreary waggeries, the lame rhymes, the consequential commendations of bed and board. I come to the last entry:
Mr. Tomkins, London.Mrs. Tomkins, London.Miss Tomkins, London.Miss L. Tomkins, London.Mr. J. T. Tomkins, London.Miss Harris, London."Exceedingly pleased with the accommodation at this hotel—the attendance excellent, rooms most clean, and food better than at any other hotel in the Engadin."I read this aloud. "There is a prospect for us!""You are not serious?" cries Sylvia, starting upright in her chair, and opening eyes as round as marbles in unaffected dismay. "That is not really there! You are only joking!""Read for yourself," I answer, handing the book to her, while I joined our junior in the window. Well, one must send all appetite to one's eyes; there is at least plenty of food for them. The pearly evening sky, cut by the cold lilac peaks; the mountains, that wear always round their waist and feet a girdle of great pines; a sombre army—rising, pointed top above pointed top, in their endless fadeless green; the rough torrent course, that furrows the hill's face, like the traces of a tearful agony; an evening glimmer of meadow flowers; a flash of bright water. And right under us the little village street, the deep-roofed low houses, the tiny casements, out of which the lavish pinks and flowered picotees are hanging; the queer sententious inscription on the chalet nearest us:—
"DAS HAUS STET IN GOTTES HAND,JAN PEDER GRIGORIBIN ICH GENAND."And is not that Jan Peder himself, sitting outside, on a log of wood? He is old and withered, and very much the worse for wear.Insensibly I begin to forget the void feeling that ruffled my temper five minutes ago, as I listen to the soothing drip, drip, of the two-spouted pump, that is always pouring into a wooden trough. The pump seems to be the rendezvous of the village; the leisurely chatter, in this odd mongrel Romansch tongue, rises soft and subdued to our ears. A tinkling of slow bells, as a herd of lovely smoke-coloured cows come slowly treading down the street, and stoop their sleek necks to drink. If one could see the inside of these folks' lives no doubt one would find that they were as basely grovelling as those of our own lower orders—lives probably brightened only by garlic and beer; but looking now at the outside of them, on this quiet purple evening, it seems as if one had come upon a little sudden patch of old-world innocent Arcadia."I wish that Jan Peder Gregori would go indoors," says Lenore, gravely; "it must be very bad for him, being out so late.""There must be some one here beside us," I say, leaning over the balcony, and pointing to a second and smaller dusty carriage, drawn up behind our great lumbering ark."A man, too," says Lenore, with lazy interest, "if a portmanteau be a sufficient proof of masculinity.""It is such a bran-new one, too," continue I, laughing, "that he must be either a just-married man, or a man just about to be married.""Who was it said that a new flannel petticoat was an infallible sign of a bride?" asks Lenore, languidly. "Does the same hold good of men and portmanteaus? I wish we could see his initials, but the hat-box hides them."Now that I think of it," I say, meditatively, "I have a vision of having seen vestiges of food on that table in the corner; let us make Kolb find out who he is, for by his luggage, I feel sure that he is an Englishman."I am right. An Englishman he is, name unknown; he has come down from St. Moritz, and is on his homeward road; he is to set off at cock-crow to-morrow, and he went out walking only five minutes before our arrival. This is all the information we obtain, all the food we get to keep alive our faint and nagging interest."Do you mean to stay fustily indoors all evening?" asks Lenore presently, with a yawn, "because I do not. I am sick of Jan Peder, and the pump, and the goats; I shall go and explore , like Mrs. Elton in 'Emma.'""Do not!" cry I, hastily and dissuasively. "You know that going out when the dew is falling always brings on your cough.""Pooh!" replies she, lightly. "What matter if it does? I am going to set up such a stock of strength at Pontresina that it would be a thousand pities not to be a little worse before I get there.""At least put on your"——I begin, but she interrupts me."Did you ever know me to take advice in all your life?" she asks, with a petulant gesture. "I should not wonder if I met our unknown friend of the new portmanteau; I am not sure that I am not going to look for him. Au revoir!"I gaze after her and sigh, with a line of "Elaine" running in my head—
"Being so very wilful, you must go."CHAPTER I
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.
"There cannot be a pinch in death more sharp than this is."AFTER all she puts a shawl over her head, it is not a very thick one, but neither is the mountain air very keen on this softly-creeping summer night. It is red, and the old men and the women sitting in the doorways of the dark little houses stare at it admiringly. She passes amongst them quickly—past the rickety little wooden balconies, the piles of firewood, the numberless odd little casements, like windows in a doll's house—it is not them that she wants—till, at a sudden turn, the village is behind her, out of sight—the laughing, leisurely, chattering village—and the river that she sought is before her. A great bold hill-shoulder rises in front of her against the dark night-sky, and beside her the river boils and maddens along in riotous white play; it is so swift that the eye cannot follow it; it tosses high its cold spray, and cries, exultingly, "Oh, snow! I am as white as you" Nobody sees her—she is all alone; even the broad-faced moon has not yet looked in silver and pearl over the hill. When one is alone one does many foolish things. Lenore throws herself on her knees on a flat stone close to the brink—dashed, indeed, by the stream's stormy white dust—and speaks out loud to it:"Oh, good, kind little river! will you drown memory for me?—will you drown Paul?"Lenore is not always thinking of Paul; sometimes for almost a day
she forgets him; but, long as it is since he cast her off', and short
as was the time during which she possessed him, the impulse still
holds her, on seeing any beautiful thing, to say, "I will show it to
Paul;" on hearing any witty thing, "I will tell it to Paul." Paul was
a cross fellow, cruel and cold, as she sometimes tells herself; but he
would have loved this mad river, biting and ravening with fierce
foam-teeth against the dark boulders that lie in its bed, and crying
violently to them, "Let me pass!" If he were here now, among the
yellow trefoil, his arm round her waist and her head on his
shoulder!—they two standing, in a dumb ecstasy, with only the
larches waving their green plumes above their heads, and the water's
endless restless roar, that ceases not day nor night, January nor
June, making a loud hubbub at their feet —alone with the river,
the mountains, and God! She can almost feel his arm; she turns her
eyes to look up into his, but then the dream flies; there are no kind eyes to look into—there is no Paul—none!She starts up hastily, and hurries on. The gorge narrows; there is only room for her and for the river—the panting fury of the stream. "Oh river! you take my breath away. Tarry a little; I cannot keep up with you!" But the river makes answer: "I cannot tarry; I have an errand into the great grey sea." On and on, on and on she saunters, not heeding how far nor whither, until at length she conies to a slight hand-bridge of planks, that gives and vibrates beneath her. There she stands, and leans over the slender railing, gazing, with eyes that try in vain to keep up with it, at the swirling torrent. The evening is both darkening and lightening: darkening, for the sun is gone further and further away; lightening, for the moon is coming—yea, come. Already she has washed the hills' faces with her cool silver flood: now her pearl-white feet have reached—have lightly trodden on the water—the wonderful water! Can it be all the same—the same when it lies in opal sleep, and when it plunges against and angrily smites its drenched rocks? If one had but sonic one—some dear person—to show it all to!After crossing the bridge the path she has hitherto followed takes a sharp turning round the spur of a hill, and is immediately lost to sight. As she stands, still leaning over the rickety hand-rail, and watching the moon-coloured bubbles, she hears a footstep coming along this unseen path. It is growing late; the moon is rising high; this place is inconceivably lonely. Her first impulse is to turn and run homewards, but her second contradicts it. "Why should she stir? Bah! it is probably some innocent rough peasant, clumping home to bed in his deep-eaved chalet . He will stare at her cloak, and probably give her a Romansch "good-night," to which she will be puzzled to respond; so she stays. Nearer and nearer comes the footstep, and her heart beats a trifle quicker than its wont. Her eyes are fixed on the corner which will give to view the owner of this slow and intermittent tread. Here he comes, out of the rock-shadow into the light! He is not a peasant! He is—surely, he is an Englishman! He is— Paul! Oh, God in heaven! it cannot be! Men dress so much alike—there is such a deceptive resemblance between all the men of a class at a little distance. He comes a step or two nearer, then stops and looks upwards. The moon shines down full and white on his upturned face—the honest, shrewd face, that is neither gentle nor beautiful. She sees his cool calm eyes glitter in the moonbeams. He is carelessly dressed, without any necktie. His strong throat rises bare and muscular, and his hands are buried deep in the pockets of the old Dinan shooting-jacket. Do you think that she faints or topples over into the water, or screams, or laughs hysterically, or calls out loud? Not she! She only stands still, with one slight hand hard grasping the hand-rail, and with a heart whose loud pulsations drown the voice of the triumphant foamy stream, waiting for her heaven to come to her. Has Death let her slip by him, having seen her bitter pain? Is she already in the blessed land? Paul is so busy moon-gazing that he is close to her—his foot is upon the plank—before he perceives her. Then he jumps almost out of his clothes—out of his Dinan shooting-jacket—out of his skin."LENORE!!!"She could not have cried " Paul! " in answer if you had offered her all the kingdoms of the world as a bribe. He stoops his tall head till his eager face is close to hers; he stares hard into her eyes; he even stretches out his hand and touches her red cloak, to assure himself that she is real. Yes, it is no ghost-woman; it is a real Lenore, with a face much paler, indeed, than the Lenore he remembers—a face grave with the gravity of intense emotion, touched with the trouble of overpowering wonder—that is looking back at him with wide and lovely eyes."God Almighty! who would have thought of seeing you here?"In the accents of intense surprise it is difficult to ascertain the presence or absence of joy or sorrow. One would be puzzled to say whether Paul were very glad or very grieved at this meeting at the world's end with his old love."Lenore!— is it Lenore? " (again narrowly scanning her white and quivering face). "How, in the name of wonder, did you come here?"It is stupid to be so tongueless, is not it?—standing dumb, with hanging head, like a child playing at being shy. But she seems to have lost the art of framing words."Will not you speak to me?" he continues, with an eager hesitation, mistaking the cause of her speechlessness; "will not you shake hands with me?"She puts out her hand in a moment: does he feel how it is shaking as it lies in his cool clasp?"You—you—are not alone here?" (involuntarily glancing at her left hand). "You are with—with"——"No, I am not alone," she answers, speaking every word very slowly and carefully, as if not quite sure whether the right words would come; "Jemima and Sylvia"——"Jemima! " he says, pronouncing the word with a lingering emphasis, as if it carried him back into memory, and smiling rather pensively.Both are silent for a few moments;—only two voices are heard: the river's loud hoarse one, as it keeps calling always to the rocks and the dumb green pines, and the grasshopper's sharp and shrill—and infinitely content. If it could but last for ever! They two standing on that narrow bridge, on a sheet of silver, the river—all silver, too—tearing and roaring below them; the larches softly tossing their small green feathers; the unsleeping grasshopper singing his pleasant song; and they two looking kindly into each other's eyes. But when could one ever say to any happy moment, as Joshua said to the docile sun, "Stand thou still?" He will not stand still; he could not if he would; he is jostled away by his pushing younger brothers."How often I have wondered whether I should ever meet you again," says Paul, presently, with a long sigh; "after all, the world is small—and if I did, where and how? Certainly, this is the last place that ever would have entered my head; and yet, only five minutes ago I was thinking of you.""Were you?" she says, softly, while her eyes shine gently back at him, like beautifullest dew-wet flowers through happy years!"You have forgiven me?" he says, anxiously catching hold of her other hand, and holding both in the same loose friendly clasp in which he had before held the one. "We are friends, are not we? At peace?"She has no hands to hide her face; she cannot hinder him from seeing how her drooped eyes brim over—how the heavy great tears are rolling down over her smart scarlet cloak. IN the tender gentleness of her small wet face there is not much war."Do not cry," he says, looking surprised and miserable, as a man always does when a woman unexpectedly weeps. >"What is there to cry about? I am not" (smiling rather awkwardly) "going to scold you, this time. You know I always was a good hand at lecturing, was not I? Often and often since I have wished that I had not been quite such a good one. . . .I can hardly believe that it is you," he says, after a pause, again interrupting the river's and the grasshopper's duet. "What have you been doing to yourself? Somehow you are different. You are too old to grow, I suppose; people do not grow at nineteen; but—but—surely you are thinner than you used to be? Have you been ill? Are you ill now?""Not very," she answers, lightly, "anybody else would have made a trifle of it, but you know I always make the most of things, and I have not much of a constitution—so they tell me."He does not ask any other question for the moment."For my part, I am glad," she continues, with a restless laugh. "I never could see what use a good constitution was to anyone, except to make them suffer more, and die harder when their time came.""I suppose you have been threatening to break a bloodvessel again," he says, with a smiling allusion to what she had told him on one of the earliest days of their acquaintance."Good God! can that be only a year ago?""Only a year ago!" she echoes, dreamily. "But a year is a long time.""You are pale, too," he says, proceeding with his scrutiny; "are you always pale now? The only time that I remember you as pale as you are now was that night when I upset you into the Rance! How wet you were! How the water ripped from your long hair! I did not believe till then that women really had such long hair. I can see you now!" His grey eyes look kind and almost wistful as he thus travels back into the pretty dead past."Can you?" she says, almost inaudibly."It was all a mistake, I suppose," he continues, sighing,"a blunder—a bungle—but it was pleasant while it lasted, was not it?"She cannot speak for tears."Lenore," he says, after another silence, in a tone of stronger excitement than any that he has yet used, "I am going to tell you something. Often and often I have wondered whether I should ever have the chance of telling you. Sometimes I have wished that I should, and sometimes I have hoped that I should not. It does not much matter what you think of me now, one way or another, but I do not think that it will improve your opinion of either my wisdom or my humility. Do you remember that last letter you sent me?"She is not pale now; he cannot accuse her of it. No rose in any midsummer garden was ever so red; and her streaming eyes flash in the mild moonlight with the old angry spirit. Is he going to twit her with that poor little overture that miscarried so piteously?"I did not believe in it," he goes on, still in hot excitement. "I was sore and mad from your galling bitter words. Lenore" (almost entreatingly), "why do you let your tongue cut like a knife? I thought it was only a flirting manœuvre to get me back and make a fool of me a second time. I hate being made a fool of! Nobody had ever taken the trouble to do it before. I hate being trodden upon. I like to walk upright and go my own way.""Well?""You remember the answer I sent—I hope you burnt it—I am not proud of it," reddening through all his sun tan. "Well, when it was gone I read your letter over again, and by dint of poring over it line by line I grew to think that there was a true ring in it. Lenore, it was very clever of you! I do not know how you managed to get that true ring. I began to think of—of—the dear old time" (his voice, though he is a man, shakes a little). "I began—you will laugh at me for thinking of such a trifle at such a moment—to remember the old blue gown and Huelgoat."She turns away, and leans over the bridge; and, unseen by him, unseen by anyone, her tears hotly drop into the cold river and are swallowed by it."I recollected things you used to say," he continues, with a pensive smile, given rather to the past than the present. "You had such a pretty fond way of saying things—well" (dashing his hand across his forehead, and abruptly changing his tone) "the upshot of it was that I resolved to ask you to—to—to—kiss and make friends in short—I suppose one may as well word it in that childish way as any other. I had even" (beginning to laugh harshly, for one's laughs at one's own expense are rarely melodious) "got a new pen, squared my elbows, and sat down to write to ,you." She is trembling all over, and panting, as one breathless from a long race."Why did not you?—why did not you?" she cries, with almost a wail."Why did not I? " he repeats, looking at her with unfeigned astonishment. "I wonder at your asking that. Why? Because at that very moment, not a week after you had composed that triumph of pathos" (with a bitter sneer), "I heard of your engagement to Scrope. I saw how much the true ring was worth then; I believe I laughed. There is always something to be thankful for, and I was heartily thankful that I had not written. There is no use in eating more dirt than one can help in this world, is there?""But I am not engaged now!" she cries, passionately. "I can hardly believe that I ever was really; people exaggerate things so in the telling. I think it was always more play than earnest.""More play than earnest! " he repeats, in utter and blank astonishment. "Why, I understood that the wedding day had come—that you were all dressed—and that it was only put off on account of your having been taken suddenly ill!""Yes," she answers, incoherently; "thank God, I was ill, very ill; that was what saved me! Thank God! Thank God!""Saved you!" he repeats, looking at her with unlimited wonder. "How do you mean? Surely it was your own doing? It was only put off, was not it?#x2014;it is still to be?""Never! never!" she cries, wildly. "Who can have told you such things? It was all a farce from beginning to end; it never was anything serious. I—I—think I must have been a little off my head.""And you are not engaged to Scrope?" (with an accent of extreme surprise)."Not I," she answers, vehemently; "do not suggest any thing so dreadful.""Nor to any one else?""Anyone else? " she echoes, scornfully. "To whom else should I be? Must I always be engaged to some one?"Now that it is all clear between them, now that all clouds of misconception have been swept away, now that they are all alone here in the moonlight, surely he will take her in his arms. Her head will rest on the shoulder of the old jacket, where it has so often confidently lain before. But he only
turns away with something like a curse, and says, half under his breath, "God! what lies people tell!" A silence. When next Paul speaks it is in a constrained and sedulously governed voice."I did not bless either you or him that day, I can tell you —not that that did you much harm; but this was quite at the first, quite. When a thing has sense and justice in it one soon gives up kicking against it. I have long given up kicking against this; I have grown so wise" (laughing, nervously) "that I acquiesce in it contentedly.""Do you?" she says, and her throat seems to have grown suddenly dry, and to send forth only harsh and ugly sounds. "Perhaps—perhaps—you will come round to him yet," says Paul, speaking with a very white face, and a tremor in his deep voice, "in time, you know; time does surprising things—things that one would not believe! You—you— might do worse."A fiery searing pain goes through her heart."You are very good," she says, while the flame of her hot eyes dries her tears, "but I really do not see what business it is of yours.""None," he answers, almost humbly; "none! I beg your pardon for having said it, but you know you consented just now that we should be friends, and friends may take an interest in each other's future, may not they?"She does not answer; she is listening to the grasshopper—his sharp treble song seems to have grown very dismal all of a sudden."Lenore," cries the other, impulsively, again catching her small hands, "before we say anything more, let me tell you —I must tell you—about—about—my future.""Well?"Her eyes, dry now, achingly dry, are staring back at him, wild with an unnamed fear."My people have been up at St. Moritz," he says, going on rapidly with his story, "so have I, for the last two months; I am hurrying home now as fast as I can, to get things straight. I am going—perhaps you have heard it already—I am going to be married.""When one receives a mortal blow, sometimes one does not feel much pain at the first—so they tell me; one is only stunned. I do not think that Lenore feels much pain, only her wits go a woolgathering. Not for long, however. Even though one is lightheaded from extremest agony, one has still the womanly instinct to draw a decent cloak over one's ugly yawning wounds. Not much more than the usual interval between question and answer has elapsed, before some one—some kind spirit, I think, who has crept inside her cold and quivering body—speaks in almost Lenore's voice—speaks with a stiff little smile:"To your cousin?""Yes, to my cousin."A little trifling pause, that would not be noticed, so short is it, in any ordinary conversation; a pause, during which Lenore is fighting more fiercely than ever the typical lioness fought for her whelps—fighting for a voice, for a laugh, for civil careless words; and he or she who in one of these mortal battles fights strongly, with heart and soul, with decency and self-respect on his or her side, mostly overcomes. Only it takes a great deal of lint to heal the wounds afterwards. Lenore overcomes. But the victory is hardly complete; she cannot let him see her face. She leans over the bridge side, as she leant five minutes ago to hide her happy tears; but there are no tears to hide now."The ideal girl!" she says, with a sort of laugh. "The woman with eyes like a shot partridge's—rather dull, but very loving! You see I remember all about her."Paul does not speak; he also leans over the bridge, and there is not much of the triumphant bridegroom in the eyes that are idly fixed on a pointed rock, grey, and shining with wet moonbeams, which every minute the stream deluges."If you remember, I always prophesied it," says the girl, feeling her words come more readily; "only, like Cassandra, nobody believed my prophecies.""Why did you prophesy it?" he asks almost angrily."There was no sense in such a prophecy—no ground for it. There was not such a thought in anyone's head—no, nor ever would have——"He stops suddenly. She does not speak, only she shakes her head gently. Her wits have come quite back; she has buried the pain in a shallow hole, out of sight, for the moment. When this is over—when he is gone—it will shake off the light covering of its temporary grave, and rise up like a giant. Then again she will have to fight; but now for the moment she has won a most numb quiet."Why do you shake your head?" he asks abruptly. "Does it mean that you do not believe me? At least in the old time you used to give me credit for speaking truth—sometimes too much truth to please you; why should I deceive you now?— now that no word that either you or I could speak could bring us one jot nearer each other?"Still she only leans her arms on the rail of the bridge—leans heavily on it—and her drooped head sinks low down."When was it that you prophesied it?" he asks almost in a whisper, coming nearer her. "Was it at Huelgoat, or at Chateaubriand's tomb, as we stood and watched the waves and the seagulls? If you did, I compliment you; you were indeed far-seeing." (No answer.) "I never was one to care violently for anybody—never. The game never seemed to me worth the candle. It does not sound well, but I had always liked myself best; but—somehow I like to say it now, though there is not much sense in it (shake your head as much as you please)—but, before God, I did care for you beyond measure in my way—it was not a very pleasant way—only I tried my best to hide it. I knew your amiable peculiarity of never valuing what you could get; but I did love you—I did—I did! (rising into an emphasis and excitement most unlike him as he ends)."Did you?" she says faintly, a little spark of animation coming into her face and into her dull eyes. "I thought you liked me; afterwards they all said you did not.""Well, I love no one beyond measure now, I suppose," he says hastily, pushing the hair off his forehead with a cross and jerky movement. "My affections are quite within bounds—well in hand" (smiling ironically)."The other was the pleasantest while it lasted, but no doubt this is the healthier state." (Still silence.) "It is much better as it is," he says presently, speaking vehemently, and as if more with a view to convincing himself than her. "If we had married then, how we should have hated each other by now! Did we ever look at anything from the same point of view?—and you are not a woman to be shaped to a husband's liking. Good God! how I laughed at that idiot West's notion of moulding you! You would not have given in, neither should I. Yes, we should have been miserable.""Miserable—yes, miserable— most miserable," she echoes very slowly and mechanically; but whether she applies the word to the hypothetical case he puts, or to her own actual one, is not clear even to herself."You agree with me?" he says sharply, as if not much gratified by the discovery of her acquiescence. "Of course! I knew you did. Yes, it is better for both of us; specially better for you .""Much better," she says, speaking with an immense effort, and even accomplishing a laugh. "As you say, when did we ever look at anything from the same point of view, even during the short time we were together?—how short! how short!" (uttering the words in a dragging, dreary way). "Hardly a day passed that we did not quarrel. Yes, it was pleasant at the time— quite pleasant. I suppose that your—your—cousin" (with a tight, strained smile) "will not mind my allowing that , will she? But no doubt we shall both do better—I, as you say, especially."A little pause."Do you remember," he says suddenly, "that day at St.Malo; how I"——She interrupts. "I remember nothing," she says firmly, though her pale lips tremble. "I have the worst memory in the world." He looks mortified, and relapses into silence. "Tell me," she says presently, with a nervous excitement in her manner, "tell me all about yourself ; that is much more interesting. When is it to be—what day exactly? I should like to think of you, you know—to drink your health, and" (laughing hysterically) "I suppose I ought to send you a present, ought not I?""For God's sake, do not!" he cries hastily, "unless you can send me your bad memory; I should thank you for that.""You never quarrel with her, I suppose?" continues the girl, drawing strength even from the very intensity of her own misery to speak collectedly, and even smilingly. "It is all smooth sailing, like a boat on a duck-pond! No doubt you can mould her, like a piece of clay, into whatever shape you like."Paul reddens. "She is a good girl," he says moodily; "and when I am away from you I know that I shall be happy with her—at least" (sighing heavily) "I ought to be; at all events, I shall have peace—that is something. All my life before I met you I thought it was everything." (After a pause) "Thank God she does not know how to sneer.""And when is it to be?" she asks, still smiling; "you know you have not told me; tell me. I wish to know the day—the very day.""Immediately," he says, feverishly; "the sooner the better. What is there to wait for?""Well, I will think of you," she says, commanding her voice with great difficulty, and stretching out her trembling hand kindly to him; "yes, I will—that is" (breaking into an unsteady laugh), "if—if—I do not forget.""Do nothing of the kind," he cries, roughly pressing the slender cold fingers; "neither then nor ever! Let us make u compact, never to think of each other again. What pleasant thoughts can we have of one another? Least of all think of me on that day," he continues after an interval, speaking with the signs of strong excitement. "I ask it of you as a favour; if your face comes between me and the parson" (laughing harshly) "I shall not be very ready with my responses! Let me have one good look at you!" (after another pause, while his breath comes quick and short), "just one. It would be a pity quite to forget the face of the handsomest woman one ever knew, would not it? There!—There!" There is the pallor of a mad longing on his cold shrewd face, as he stands staring and stammering in the moonlight. "Good-bye, lovely eyes!" he says, in a hoarse whisper; "good-bye, lovely lips! you gave me no peace while I had you; but, yet I wish—oh God! how I wish"—He stops abruptly. His mad fond words have brought back the solace of all the sorrowful to her smarting eyes; they are shining with the soft dimness of tender tears, as they grow to his harsh and altered face."Wish nothing," she says, gently. "I have wished many things in my time—that you were dead; that I myself were; that one could have things twice over, or not at all—but you see they have none of them come true.""Let me, at least, wish one thing," he cries, violently. "Whether you let me, or no, I will l wish it! I will pray, and urgently entreat God for it—that this—this hell, that is just half a step off heaven, may not come over again! Lenore—pretty Lenore—what ill-luck makes us both live in England? What security have we that we shall not come across each other again, and yet again, and yet again?""There is not much danger," she says, calmly—"at least, not yet awhile: we are not going home; we are going up to Pontresina for many months—for all the summer.""To Pontresina?" he exclaims, brusquely. "What are you going there for? Health or pleasure? Not health , surely?" peering at her again with an anxious suspicion."Partly," she answers; and then, trying to speak lightly and merrily, "I suppose being over-lively and over-amused wears one out as much as over-work or over-grief; I was so gay last winter—so gay—that I danced all the flesh off my bones."He makes no comment on this announcement."I am going to lay up such a store of strength against next winter," she continues, laughing almost loudly, "for I mean to be gayer than ever then—gayer than ever."The contrast between the words she is uttering and the black devastation that is laying waste her soul, strikes her with such bitter force that she turns away sharply."Do you?" he says, fiercely. "I daresay! What is it to me? Why do you tell me?"Higher and higher the fair broad moon has been sailing; she has reached her zenith; now, nothing escapes her; every larch feather, every yeasty crown of froth, every daisy and fine grass blade, she has daintily washed."I am going," Paul says, with rough suddenness. "What am I waiting for? Can you tell me that? If I stayed here all to-night and to-morrow, and the night after, what would be changed? This vile stream would still be thundering on, and we should still be standing here, eating our hearts out with longing for things that, if we had them, would not give us content.""Yes," she says, and her own pretty womanly voice is almost as harsh as his, "go! Who is keeping you?"His face is white—so white—with the pallor of unwilling passion, and he is trembling all over. "And must I leave you here, all alone in this desolate place?" he asks, in a husky whisper; "all alone, as I found you?"And she echoes, "All alone!""You are not frightened?"Again she laughs, though the muscles about her face seem tight and stiff. "What should I be frightened at?"Their hands are interlocked, and their eyes are fixed on each other's faces."This is the third time we have said 'Good-bye,'" he says, indistinctly. "The last was bad enough, but, for my part, I liked it better than this; and the first—Lenore, do you remember the first on the steamboat at St. Malo?""I remember nothing," she says, breaking out into impetuous passion, while the blood runs headlong to her cheeks. "How many times must I tell you that it is an accursed word? I have torn it out of my vocabulary! I always look on—on—now" (speaking feverishly). "Surely there must be something pleasant ahead somewhere—somewhere!""Perhaps," he says, gloomily; " but one thing I am sure of—oh Lenore, you are sure of it, too—and that is, that there is nothing so pleasant ahead as what we have left behind!"These are his last words.CHAPTER III.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.AND now we have done with Bergun; in all probability we shall see its little eaves and deep doll's-house windows never again. How happily might one (one is not equivalent to I here) spend a honeymoon among its rocks, and pine-slopes, and flowered fields, always supposing that one had brought one's own food with one. I confess to an opinion that the chicken's black skeleton, and the untold nauseousness of the Sasseila, would cool the ardour of the warmest pair that ever yawned and fondled through the conventional month. We are still, however, in the foodless land of the Engadin; we have reached Pontresina. It is a long name is not it? But the name is longer than the place; it is only a cluster of houses, white as the defacer of all beauty, whitewash, can make them. If I had the world's reins in my hand I would have put him that invented whitewash to even a feller death than that which I would have inflicted on the twin demons who brought up gunpowder and electricity from hell's lowest pit. At the foot of a long stern hill the village humbly crouches, while round it stand a silent solemn conclave of great mountains—white snow spires reaching heavenwards God's church steeples; while far off, a grey-green glacier dimly shines. Oh, mighty mountains, you coldly awe me with your "aloof and loveless permanence."The trees cluster in the valley, but the great hills stand bareheaded before God. Here we are at the little hotel "De la Croix Blanche ," having taken root among the whitewash. We have been here a week, and we have yawned a good deal. The season has hardly begun—at least for the English—and it has rained an infinity. We have even had the doubtful pleasure of seeing flakes of unseasonable snow. There are no books to be got, and we have exhausted our few Tauchnitz novels. To-day we have grown tired of our own sitting-room, and have strayed objectlessly up to the general salon at the top of the house. It is a bare light room, whitewashed, of course. A carpet would be pleasant to-day, but no rag of carpet is there; only aggressively clean squares of deal, intersected with red pine. There has been a wedding party in the house all day; their all-pervading din and to us incomprehensible Romansch mirth have had a large share in driving us upwards. It is afternoon now, and, thank God, they are gone. We have been standing out in the balcony, watching their departure, as they pack themselves into their shabby hooded carriages, garlanded with dusty green wreaths. Yes, they are gone; the arm of each gawky youth, with ostentatious candour, clasping the solid waist of his maiden. Now that they are gone, Sylvia retires inside, grumbling and shivering."Had not you better go in too?" I say to Lenore; "it is very damp. You will never got well if you do not take more care of yourself.""Why should I get well?" she says, querulously. "I do not want to get well; what object in life should I have if I were well? Being ill is something to do. I can be interested in my symptoms and my tonics; I would not be well for worlds."I look at her compassionately—at her sharpened profile; it is getting a look of pinched and suffering discontent. Where is its lovely debonair roundness? Alas! even since we left Bergun it has been slipping—oh, how quickly!—away."You may get me a shawl if you like," she says, presently, "and a chair."I re-enter the salon to fetch them. Sylvia is sitting with the landlord's book of dried plants before her, lamentably turning over the leaves. At the best of times nothing can be more melancholy than a dried flower—a colourless skeleton, without any likeness to itself. One ought to be in the best of spirits to look at such a collection as is now engaging Mrs. Prodger's slack attention. I return with the shawl—a heavy and warm one—and wrap it about my youngest sister, and then remain by her side, vacantly gazing at the view. The rain has ceased, but the clouds still hide the top of the glacier mountain; one tiny cloudlet has lost its way, and is wandering about near the hill foot, slowly evaporating, and losing its thin life. The balcony where we are is much higher than the opposite houses; it can look magnificently down on their roofs. They are a queer little row; not in a line at all, but each seeming to be shoving and elbowing its neighbour, in order to get forwardest; in the narrow street below, a man is leaning against a doorpost, smoking a long pipe; another is sweeping the round stones of the pavement with a besom.How can one possibly get up any interest in either of them?"I do not think Kolb behaved quite honestly about this place," says Sylvia's voice, dolorously, from the interior; "somehow one never can get foreigners to speak quite the truth—he certainly told me distinctly, when I asked him, that one might always wear demi-saison dresses here."We are both too much depressed to join even in abuse of Kolb's mendacity. Several more leaves turned over; a heavy sigh."I wish the "Websters were here; they talked of going abroad this summer. I will write and advise them to come here.""Rather a case of the fox that had lost his tail," I say, laughing dismally."Tell them not to bring any demi-saison dresses," subjoins Lenore, sarcastically.Several moments of forlorn silence. Sylvia has finished her book, and with a vague and mistaken idea that we have got some little piece of amusement that we are privately worrying without giving her information of it, she issues forth a second time and joins us. We are all in a row, like three storks standing on one leg on a housetop. The cloudlet has quite melted; there is not a trace of it. I wish I could melt too. The man has stopped sweeping. Suddenly—no, not suddenly—gradually a sound of distant wheels and bells salutes our ears. A vehicle of some kind is approaching at a brisk trot from the direction of Samaden."Coming here , do you think?" I say, with a spark of animation shooting, as I feel, from my lack-lustre eye."No such luck," answers Lenore, gloomily."No doubt it is going on to 'The Krone," says Sylvia peevishly. "Everybody goes to 'The Krone.' I wish we had gone there. It was all Kolb's doing."The bells ring louder, the horses' hoofs stamp the stones more distinctly; it is in sight. Yes, a carriage, twin brother to our own late one, only that it is shut on account of the weather; four horses, piles of luggage, dusty tarpaulin. A moment of breathless suspense; we all lean over the balcony as far as our necks and heads will take us. Yes!—no!— yes! Far down in the street, right under our eager eyes, it is pulling up."My heart was in my mouth!" says Lenore, smiling a broad smile of relief. "I thought it was going on to "The Krone.'""We are too high up here," I say, excitedly; "we should see better from our own windows."Hereupon we all rush violently, helter-skelter, downstairs to our sitting-room, which is on a lower floor. Only one window gives upon the street; it is small, but we all huddle into it. M. Enderlin, the landlord, letting down the steps; Madame Enderlin courtseying; Marie and Menga hovering near, ready to carry out parcels."Maid , of course," I say, as the first occupant slowly emerges. "She looks rather wet; evidently she was in the coupè with the courier, and they only took her inside because it rained."A man's legs and a wideawake, then a great deal of golden hair and a plump smart woman's figure. Being above them, we see none of their faces."Nothing looks so nice for travelling as those French lawns trimmed with unbleached Cluny," says Sylvia, with pensive envy; "they never show the dust.""Bride and bridegroom," say L "What a bore! They will not do us much good; they will be swallowed up in one another.""They look like people , however," says Sylvia, by which expression she means to intimate a favourable opinion of the new-comers' gentility. "If they are nice," she continues, "I mean, really people that one would like to know—and Kolb could easily find out that—we might make a party to go up Piz Languard with them.""There is some one else with them," cry I, eagerly. "Surely they cannot have taken their parents to chaperone them!""Like the people at Dinan," says Lenore, drily, "who went a wedding tour á l'anglaise , and took the bride's mother and the bridegroom's with them."A fat but nicely-booted female foot slowly treads the step, and then the ground; it and its fellow support a form of shapely mature portliness. Having descended, this last figure lifts its face to look at the little cross swinging out as the inn sign in the street."Good heavens!" cries Lenore, emphatically. "Why that pious ejaculation?" say I gaily, my spirits having gone up fifty per cent, at the prospect of human companionship."Did not you see?" breaks out Lenore excitedly. "Do not you know who they are?" "Not I. How should I?""Why, old Mrs. Scrope, to be sure—Charlie's mother." "What! all three of them?" I say derisively. "My dear child, you are dreaming.""Impossible!" says Sylvia, straining her little neck out of window to catch a last glimpse; but they are gone. "You have such a mania for seeing likenesses that no one else can. How could you tell? one only saw their backs.""And should not I know my own mother-in-law's back among a hundred?" says Lenore, with sardonic mirth."Oh, if it was only her back," I say, with a sigh of relief, "I do not mind; all old women's backs are much alike.""Are they?" says Lenore, with a grim smile. "I do not agree with you; there are backs and backs; but I do not confine myself to backs—I saw her face , and my ex-mother-in-law's it was, I am sorry to say.""And the other two were the married daughter and her husband, I suppose?" I say, a painful conviction that Lenore is speaking truth forcing itself on my mind. "Now that I think of it, there was something familiar to me in the broad gold arrow she wore in her hair."Silence for a few moments, while we stare at one another blankly."I wish they had gone on to 'The Krone' now," says Lenore drily."If we wait to go up Piz Languard till we go up with them," I say with a vexed laugh, "we shall remain some time at the foot, I think.""How glad they will be to see us," cries Lenore, breaking out into violent merriment, that does not, however, express any equally violent enjoyment, "considering that last time they saw us they left us with the Elizabethan sentiment that 'God might forgive us, but they never would,' or words to that effect.""I declare I do not know what you are laughing at," says Sylvia pettishly, with her eyes full of tears; "it is a great thing to be easily amused; as for me, I see nothing amusing in it! This sort of thing never happens to anyone but me; really good people, that one would have liked to know en intimes——"Listen," I say, leaving the window and approaching the door, "they are coming up! I hear Madame Enderlin's voice.""We shall be always meeting them on the stairs," says Sylvia lachrymosely, "and I declare I shall no more know-how to behave—very likely they will take their cue from me —whether to stop and shake hands, or bow and pass on——""Stop and shake hands with the man—bow and pass on to the women," says Lenore promptly; "men are always kind.""As for you " retorts Sylvia, turning upon her with a tearful spitefulness, "in your case there can be no difficulty; they will cut you , of course, out and out— dead —and really, considering all things, one cannot blame them.""Of course they will," replies Lenore calmly, though her colour deepens; "I should think very meanly of them if they did not.""And you " (speaking very rapidly, while the large tears still roll helplessly down her cheeks), "what will you do? how will you take it?""Do? " says Lenore with a little dry laugh; "what is there to do? I shall be cut, I suppose, and try to look as if I liked it."CHAPTER IV.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."MADAME est servie! " says Menga, half an hour later, opening my door, and putting her head in."Do not go without me!" cries Sylvia, eagerly; "wait for me. Did you ever see anybody so silly as I? I am trembling all over—like a leaf—feel!""Lenore is not quite ready," I say."We will go without her," rejoins Sylvia, quickly; "why should not we? They will he more likely to speak to us if she is not by."I shrug my shoulders. "I suppose one must begin to be civilised again," continues my sister, holding out one plump and shapely arm for me to clasp a bracelet on. "It is astonishing how soon one gets out of the way of it! Certainly it is cold; but bundled up in a shawl one looks as if one had no more shape than the Tun of Heidelberg."We descend. The few visitors are collecting in the hard-scrubbed salle à manger round the snow-white table."How my heart is beating!" says Sylvia, as we stand at the door about to enter; "look and see whether they are down yet."I peep. "Yes, there they are;" and as ill-luck will have it, their places are next ours; you need not have taken off your shawl; they have both shawls, and the husband—what is his name?—I never can recollect—Lascelles, is not it?—is in his greatcoat. There is no help for it; if we wish for food, we must go into the lion's jaws to get it. As we approach it becomes evident to us that the fact of our presence has been previously revealed to the new-comers. As we reach the table they just look up, and bow—gravely and slightly, it is true; but still they bow. Old Mrs. Scrope holds her little hooked nose—gently, not Jewishly hooked—rather more aloft than usual, gathers her shawl with a chilly gesture about her, and says across the table to her daughter:"I wonder why they do not light the stove?"Mr. Lascelles rises and shakes hands heartily, and says:"How are you? Deuced cold, is not it? How long have you been here?"Everybody but Lenore is down; the little bourgeois German family—father, mother, two daughters, the mild and havering English old maid in noisome cameo brooch and hair "bracelet, who spends her life in marauding about the Continent 
in virgin loveliness; the Cantab, who has been climbing every high mountain in the neighbourhood, till all the skin is peeling off his blistered scarlet face—here they are, all of them, each eating soup, if you like to call it soup, after his several manner. It is weak and watery stuff enough, one would think, but apparently too strong for the German stomachs; at least having nearly finished their share, they call for hot water, pour some into their plates, and begin to ladle it up into their mouths."I had better go and call Lenore," I say aloud to Sylvia, purposely speaking the obnoxious name to see what effect it will produce. "I cannot think what has become of her."As I speak she enters. As she comes hurriedly across the room with a sort of nervous defiance in her face, I look at her curiously, trying to see her as a stranger would. Surely there can be nothing very provocative of wrath—of conciliation, rather—in her altered look. Even to me , who have watched her daily, hourly, she seems ill, shrunken, drooped. How much more to them who have not seen her since—six months ago—she shone upon them in the healthy bloom of her delicate ripe beauty. Poor soul! now that her strength is gone and her fairness waned, can they be angry with her still? As they rather feel than see her approach, I am sensible of a sort of ladylike stiffening and drawing-up on the part of th two women.Mr. Lascelles is fully occupied in making faces at his soup. The dead cut Sylvia predicted is imminent. As she slips into her seat, the only one left—one next Mrs. Lascelles—with eyes determinedly downcast, and an uneasy red look, half challenging, half deprecatory, on her face, curiosity gets the Letter of their dignity, and they both glance at her. I see them both start perceptibly. Yes, they have noticed it too. Alas! the change is too patent to escape the carelessest, hostilest eye. With a sudden impulse they both bow, as they had bowed to us, slightly, unsmilingly, without the smallest attempt at cordiality, but still quite politely."Deuced cold, is not it?" says Mr. Lascelles, turning, with an air of the greatest friendliness to Sylvia; man-like, happily and sublimely ignoring the squabbles of his womankind; and, rubbing his hands, "when last I saw you, it was deuced cold too; we were as nearly as possible snowed up on our way back to London—do you remember, Blanche?"At this happy allusion to our last merry meeting we all wax deeply, darkly, beautifully red."Is it always cold here?" asks Mrs. Lascelles, rushing hurriedly, and quite contrary to her original intention, as I feel, into conversation with me."It has been cold since we came, but we are hardly fair judges yet; we have only been here a week; I am told that it is a remarkably healthy climate," I answer, stiffly and tritely; my besetting sin always being a tendency to sink into an echo of Murray."It has been arctic! " says Sylvia to her neighbour, with a plaintive up-casting of her eyes to his face, "positively arctic! How I envy you your greatcoat!—nothing so pretty as beaver" (stroking it delicately); "naturally, we left all our furs behind
us.""One peculiarity of the climate," say I, addressing everybody, in a monotonous recitative, "is, that meat killed in the autumn dries of itself in the course of the winter; it is considered an excellent thing for making blood, and looks like sausage.""Is not it too cold for you ?" Mrs. Lascelles asks, pointedly addressing her question to Lenore, and speaking with a compassionate inflection in her voice.Lenore blushes furiously. "For me! "she says, stammering, and looking surprised, "for—for all of us; we all shiver."No one makes any rejoinder."It is a wonderful climate for consumption, I believe," continues Lenore, speaking hurriedly and hesitatingly, as if not at all sure of the reception a speech from her may meet with. "A clergyman in the last stage came to St. Moritz last year, and is now quite recovered; not" (looking round with a nervous laugh) "that that need be any great recommendation to any of us, I hope."Again they look at her, with an unwilling startled pity in their healthy prosperous faces. The German father is dexterously whisking his beef gravy into his mouth on the blade of his knife, at the imminent risk of slitting his countenance from ear to ear; the Cantab is reluctantly turning his peeled nose and flayed cheeks to the old maid, who, gently blinking behind her spectacles, is addressing him."A happy deliverance," cries Sylvia, stretching herself on the sofa in our sitting-room, when at length we attain that haven, dinner being ended. "Nothing prostrates one so much as these little social ordeals! Did you see how I cultivated the husband? I do not think they quite liked it."I am looking out of window, and contemplating Mr. Lascelles' back, as he stands on the doorstep talking to Kolb, and banging his arms together like a cabman to keep them warm. I can feel, by the expression of his shoulders, that he is for the third time remarking that " It is deuced cold.""If he had his own way, he would be always with us, in and out, in and out," continues Sylvia; "one can foresee that. But no doubt he will not be let .""What a thing it is to be thin!" cries Lenore, with a rather bitter little laugh. "If I had been fat and well-liking, they would have cut me dead. If I gain in favour in the same ratio in which I lose in flesh they will soon be thoroughly fond of me." I turn from the window with a sigh at this speech. "There is something very affecting in having a thing like a bird's claw held out to you, is not there?" continues 
she, looking with a sort of pensive derision at her own hand, first opening it and then clenching it, to see how strongly the knuckles and bones start out."Do not!" I say, crossly. "I wish you would not!""In books," continues she, "whenever people on their death-beds lift up their thin hands, or hold out their thin hands, one always begins to cry, don't you know?" I laugh, but not very jocundly. "If they could hear the way in which I cough at night I am not sure that they would not kiss me," says the young girl, with a sarcastic smile."How extraordinarily like Charlie his sister is!" says Sylvia, sitting up on the sofa. "What are you looking at, Jemima? Any new arrivals? Thoroughly bon genre they all look. Say what you will, blood must show.""As the old maid said when her nose got red," retorts Lenore."A plain likeness, of course," pursues Sylvia, not deigning to heed this profane illustration. "Blanche Lascelles is too much of a peace-and-plenty-looking woman to please me—too redundant , don't you know? I confess to liking to see people keep within bounds: but she is growing so enormously large, she will soon be all over everywhere.""Perhaps it is bon genre to spread," says Lenore mockingly; "who knows?""She put me so much in mind of him that it was on the tip of my tongue to ask after him," continues Mrs. Prodgers."I am very glad it remained on the tip.""I wish with all my heart he was here," says Sylvia, continuing her monologue and yawning. "I wonder is there any chance of it? One abuses them when one has them, but certainly life—travelling life especially—is very triste without a man.""Do you wish it too, Lenore?" I ask, walking over to where my youngest sister is listlessly lying back in the one-arm-chair that the room affords."How do I know?" she answers in a tone of weary irritability. "I wish a hundred things one half of the day which I unwish the other half. No, certainly I do not—not until I get my looks up again. Jemima" (gazing wistfully up at me), "how long do you think it will be before I do?""My dear, am I a prophet?" I say, very sadly, stroking her hair."Evidently they thought me very much gone off, did not they?" she asks, with her eyes still fixed on my face, and a faint, a very faint hope of contradiction in her own."How do I know?" I reply, evasively. "If they had thought so they would hardly have chosen me to confide it to.""But they did," returns she gently, shaking her head. "As Sylvia says, one has one's instincts." (A moment's silence). "Who was it?" she continues, with a melancholy smile; "Madame du Barri, was not it, who said that she would rather be dead than ugly? Pah!" (with a shudder), "it would be very disagreeable to be either."CHAPTER V.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."The gods may releaseThat they made fast;Thy soul shall have easeIn thy limbs at the last;But what shall they give thee for life, sweet life, that is overpast?"AT least it is summer to-day; the sun says, "Now it is my turn!" With his strong right hand, he has swept the clouds away from the snow-peaks—away—away—anywhere; he will have none of them. Those snow-peaks! They dazzle one so that one cannot look at them, save through blue spectacles. It makes one's eyes drop water but to glance hastily at their shining magnificence. Oh happy consummation! it is too hot even for demi-saison dresses."I think Kolb is very tyrannical!" says Sylvia, discontentedly. 
"What do I care about the waterfall, or the Mortiratsch glacier? After all, when you have seen one glacier you have seen them all; and though nobody can be fonder of scenery than I am, yet of course there are other things in the world; I had much rather have stayed at home to-day and found out what the Scropes' plans were."We are all joggling along in a little chaise, drawn by a fat pony, which however is so far from us as to be almost out of sight, from the length of the traces—jiggling joggling along through Pontresina, between the green-shuttered, white houses; here and there a flourish of flowers—geraniums, cinerarias—out of their windows; through the upper village, and along the hot high road. On each side of us is the lovely riot of the meadow flowers; they seem to have rushed out all at once, and all together, to answer to their names at the roll-call of the spring sun."At all events," say I, laughing, "Mr. Lascelles cannot say that it is 'deuced cold' to-day. Pah! how apoplectic it makes one's head! Oh, for a good honest British cabbageleaf to put in one's hat!""There is one comfort," says Sylvia, pursuing her own thoughts, "and that is that there is no one they can become liés with, in our absence, and I should think that they were sociable sensible sort of people, who cordially hated their own society.""Worse even than ours?" asks Lenore, with a cynical smile, from beneath the dusty little hood, under which she is leaning back.We leave the high road; we turn into a byway that leads to the glacier, leads through a company of larches. They have grown up, here and there among the great strewn stones, of every shape and size—lichen-grown, green, forbidding. By-and-by we have to say good-bye to our carriage; it can go no farther; the road breaks off."This is quite the most triste festivity I ever assisted at," Sylvia says, plaintively, as we dawdle and loiter hotly along. "Bah! how the midges bite! As a rule, no one is more independent of men's society than I am, but in a case of this kind a man is indispensable to give a sort of impetus, a fillip, to the whole thing.""Let us have luncheon," say I, with my usual material view of things; "eating always raises one's spirits, and we can eat as well as if a regiment were looking on."So we lunch on the short sward. The smooth smokecoloured cattle are ringing their bells vigorously, as they browse near us, though what they eat the Lord only knows, unless they have a taste for yellow potentillas, sweet-scented daphne, and dry white bents. Kolb has stretched a mackintosh for us to sit on, and brought spiced beef that looks weirdly nasty, in sun-warmed slices, out of a marmot-skin bag; rolls, hard-boiled eggs. A bottle of Château Margot stands under a great rock, knee-deep in yellow violets. The glacier river, the Bernina, runs madly past us, hoarsely raving to its wide stone bed, in a torrent of dirty yellow-green-white. There we lie, couched comfortably as ruminating cattle, while at our elbows and feet the gentians open their blue eyes, bluer than any woman's, deeper than any sapphire."How pretty they would be in artificial!" Sylvia says, pensively plucking one. "A spray for the side of the head, you know, and another for the corsage; I am afraid we are too far off for it to carry well, or I would send one to Foster's in a tin-box; he will always copy any flower you send him, exactly.""Perish the thought!" says Lenore, with a sort of lazy indignation, laying her head down among a crowded little family of the yellow violets, under a great split rock."Dark blue is not a good night-colour, however," says Sylvia, still pursuing her own train of meditation."How drowsy the river's roar makes one!" I say, yawning, and burying my hot face in my out-stretched arms; "if you two will not speak I shall be asleep in three minutes.""How hideous it is!" says Sylvia, dropping her gentian, and gazing with a sort of disgust at the tearing flood. "Glacier rivers always are. Did you ever see anything so dirty in your life? It looks as if hundreds and thousands of washerwomen had been washing in it with myriads of cakes of soap."After all we never reached the glacier. If luncheon has cheered it has also enervated us. We content ourselves with languidly strolling to the waterfall. Now we have reached it! now exertion is at an end; now we lie, lazy as lotus-eaters, on the dry warm herbage—scant, yet so sweet!—and gaze and listen, gaze and listen, for God knows how long, to the loud white beauty of the fall. Down it comes from the top of the low hill in one long snowy plunge; then a smooth sliding over the polished backs of the great stones; a curling of creamy wavelets; then another foamy leap in lightning and froth; then a green pool, where the sun is holding dazzling mirrors, too bright to look at, to the pines' dark faces. The long roar rings loud yet gentle in our ears, bringing to us a drowsy joy. Even Sylvia's grumblings are stilled—at least we no longer hear them, Lenore and I. We have climbed slowly and intermittently up the rocks to a little plateau, whence we can see the water's chiefest plunge. Who can stop it? The air is full of its cold white powder; a great stone opposite is for ever wet with the cool damp dust drifted against its shining sides. Little lilac primulas confidently grow and bloom in its clefts. Oh, torrents and hills and flowers, you make me drunk with beauty! What can be nobler than to watch the play of God's imagination in these silent places?With elbows deep sunk in gentians, and head on hand, we lie and lie, till the sun is marching in all his afternoon heat and mellow glory through the pale turquoise sky. The pines above our heads smell divinely. There is no flower, however sweet, that has a better fragrance than that which the grave flowerless firs give out at the bidding of their master, the high June sun. For half-hours, hours—we know not which—neither of us have spoken. My eyes have long been fixed on the little rainbow that the waterfall has caught and held fast, with its faint green and yellow and red, in her shining toils. Presently, and little by little, I cease to see the tender colours of the prism—I cease to hear the water's plunge and the pines' low sigh; I am asleep. Whether my doze is long or short, I do not know. I imagine, however, that it is not very long; but it is broken at last by a sharp exclamation from Lenore."What are you making such a noise about?" I cry, starting up and rubbing my eyes. "One may as well be killed as frightened to death——Charlie!!!"Am I dreaming still? No; the waterfall's voice has come back to my ears, and the pines' woody fragrance to my nostrils. Providence has granted Sylvia's prayer—for a prayer it was; at least, it fulfilled the hymn's definition of prayer:
"Prayer is the heart's sincere desire,Uttered or unexpressed."There he stands, three paces from me, among the juniper bushes, solid and real, in the loose and untinted clothes that summer Britons love—stands there in all the stalwart deep-coloured beauty of his manhood. Providence has sent us a man "to give the whole thing a fillip." Lenore has risen to her feet and is facing him. Their hands are not touching, neither are they speaking, only they are looking at one another long and dumbly. Embarrassment at the recollected hostility of their last parting is tying Lenore's tongue as I feel; but what is it that is giving that look of silent painful wonder to Scrope's face?"Why are you looking so hard at me?" she says at last, in a low voice, with a tremulous asperity. "Is there anything odd about me? Do not you know that it is not good manners to look so hard at any one?""I—I—beg your pardon," he says, stammering. "I—I—did not mean—you see, it is so long since I have seen——"I have scrambled to my feet and shaken the illicit noon-day sleep from my eyes. "Charlie!" I cry a second time, coming forward; and not being a person with any great command of language, I add nothing to the pertinent brevity of this observation.He turns, and takes my ready hand in the cool, familiar, brotherly clasp with which, in their day, so many good and handsome men have honoured me, and for which I have never felt the least grateful to them. "Did not you know I was coming?" he asks; "did not they tell you?""Not they!" reply I, laughing. "To let you into a secret, we are not quite on confidential terms—rather en délicatesse , as you may say. I dare say they thought we were not good enough to be told such a piece of news—that it would exhilarate us too much.""They were nearly right there, I think," says Sylvia, to whom, being a little lower down, the answer to her prayer had been first vouchsafed. "It is never my way, as a rule, to make people conceited—men especially; I am sure they are bad enough, without one's helping them; but certainly, if one wishes to know how thoroughly to appreciate a friend one must come to the Engadin.""You are glad to see me, then?" he says, stretching out his hand to her too, with a broad eager smile. The question seems addressed to Sylvia, but his eyes seek Lenore. "Truly, honestly, without figure of speech? You know I had my doubts.""A perfectly unjustifiable question," returns Sylvia, giving her head a little playful jerk. "We totally decline to answer it, do not we, Jemima?""And you? " he says, impulsively, stooping over Lenore and lowering his voice a little.She has sat down again, and, leaning on her elbow, is listlessly picking a bit of daphne to pieces: the little treacherous colour that his first sudden coming had sent into her cheeks ebbing quickly out of them again."I!" (with a little start). "Oh, of course—yes, I think so—I suppose so—why should not I be?"Her eyes are lifted to his; they mean to be kindly, but they have of late got a settled look of weary nonchalance , that they could not, if they would, put away."What have you been doing to her?" he says, leading me a little away from the others, on pretence of looking over the slender plank bridge that crosses the fall, grasping my arm, and staring with an angry painful vehemence into my face. "They told me she was so altered that I should not know her again—not know her again! "—(with an accent of scorn) —"she would have to be altered indeed before that could come to pass. I thought they only said it to set me against her; that was why I followed you. I could not wait. My God! she is changed" (loosing my arm, and clenching his own hands together). "I could not have believed that any one, any young strong person, could be so changed in five months."I do not answer, for the excellent reason that I cannot. My throat is choked, and my silent tears drop on the bridge rail and into the emerald pool beneath. One must love something. I have not had many people to love in my time; nobody very good, or that loved me much; and for want of them I love Lenore. I suppose he thinks that my speechlessness comes from callous indifference."You have taken no care of her," he continues, harshly; "you have not looked after her. When did she ever look after herself? You—who are so much older than she that one would have thought that you would have been like a mother to her."He stops abruptly. She of whom we speak has risen and followed us."You are talking about me," she says, slightly smiling. "Yes; you both look guilty! what are you saying? No, I do not care to hear; nothing very interesting, I dare say."So saying, she saunters slowly away again."You are no wiser than you were; I see that," I remark, dashing away my tears, and trying to smile when we are again alone."You are mistaken," he answers, with eager quickness; "I am perfectly cured—perfectly; and when one is once thoroughly cured of a complaint of this sort, one does not sicken again. If I had not been sure of that I would not have come near you: I would have put the width of all Europe between us."I shake my head in a silent scepticism."See," he cries, earnestly, "do you remember how I used to tremble all over if my hand touched hers?—how I grew redder than any lobster if she spoke to me? Do I tremble now?" (stretching out his right hand to me)—" am I red?"Still I am silent."Do you hear?" he asks, impatiently."Yes," I answer, drily. "I hear."CHAPTER VI.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."I feel the daisies growing over me."THEY are sitting, they two, the lover and the loved one, in the tiny graveyard of the little church upon the hill. They have risen up hastily from the noisy supper, where the fusty German mother had shut the window, where the fusty German daughters had made weak and steaming negus of their vin ordinaire , on this sultry summer evening. They two, and Jemima. They have passed through the small still street, along the silent road, where even the dust lies quiet and white, and does not harry one as in the day time; up the lane, past cottages and fields, to the little church that stands below the rocky mountain. Lenore has ridden; she could not have walked so far up the hill-side; ridden the fat pony, "a beautiful pony, just like a teapot," as Kolb, with doubtful compliment, remarked of him. Now he is tied to the church porch and is eating forget-me-nots in the evening grey. Jemima has discreetly strolled away, but her discretion has pleased but one of her companions; the other has hardly noticed it. It is all one to Lenore whether she goes or stays. It is eight o'clock. Pontresina church is telling the hour sonorously, and the little hill church beside her is answering with its one grave bell; the church, with its rude stone tower and little extinguisher top, its windows deep set in the wall, like deep-sunk eyes."Lenore," says Scrope, presently plucking a great forget-me-not, twice the size of those we see in England, from one of the low graves, "do you think it wicked to tell lies!""It depends," she answers, laughing slightly. "I think truth is rather an overrated virtue.""I told a gigantic lie yesterday.""Did you?" she answers, but she does not seem to care to ask what it is.He waits a moment, but finding that her curiosity will not come to his aid, volunteers his information."I—I—told Jemima that I was perfectly cured," (reddening a little)."Yes, that was not quite true," she replies, quietly."Are you glad or sorry?" he asks, eagerly.She has plucked two blades of fine grass, and is carefully measuring them, to see which is the taller. Perhaps that is the reason that her response comes slowly."I am glad," she says, "quite glad! Formerly, when I was strong and well, I did not mind who cared for me or who did not; I cared for myself a great deal—immensely —and that was enough; but now that I am so weak and sickly, and wangling , as they say in Staffordshire—is not it a good word? —does not it give a limp, peevish, unstrung idea?—why, now I like some good patient person to be near me, and look sorry when I am out of breath and in tiresome pain."He does not answer, but I do not think she takes his silence ill."Care for me," she says, simply, stretching out her hand, with a sort of naïveté, to him, "care for me a little—care for me a good deal, but do not care for me too much; it is silly to care too much for anything; one misses it so if it goes."He takes the hand she so frankly gives, but he is afraid violently to press or kiss it, lest, with a sudden change of mood, she may snatch it angrily away."Do you remember the day we parted?" he asks, in a nesitating voicehesitating."Yes," she says, with a rather embarrassed laugh, "to be sure I remember. "We both went into heroics, and you, after abusing me in good nervous English, fell on your knees before me, and in so doing gave pug's nose such a kick that it has never been the same feature since.""It is nearly six months since then," he says, in a low voice; "five at least. If I had taken you at your word——""I am so glad you did not," she interrupts, hastily.His face falls."So glad, are you? Why?""Do not you know that I like to take all and give nothing?" she says, with a sort of smile. "That was always my way—always; let me have it a little longer. I know that I cause you pain every time that I am with you, but somehow I do not mind—I have no remorse; you are strong, and pain does not kill; sometimes it braces. See, I have suffered a good deal, and I am not dead."He clasps the slight cool hand he holds tighter."Thank God, no!""Have you ever known what it is to be very unhappy?" she says, looking with a sort of pensive curiosity into his face. "If I asked you you would say yes, you would swear it; but somehow I doubt it. How clear and blue your eyes are! They look as if they had always slept all night and smiled all day. You are not fat , certainly—far from it—I hate a fat man; but how well and strongly your bones are covered!"He does not asseverate; he makes no apology for his healthy manhood; but, I think, when he next looks in her face she knows that one may wear a sore heart and yet eat well, and have broad shoulders and a stalwart presence. There is no sound but the wind speaking pensively to the pines; the wind that makes all the meadows one cool shiver."Why are you so faithful?" she says, presently, with a sort of impatience in her voice. "There is no sense in it; there is something stupid in such fidelity; it is like a dog; it is not like a man, at least not like the men I have known."A hot flush rises to the young man's face. "It is stupid," he says, humbly. "I have often thought so.""Why cannot you take a fancy to some one else?" she continues, sharply; "to one of my sisters, for instance; not Sylvia—no, I do not think I can conscientiously recommend her—but Jemima; she would worship the ground you trod on; and she is not so very old, either. I have heard some people say that an Englishwoman is at her prime, mind and body, at twenty-eight, and she is only twenty-nine."Scrope does not seem to jump at the tempting offer thus made him; he looks down on the flowery grass at his feet."She is not much to look at, certainly," pursues Lenore, coolly, "but neither am I, for that matter, just now; but of course, when I grow strong again I shall get my looks back, shall I not?"He is busy, apparently, in trying to make out the Romansch inscription on the small broken pillar beside him; at least he does not reply."Why do not you answer me?" she cries, angrily. "You used to be glib enough with your compliments and fine speeches; if you cannot say 'Yes,' at least have the honesty to say 'No.'""My dear," he says, with a sort of tremor in his voice, "what should I say either 'Yes' or 'No' to? In my eyes you have never lost your looks; how can you get back what you have not lost?"She looks at him with a scared discontent in her pale face. "You have got out of it very lamely," she says, with a brusque laugh. "I never heard anything clumsier in my life. There—never mind. I suppose you could not help it."Her eyes stray thoughtfully away to the hills; a luminous mist, a dimness, yet a glory—seems spread over the high mountain amphitheatre that looks down on Pontresina; great glorious battlements, lifting high heads against the higher heaven—citadels that a God must be dwelling in: that dim effulgence is the skirt of his trailed robes. Below, the meadows flash in yellow, and the river twists in silver. Oh, heavenly Zion! oh, fair City beyond the clouds! can thy jasper walls and pearly gates be yet fairer?"And you find that it is quite as impossible as you did six months ago?" Scrope asks, with a tremble in his low voice, after they have sat silent some time."Quite," she answers, briefly."And it is always he that is in the way?" he says, with an accent of bitterness."Yes," she answers, softly; "always he—always he." (Then with a dreamy smile) "You see that there are other people who can be stupidly, doggishly faithful, as well as you; you , at least, cannot blame me.""If he did but know it!" the young man cries, smiting his hands together, and looking passionately upwards to the faint skies above him; "if some one would but tell him—if ho did but see you now—he could not keep his senseless resentment any longer. It is against my own interest to say so, but he could not, he could not.""He has no resentment against me now," she answers, quickly, "none; he is no longer angry with me.""How do you know?" with a hasty suspicion in his voice; "has he written to you?""No.""How then?""I have seen him," she says, briefly.For a moment, astonished disappointment keeps him silent; then the two words, "When, where?" come low, but hurriedly, from his mouth."We had a long talk," she says, with the same unmirthful, tender smile, "quite a long talk—on a bridge—in the moonlight, at Bergun; the accessories sound romantic, do not they? Moonlight always makes one feel sentimental; I am not quite sure that we were not a little so."A pause. Through the larches in the wood above them, a long, long sigh passes; then falls—dies—then revives again; a sound as of infinite yearning."When he is coming here give me warning beforehand," says Scrope, in a voice that is next door to a whisper. "I suppose he will be coming here soon?""Perhaps," she answers, with a little laugh that is almost malicious. "Who knows? Perhaps he may take it in his wedding tour.""His wedding tour!!""Yes," she answers, looking away from his bewildered face again, on the perfect content, the evening placidness, of the landscape; "it is contrariant , is it not? but he is going to be married.""Who told you so?" (very rapidly)."He told me so himself.""And you ? how did you take it? what did you say?""I said, 'Oh, are you?' I believe I laughed—I am not sure.""And then?""And then—no, not quite then " (drawing in her breath slowly)—"a little afterwards—he went.""And you?""And I—oh, I lay down on the grass—nice crisp dry grass, by the river, with my head in a clump of trefoil—what a noisy river it was!" (speaking with a sort of pensive complaint) —"sometimes I hear it now, at night, running through my head.""And you stayed there all night—you —in the damp?"
(with a tone of reproachful solicitude)."No, not all night; about half the night, I think—I forget about the time; talking is very tiring work, and I was tired.""Yes?""And then they grew anxious—Jemima and Sylvia—and came to look for me.""Well?""And then they scolded me, and asked me what had happened to me, and I said I had seen a ghost; so I had."The wind has no more to say; he has dropped; there is no noise but the swirl of the far water."Sylvia was quite interested," pursues Lenore, rousing herself, and even looking rather amused; "she wanted to know what sort of a ghost it was—whether a man's or a woman's, or a child's or a dog's—she said she had heard of dogs' ghosts being sometimes seen—and also whether it carried its head under its arm? I said, 'No it did not' and—and—and— that is all, I think."On the glacier mountain there is a white glory, that cannot be moonlight, for moon is there none; it must have stolen some of the sunset, and kept it in its bosom; the shadows steal over the lower snow, but the peaks keep that strange shining, such as Moses' face had when he came down from his high talk with God."Charlie," says Lenore, suddenly, with an abrupt change of subject, "does not it occur to you that at Pontresina the dead are much better lodged than the living? Would not you rather be here than at the Croix Blanche ?""At the present moment, certainly," he answers, with a smile. "I prefer you and the smell of flowers to the German squaws and the smell of negus.""Look," she says, rising from her grassy seat, "I am going to show you something. If I were old, or had any complaint that was likely to kill me, I will show you the exact spot where I should like to lie—how can you see? you have turned away your face—pshaw! how absurdly sensitive you are; you are as bad as Jemima. If either of you were to point out to me the place that you wished to be your grave I should listen with the most composed attention, and try to bear it in mind against the time when I should have the misfortune to lose you.""I quite believe it," he answers bitterly; "I have no doubt you would.""See," she says, not heeding the bitterness, hardly hearing it, but pointing, with a smile, to a spot of ground, richer even than its neighbours in manifold-coloured flowers and fine green, grass, "did you ever see anything so luxurious? This wall's shadow to shelter one from the sun at noonday, and all these pink plantains to ripple above one's head; they say one does not hear when one is dead—well, as to that, I have my own opinion; but if one could hear, it would be pleasant to listen to the wind softly buffeting their toll heads in the dim summer nights, would not it?"No answer."I would have no gilt tears, however, on my cross," she adds, a few minutes later.He stoops and plucks a handful of the pink plantains angrily, and then throws it away again."What are you doing?" she asks, turning with a gesture of surprise and remonstrance to him; "why do you look so cross? Why are you frowning and clenching your hands? You foolish fellow, do you think if I meant to die really that I should talk about it so lightly—that I should pick and choose my grave? Good God! no!"(with a strong shudder) —" I should keep far enough from the subject!"CHAPTER VII.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."On pain of death, let no man name death to me; it is a word infinitely terrible.""Yes, they are certainly coming round," says Sylvia, with a tone of self-gratulation. "I met Mrs. Scrope just now on the stairs, and she said, 'You have been to the Rosegg? I hear there is quite a practicable road there.' When once one has the men on one's side one is all right; and somehow we always manage to enlist the sympathies of the fathers and husbands and brothers.""I do not agree with you," says Jemima, taking her hat off and laying it on the table. "I think it is just the other way—the women to be propitiated, and the men follow naturally. Take care of the women and the men will take care of themselves.""They certainly dress very well," continues Sylvia complacently; "nothing voyant; all those pretty mouse-colours, and sad colours, and smoke colours, that I am so devoted to. Very good taste; and say what you will, that alone is enough to prepossess one in people's favour.""I have just been falling into the arms of that dreadful little widow," Mrs. Scrope says, re-entering her own apartment at the same time as Sylvia has made her re-appearance in hers. "Ambling up the stairs and coquetting with the banisters, as usual. She is always on the stairs.""She reminds me of the women in Isaiah, don't you know?" 
says Mrs. Lascelles, laughing; "' walking and mincing as they go.' I wonder had they high-heeled shoes and a panier? If it were the fashion to sew pillows to armholes nowadays, what gigantic bolsters she would have!""My dear, atrociously as that girl behaved, we never can be too thankful to her for having delivered us from the Prodgers connection. Prodgers! —such a name!""Do not holloa before you are out of the wood," says Mr. Lascelles, looking up from his novel for a moment, and instantly 
immersing himself in it again."I believe what first set her against him was the awful description I gave her of our honeymoon," says his wife, laughing again. "I told her about your being sea-sick all the way to St. Malo. I remember she looked awe-struck at the time.""It will be all on again before you can look round," says Mr. Lascelles, again emerging from his romance.Both women shake their heads."Poor soul! it would hardly be worth while her being "on,' as you say, with any one.""You mean that she is not long for this world?" replies he, dropping his book entirely this time. Mr. Lascelles' voice is never as low as Cordelia's, and the door is ajar."Hush!" cry both the women together. "Some one is passing; it may be one of them.""I wish I could induce you sometimes not to speak at the very tip-top of your voice," says his wife. "If you remember, 
when you proposed to me, at the Inniskillings' ball, you expressed your wishes so loudly that you drowned the band."WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.THE hotel is fuller than it was. This last week has made a difference. Several more little whitewashed rooms are occupied. A member of the Alpine Club, with a harem of three gaunt women, battered and unsexed by much scaling of high mountains; two or three new couples. The last, an elderly clergyman and his wife, occupy the room next mine. Only this morning I was remarking on the thinness of the partition walls: I can hear him alternately splashing and groaning in his tub."They have not been married long," Lenore says. "They say the Lord's Prayer together very loudly every night."And Scrope asks, laughing, whether that is a proof of being newly wedded.This was after breakfast. Since then we have been to the Rosegg glacier. Lenore has not been with us: gradually she is slipping out of our excursions. "For the present," she says; "just for the present, I am better at home." Now we are back again, Sylvia and I, in our own little sitting-room— a cheerful little place, whence one can look down on the white houses of the clean narrow street, see the outgoers and incomers to the hotel, and catch bright glimpses of the mountains.The door opens and Lenore enters, and at the same moment Sylvia passes out. "Is she gone?" says Lenore, ad-vancing towards me; "really gone, do you think? I do not know why I ask; I have nothing particular to say." Her face is disturbed, and her eyes wander uneasily round. "I —I—I have been eavesdropping ," she says, beginning to laugh. "What do you think of that? And they say listeners never hear any good of themselves. That, however, is not a case in point, for I heard nothing about myself, of course—nothing .""Eavesdropping!" I repeat, surprised. "That is not very like you. What do you mean? What are you talking about?""I was passing by the Scropes' door just now," she says, with a sort of hurry and agitation in her manner—"it was ajar, I wish people would keep their doors shut," (with a tone of irritability)—" and they were talking; the man—the husband
—you know what a sweet low voice he has—was saying in a tone as loud as all the bulls you ever heard bellowing: 'She is not long for this world.' Whom do you think they were talking about?""My dear child," I say impatiently, "what extraordinary things excite your curiosity! Am I a diviner of dark sayings? Probably some friend of their own that we never heard of.""And then the women said, 'Hush, hush!' " pursues she, with her eyes still watching my face. "Why did they say 'Hush?' if it were some friend of theirs, why should they mind being overheard? They were saying no ill of her.""Pshaw!" say I, pettishly; "how do I know?""He said she , certainly—not he ," she continues, as if unable to leave the subject. "Not long for this world! "(uttering the words very slowly). "Poor soul, whoever she is I am very sorry for her, are not you, Jemima?"Yes, yes, of course—very sorry," I answer, indistinctly, turning to the window."And yet it is absurd to be sorry for a person one has never seen—never heard of—is not it?" persists Lenore, again breaking out into a laugh. "Perhaps we are throwing away our compassion—perhaps it was a dog or a cat—who knows?""Very likely, very likely!""But why did they say 'Hush?' " she says, brooding over the word, and addressing the question rather to herself than to me.I do not answer."Jemima," she says, following me to the window, "look round—I hate not being listened to when I am talking—I am going to make you laugh—you often laugh at my ideas; well, they are sufficiently ridiculous now and then; do you know I took it into my head—one is so egotistical—that perhaps they were talking of—of—me."I lean out of the window, and try to persuade myself that my voice, as I say "Nonsense ," sounds lazily indifferent."You are not laughing," she cries, in a tone of alarm. "I thought you would have laughed. Why do not you laugh? Is it possible that you see nothing ridiculous in it—that you think it—it—is—true ?""I think nothing of the kind," I answer irritably; "do not be so absurdly fanciful.""If they did mean me," she says, with the same restless, strained laugh, "they are alone in their opinion, are not they? —quite alone. It does me no harm, and it amuses them, I suppose—ha, ha!""What disease do they mean to kill me by, I wonder?"The says after a pause, spent by her in rapidly traversing and re-traversing the little room. "Consumption, of course" (shuddering) .
..."They should have seen you last winter," she resumes by-and-by, standing beside me, and uneasily trying to see my face, "when you had that attack of influenza. How you coughed! Worse, far worse, than I do, and your head ached torturingly—mine seldom aches—and you were so weak you could scarcely lift a finger, and yet it was only influenza!""Only influenza," I echo mechanically; "influenza is nothing.""Tell me," she says, a little reassured, and looking into my face as if she would wring from me the answer she longs for, "you must have an opinion one way or the other; do you think they meant me?""My dear," I say, driven into a corner, "did I hear what they said? I only know what you tell me—it—it—is very conceited of you to imagine that they must be always talking of you.""People are so fond of killing their friends, are not they?" she says, with the same wistful searching look in her great and lovely eyes; "so are doctors, and very often the killed outlive the killers after all.""Very often.""Next time that I pass their door I shall run past with my fingers in my ears. Feel how my heart is beating!""You are growing as bad as Sylvia," I say, trying to speak gaily; "she is always requesting me to feel how her heart is beating; if you both set up nerves I shall decamp.""You think I may make my mind quite easy?" she says, in a lighter tone, taking my hand in her two hot slender ones."Of course, of course.""That they were talking of some one else—or that if it were me, they were utterly and unaccountably mistaken?""To be sure! to be sure!""Fat, and florid people often seem to think that those who are not red and bulky as themselves must be in articulo mortis .""So they do.""Jemima!" (still strongly clasping my hand in both hers), "if you believe it so firmly, you will nut mind swearing it.""What is the use of oaths and asseverations?" I ask, uncomfortably. "Will not a simple assertion do as well?""You won't swear!" she cries, in a tone of profound alarm. "Why not? Jemima, I do not like your face! Your eyes will not meet mine—your lips are quivering—you are half crying. I know that I am very sick—that I have not much peace, day or night—but you do not think that it means anything bad?—that I am—oh, my God! I cannot say the word!"Her sentence breaks off, smothered in a shuddering sob."I think nothing of the kind," I say, hastily, thoroughly frightened at her agitation. "Why will you gallop away with an idea? Oh, Charlie! do come here; she is so impracticable—So unreasonable—she is talking such nonsense."The door has opened, and Mr. Scrope is looking doubtfully in. At my words he enters hastily.For the first time in her life she runs to him of her own accord, and throws herself into his arms. "Oh, Charlie!' she cries, wildly, "you are the only person in the world that is kind to me. They have been so cruel to me—so cruel. They have been saying such things of me—you would not believe it. That man—that Mr. Lascelles—says I am not long for this world, and Jemima quite agrees with him.""Jemima is a fool!" says Mr. Scrope unjustly, looking with a momentary expression of raging hatred at me over her prone head."No long for this world! " she repeats, with a sort of moan, lifting her face, and staring pitifully into his. "Those were his very words: I have not altered one.""Lout! idiot!" cries Scrope, angrily; "he had not an idea what he was saying!—he never has. My darling" (closely straining her to his heart, as if neither God, nor his great angel, Death, should avail to tear her thence), "please God, you are longer for this world than he is—than I—or Jemima—or any of us.""Do you mean it, really ?" she says, with an awful anxiety in her tone. "Are you serious? Oh, God! how I wish I could think so.""Are you so anxious to outlive us all?" he asks, with a passionate melancholy. "Well, I daresay—it is natural, I suppose. Why should not you? Very likely you will have your wish.""I want to live to be quite old," she says, hurriedly, not heeding his upbraiding eyes or tone. "I want to live a great many years: people are often happier when they are middleaged 
than in youth; but it is pleasant to be young, too. It is not all pleasure, but there is a great deal. I do not complain —I do not complain." (She is trembling violently.) "Hold me!" she says, hysterically. "Do not let me go. You are the only person in the world to whom it matters much whether I die or live. Promise me that I shall not— oh! that dreadful word!—promise me!""I promise, darling,"he says, "I promise.""You speak uncertainly!" she says, "wrenching herself out of his arms, and staring at him in a distrustful agony; "you are like Jemima—your face is all quivering. I believe you axe telling me falsehoods on such a subject! Great God! can there be anything wickeder than to deceive one—to tell one lies—in such a case?""Oh, my dear, I am not telling lies! Before God, I am not! I confidently trust—I altogether hope, that I shall yet see you strong and well as ever again. If I thought the contrary, do you think I could bear my own life for one minute?""What does it matter what you think—what you hope?" she cries, roughly, with one of her old petulant movements; "will your trusting and hoping keep it off? "Will telling lies about it make it any better?" (with an angry flash of her lovely miserable eyes at us both). "Whatever you say— whatever you do—it is coming! it is coming!"She flings herself down on the little sofa, shuddering from head to foot, and buries her face in the pillow, while her whole frame is shaken by the violence of her sobs."My dearest child!" I say, half out of my sober wits with fright and pain, advancing to her, and gently touching her on the shoulder; "for Heaven's sake do not be so excited! You are not very ill now, really, you know; you can go about a little, and walk, and talk like the rest of us; but if you behave in this way——""Where have my eyes been?" she interrupts, sitting up again, and speaking connectedly, but not calmly, while the great tears pour down her cheeks; "how is it that I have not seen all your looks and signs? If they had not thought me very bad would the Scropes have spoken to me the other night? Not they! So I excited their compassion , did I? I had no idea that I was an object of pity! I never used to be. Oh, I am indeed! They were right! I am indeed!" (breaking into a fresh tempest of great sobs, and again hiding her face in the cushion)."You are mistaken!" cries Scrope, beside himself at the sight of her agony, and throwing himself on his knees: "Look up, Lenore! Look up, beloved! Look in my face, and see whether I am telling truth; they talked to you the other night because they knew that if they were not civil to you I should never speak to them again—because they dared not be impertinent to you. Why should they pity you, except for being younger and prettier than themselves?""You may save your breath," she answers, looking at him fixedly, with a sort of resentment; "there is no untrue thing that you would not say to me now, to keep me quiet. . . . . It is very unjust," she cries out loud, clasping her lifted hands in a frenzy; "it is hard—there is no sense in it —that I, that am the youngest, should go first! I, that was so pretty, and enjoyed my life so much! Some people only half live; until we went to Dinan I lived every moment of my life! Since then I have been miserable, certainly—very miserable now and then—but it was not half so bad as this! Oh! how gladly I would have it all over again!—at least I was alive then," she says, trembling violently; "nobody pitied me then! After all, what does it matter what happens to one, so long as one is alive!—that is the great thing! Sometimes I have said I wished I was dead; but God knows I did not mean it—one says so many things that one does not mean—he cannot be so cruel as to take me at my word! Oh, he cannot! he cannot!"Her voice dies in a wail—a wail of unspeakable fear."Good Heavens! what is the matter?" says Sylvia, opening the door and entering; her commonplace voice striking on us with a painful incongruity. "Why are you all pulling such long faces?"We none of us answer her.CHAPTER VIII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."Though one were fair as rosesHis beauty clouds and closes;And well tho' love reposes,In the end it is not well."LENORE has been very ill; her very fear has accelerated what she feared. During the night following tho conversation detailed in the last chapter, in a violent fit of coughing, made more violent than usual by overpowering emotion, by uncontrolled weeping, she has broken a blood-vessel. It is in the dead of night; every soul in the hotel is asleep. Until they have tried it, no one can realise the feeling of absolute helpless desperation that assails one under such a catastrophe happening in a remote and hardly accessible corner of Switzerland, utterly without doctors, and four days' post from England. Since the days of Lenore's childhood, I have been entirely unused to the sight of sickness. I have not the remotest idea what remedies to apply, neither is Sylvia any wiser. In my despair I turn to the one person from whom I know that I shall get at least passionate sympathy. Apparently he is not asleep, for before I knock at his door he has opened it, and stands before me in the dishevelled dress in which a person usually appears who has sprung out of sleep into their clothes, his curled locks tossed in the untidiness of slumber, and the heavy lids still weighing on his blue eyes."I thought it was your step," he says, hurriedly. "God Almighty! what is it? Is she—is she——""She is much worse; she has broken a blood-vessel," I answer, breathlessly. "What are we to do? what are we to do?" (wringing my hands). "No doctor to send for! One is so utterly helpless—what is to become of us?"For an instant he has clenched his hands, with a movement of despair more absolute even than mine; then, under the urgent need for them, his strayed wits come back."There must be a doctor at St. Moritz," he says, "amongst the two or three hundred visitors there always are one or two. I will knock up M. Enderlin, and make him saddle me a horse to go there.""But what are we to do meanwhile?" I ask, helplessly. "You cannot be back for two hours at soonest. We know nothing! Perhaps, we may be throwing away her life, for want of knowing the right way to keep it.""I will send my mother," he says.He is already half-way down the long chill passage. In twenty
minutes more he is gone, and the whole house is astir. Doors are being
opened; people of both sexes, evidently so sketchily dressed as to
avoid rather than court notice, protrude their heads, and ask what is
the matter. Mrs. Scrope has come hurrying to us, with the entire
self-forgetfulness of a kind-hearted person; come hurrying in a limp
and corsetless dishabille, eminently becoming to a young girl, but
cruelly trying to the best looking woman of more advanced age. How
many secrets of the prison-house, must a fire, an alarm of burglars,
or a sudden illness, have revealed before now! She has put something
of calm and order into our disordered consternation. "We do what
little we can—alas! it is but little—and then
wait—wait—try to imagine, as we sit in absolute silence
and weary stillness in the little bare room, how far up the mountain
road to St. Moritz our messenger is; fancy a hundred times that we
hear the hoofs of his back-coming horse long before he can possibly
have reached his destination. Sylvia has disappeared; certainly she was here when first I went to call Charlie, though she entirely declined to accompany me on that mission; has she actually had the heart to go to bed again? I am not long left in doubt. As we sit, not speaking, in the dawn of the summer morning, that seems to have run half-way to meet the so lately gone evening, the door opens softly and she enters. She has been making a toilette: an embroidered wrapper embraces her form, and a saffron ribbon is twisted in her black hair. The ruling passion strong in death!—not her own death, but that of another person."Can I be of any use?" she says, looking in. "Oh, Mrs. Scrope, how good of you to come to us in our trouble! I had not an idea that you were here."I make signs to her not to speak, and also that the room is too confined to admit of three nurses. She disappears. It is full morning before the joyful sound that for hours we have been straining our ears to catch greets them. The doctor has arrived. He is a dirty-looking little fellow; some paltry apothecary probably, to whom, were one in England, one would hardly entrust the care of a sick dog; but now , with what utter faith, with what intense and believing anxiety, do we listen to his fiat!"He says it is only a small blood-vessel after all," I say, trying to speak cheerfully, as I rejoin Charlie outside the door, and looking haggardly into his still more haggard face, in the early splendour of the strong young daylight; "perhaps we have been making ourselves too miserable. She is to be kept absolutely quiet; only one person at a time in the room, and that one not to speak. She is to have all sorts of nourishing things—good heavens!" (breaking off in a sort of despair) "where are they to come from—here, where there is nothing but spiced beef as hard as a shoe, and skeleton fowls?""Why did you bring her here?" he asks, in a tone of angry misery. "Were you mad? It was murder!""We did it for the best," I answer, humbly; "the doctor recommended it and she fancied it." . . . .As ill-luck will have it, next day there is a great yearly
fête celebrated in the village; a stir and festal noise all the
long day in the crowded street and through the house; doors banging,
loud voices laughing. We have tried so earnestly to keep them quiet,
but all in vain. When one is merry with beer, and when one has a
holiday only twice or thrice a year, one cannot always, every moment,
bear in mind the sufferings of an unknown unseen stranger. It is
drawing towards night again; still the clamour shows no symptom of
abating. Now and again I hear Madame Enderlin's low kind voice in
earnest remonstrance, but even she remonstrates in vain. The weather
has grown very hot. Lenore lies on her side, dozing uneasily, moaning
now and then. I sit beside her, bathing her hot hands with eau de
Cologne and water, and give a fresh start of exasperation and
apprehension at every fresh noise that penetrates through the door,
left ajar to admit a little air into the close room, where open
windows are forbidden, at least in the evening. Presently, a louder
noise than any of the former ones reaches my tortured ears: a great
and heavy stamping up the stairs—up—up—up. It
reaches the passage on which all our doors open. I stretch my neck to
see what it is, without moving, and to my horror discover that it is
an Italian hurdy-gurdy man, with his instrument on his back. He is
just stooping his hand to turn the handle, when I see Charlie rush
wildly out of his own door and with furious gestures stop him. The
poor man is much surprised. "What, must not he play for the Signora?"A month has passed. Lenore is again up; lies on the sofa in the sitting-room, dressed; again talks, sometimes again laughs."She wishes to see you," I say to Mr. Scrope, as we meet in the passage; "she is quite looking forward to it; will you go now?" My fingers are on the door handle; I half turn it."Stay," he cries, hastily, but in a low voice, putting his hand on mine to check it; "I am not ready—wait a moment—tell me—how do I look?""What do you mean?" I say, half-laughing; "are you taking a leaf out of Sylvia's book?""You know what I mean," he answers impatiently. "Do I look cheerful—in good spirits—as if I had nothing on my mind?"I scan his face doubtfully, I cannot answer in the affirmative."Her eyes look me through and through," he says, excitedly, "no matter how much I lie, she is not deceived. Tell me, Mima, how can I make my face tell lies?—how can I look content?""She will ask you no questions," I answer, sadly; "at least, I think not—she has asked me none.""Shall I—be—be—very much shocked?" he asks in a whisper, "it is better to know what to expect—tell me.""She is pulled down, of course," I answer sorrowfully; "very much pulled down;" (then, after a little pause): "my poor fellow, what is the use of buoying ourselves up with untrue hopes? It is the beginning of the end; the doctor himself said as much to me the other day."CHAPTER IX.
WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."The light upon her yellow hair,But not within her eyes;The light still there upon her hair,The death upon her eyes.""How much better you are looking!"In his own mind he has been practising this little speech—practising it with the proper intonation of half surprised cheerfulness; when he comes to pronounce it, really it is a failure. There is a strained gaiety in his tone that would hardly deceive a baby."More perjuries," she says, with a languid smile, looking up at him half compassionately from her couch. "I will dispense you from telling any more stories; you told a great many the other day, but I do not think they will come much against you in the last account—but still—be on the safe side—tell no more of them.""I—I—I said nothing but what I thought," he begins, with a stammering haste, but her great clear eyes looking steadily, though not unkindly through him, make his voice decline into silence."I have done crying for myself now," she says, with a sort of smile, "do not you think I have had plenty of time to do that in, during these last long endless nights? I could not have believed a summer night could be so long. I have been sorrier for myself than I ever was for anybody else—but—but—I am getting used to it—I kick and scream no longer. Where is the use?"What has become of the stiff smile into which he has so carefully trained his features? He has taken possession of one of her pale hands; he seems to be very welcome to it; she does not care whether he has it or has it not; he has stooped and laid his bronzed cheek upon it to hide his face."'As flies to wanton boys, so we to the gods;They kill us for their sport,'"she says, dreamily repeating this couplet out of "King Lear." "I suppose they are killing me for their sport?""You are not to talk. Jemima says so," he says, raising his head, and speaking with a tone of shocked distress."Bah!" she answers slightingly, "if I am silent for ever , will it save me? Do you think that if I thought there was the remotest chance of that , I would once open my lips? But what is the use of setting up one's little bit of life, like an end of candle on a save-all, to make it burn a few moments longer?" A little dumb pause. "You are crying!" she says presently, with one of her old quick and irritable moments, which contrasts oddly and painfully with her changed and almost extinguished voice. "I hate to see a man cry! It is unnatural—womanish—it always makes me inclined to laugh.""For God's sake, laugh, if you feel disposed!" he says fiercely, dashing away his tears, as if ashamed and angry at them. "I have been your butt always, Lenore! I am willing to be so still.""Are you going to quarrel with me?" she asks, querulously. "I suppose so; sooner or later everybody does.""Do they?" (speaking softly, and again stooping his head, to kiss her fingers)."You blame me for talking," she says presently, with a sort of weary pettishness, "and then you do not volunteer a word yourself. Some one must speak; we cannot both sit dumb—mumchance.""You are right," he says, making a great effort to speak easily and lightly. "I am more than ordinarily stupid to-day—headachy, I think—cobwebby.""At least do not look so woe-begone," she says, staring at him with discontented tired eyes; "you make it worse for me—harder. I have been trying to persuade myself that what happens to every one cannot be so very bad—but you—your face upsets me!""How can I mend it?" he says, humbly and fondly. "I will try.""After all, it is no such a great catastrophe," she says with a little bitter laugh; "nobody is much to be pitied but me— nobody cares much except myself, and, perhaps, you . Jemima thinks she is enormously grieved; she pulls a long face, but it is easy to see that it will not be the death of her—that she will survive many long and happy years to talk about 'poor dear Lenore.'"He silently caresses her hand, but does not trust himself to embark on any speech."How strong you are!" she says, her eyes wandering steadily and coldly, with a sort of envy, over his face and figure."Certainly there are hands and hands" (again taking possession of her own, and laying it beside his to compare them). "If you do not play tricks with yourself—if you are moderately steady—what a long life you will probably have, full of action and pleasure and pleasant business! Oh, my God!"—(breaking out into the passionate and so-absolutely-useless upbraidings that Ave sometimes address to the great Power above us)—"it is not fair—indeed it is not. How have you been so much better than I, that you should live so many happy years after I am gone?""Oh, my love," he cries in a tone of the acutest pain, "why do you throw my strength in my teeth? Can I help it? Do you think it gives me any pleasure? Do you think that if I could be weak and sinking like you—now —this minute—that I should complain much?""Of course you would," she answers feebly but brusquely, as much as I do. Of course you are glad to be strong; you would be an idiot if you were not; as long as one has good health, one has everything ! One can get over every other trouble, but that—that——"He shakes his head dissentingly. More than once the effort of talking has brought on an access of coughing, but Scrope's remonstrances are vain; she is resolute to carry on the conversation."Fifty years hence you will probably still be here," she says, in the same faint envious voice. "You are twentyeight now—yes—a hale strong man of seventy-eight—still alive—still enjoying—children and grandchildren all about you.""Never!" he says, violently starting up, and walking about the room in disordered haste. "I shall never have a child! If you leave me, Lenore, I shall never have a wife.""Pooh!" she says contemptuously, "five years hence you will be a respectable pére de famille . What do I say?—Five years? three—two—and when you are talking about your conquests you will have to think twice before you can recollect what colour my eyes were, or which of the dry dusty hair-locks in your pocket-book was mine.""At least you are consistent," he cries fiercely, stopping suddenly beside her, his face white and disfigured with angry grief; "all your life your object has been to give pain. Well, I congratulate you; weak and changed as you are in other ways, you are still unchanged in that—are still as able as ever to cut to the heart.""Why should not I!" she says wearily, rolling her head from side to side on the pillow. "I have been cut to the heart enough in my day; why should not other people go shares with me?. . . . Until we went to Dinan," she resumes by-and-by, "I had always had my own way; I never remember the time when I had not. I always said, that if ever I did not get my own will in anything it would be the death of me. I remember telling Paul so, almost the first time I saw him; I thought it rather a fine thing to say; I never dreamed of it's coming true, but it has.""Not yet—not yet!" he remonstrates, passionately."Not that I am dying of love," she says, raising herself and speaking with more energy than she has yet shown. "Never say, or let any one else say, that. Whatever tales one may have heard to that effect, I do not believe any one ever did such a thing in this world. If I had not been sickly to begin with, I could not have fretted myself into my grave, however hard I had tried. I should have grown yellow and pinched and withered before my time, but I should have lived . Yes, if I had not been sickly, radically sickly, to begin with, I should have lived.""Live now!" he cries wildly, throwing himself down on his knees beside her sofa, and looking up with all the sorrowful madness of his blue eyes into her face. "Why should not you? Perhaps you will never again be very strong, but there is no reason why you may not live—yes, live for many years. This climate is too harsh for you; when you grow a little stronger let me take you away to a warmer suaver one —to Italy—the South of France; let me take you, Lenore— take my wife—the only wife I shall ever have.""Your wife! " she says, with a smile wholly sorrowful, yet touched with a little gratification. "I thought we had heard the last of that old story.""Never! " he answers, vehemently. "Never! " As long as I am near you you will never hear the last of it.""If you honestly wish to marry me," she says, looking half gratefully at him with her large and languid eyes; "yes, you look honest, it is a way you have; but if you wish it seriously, it must be only as a penance. Even good men, who have loved their wives to begin with, if they fall sick, and remain for a long time ailing invalids, grow tired of them; against their will they grow tired of them. If I lasted long enough, you would grow tired—heartily tired—of me.""Should I?" (with an expressive accent).Again she shakes her head."There are worthier occupations in life for a young and handsome man than carrying cushions and shaking physic-bottles.""Tastes differ," he says, smiling a little, though not very merrily. "I think not.""Who could love me now?" she asks, with a movement of disbelieving self-contempt. "Aimer d'amour , I mean; they might love me in the sense in which good and tender-hearted people love anything that is miserable and suffering; but that is not the way in which I used to be loved—not the way in which I cared to be loved.""Neither is it the way in which I love you," he answers firmly."Why do you tantalize me?0" she cries, angrily, pushing nor heavy hair irritably away from her blue-veined temples; "talking about what we shall do if I live. I shall not live— I shall die. Often—so often—in the past nights, when you have all been comfortably warmly asleep, I have said over and over to myself, 'Lenore Herrick is dead,' trying how it would sound.""Hush—hush!" he says, unutterably pained; then, after a little silence, "Lenore" (speaking with a shaking voice and quivering features), "even if you are right—even if you are not to live long—why do you make me face this frightful possibility? But even if it is so, let me at least be able to look back out of my desolation, and think, that though God was in a hurry to part us, yet that for a short time—after long and weary waiting—you were my very own—belonging to me—called by my name.""If I am to die," she says harshly, "what does it matter what name I am called by?—what name is cut on my gravestone? Shall I lie any the easier because you wear crape and weepers for me?"Again he says, "Hush! hush!""You are unwise to wish that I were well," she says presently, with a sort of pitying smile, "it is against your own interest. I am quite fond of you now—quite! I like to feel your hand coolly clasping mine; I like to send you on messages; you are so zealous and so speedy. I like to see your handsome sorrowful face come in at the door."Again he bends his head over her hand, to hide his dumb agony."If you had not been here I should have sadly felt the want of some one to cry over me," she continues, mournfully smiling; "nobody else would have done it, certainly. I do not blame them; I never cried over anybody else, or was at all pitiful or sympathetic in my day. I reap my own sowing, but still it is pleasanter as it is."He is kissing her hands over and over again, but he makes no rejoinder."But yet," she pursues gravely, "I have a misgiving that if I grew strong and well again I should have as little relish for your society as ever; I should shrink from your touch, and fly at the distant sound of your voice, as I did in the old days of our engagement. Do not look miserable; my affection for you will never be put to that test—only say nothing more about my being your wife; I wish for that as little as ever. I love you as a child loves its nurse, not as a woman loves her husband."Poor Scrope! his last Spanish castle has fallen into ruin: by her cold and friendly words she has torn into tatters the airy fabric of his last poor dream."I was wrong," he says, after a pause, in a strangled voice, "selfish, as I always am. I will be—be—content."A long, long silence. Outside, the cheery footsteps of guests in the hotel running down stairs, in preparation for some pleasant expedition; loud and happy voices calling to one another. Lenore lies back with closed eyes, exhausted by the previous conversation, and yet it is she that resumes it."How long do they give me?" she asks, faintly, but calmly; "if you are truly my friend, you will tell me—No? Well, then I must remain in my ignorance."Another pause 5 the gay picnic party have packed themselves into their carriage; with a noise of wheels and bells they are off."Before you go," says Lenore, again speaking, "I have one more thing to say to you; it will pain you sharply, but that is nothing new, is it? you will writhe and shudder, as I have already seen you do two or three times to-day—well—I cannot help it—you are the only person I can speak to about it; if I were to broach the subject to Jemima she would put her fingers in her ears, and run out of the room.""What is it?" he asks indistinctly."When—it is—all over," she says, very slowly, but with composure, "when I am——gone , do not let them take me back to England; was not it Châteaubriand who said that there was something revolting to him in the idea of a dead person on a journey?—well—I agree with him. Make them, bury me here—in the little mountain graveyard, where you and I sat on that Sunday evening, when first you came—are you listening?—will you promise?""I promise," he answers, unsteadily."How grand it was!" she says, leaning back, with closed eyes, and smiling dreamily. "I see them now—all those great peaks cutting the pale green sky with their jagged teeth—now that I am to leave the world so soon, I wish it were uglier; perhaps it would be easier to go—oh, my God!" (opening her eyes, and clasping her hands together in utter bitterness of spirit), "I do love this very world—just as it is—other people find fault with it, but I do not—I love it—I love it—oh, why may not I stay a little in it?""Bury me under the west wall," she says, "beneath the catchfly and the blown dandelions!"CHAPTER X.WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.YET another month has smoothly slidden past, and we are here still. We know not how much longer we may have to bide here; but, alas! we do know that when we go we shall not all go; but that one of us, whether we will it or not, must stay behind. One of us God has called, saying to her, both in the dark night and in the broad blue noon, "Come!" and to that strong bidding there can be said no "Nay." This is an invitation to which we cannot say, "I will not," or "I will." Bidden, one must go. Thus our Lenore is going. "We say so now, and so it is. At first, we did not breathe it even to ourselves; then, after a while, each whispered it low to her own sad heart; now , we say it aloud to one another.We have been here ten weeks; the summer, that we found in its first cool youth, has now assumed the hot gravity of its August ripeness. We have outlived many lovely dynasties of the flowers; have seen them arise and prosper, and then sweetly die. Oh! flowers, give us a lesson; teach us your way of dying, your gentle, unregretting extinction. Our death is a cruel fellow; he is not content to take us with a kindly mildness. Did he but stretch out a friendly hand to us, some among us would not be over loath to put ours in it, and go away with him whither he list. But he comes with his eyeless, ash-grey skull face; with his racks and his scourges; can he blame us that we shrink and shiver away from him? Lenore has been looking him steadily in the face now, for a long time past, but still she shivers, still she pales, at the sound of his nearing feet. Lenore is amongst those who go, knowing it. Some depart smiling; ignorantly "babbling of fond home trifles, with eyes still fixed on earth's dear sunshiny hills and plains. Overhead in the flood are they plunged, or ever they know that they are within sight of its bank. But Lenore knows. I am uncertain whether we should ever have had the heart to tell her; whether we should not have let her slip into the next world, without being aware of it. For myself, I think it the kinder plan; I think that to one whom God has summoned, himself will reveal it in meet time, without the intervention of any harsh human voice, saying roughly, "You will die." But, as you know, an accident has revealed it to Lenore. Sometimes she forgets it for a moment; sometimes the conquered spirit of youth reasserts itself; sometimes she talks gaily of what she will do next year; sometimes she rives our hearts by making plans for the winter, whose snows she will never feel, for the new distant spring, whose flowers will open upon her grave. But it is only for a little while that the beautiful illusion lives; always it vanishes, as the cold dew vanishes from the fine fresh mountain grass.It is a fearfully hot day, softly overcast; the keen mountain air, cool and crisp, which so rarely fails from these high places, has gone to draw new sharpness from the snows, and left us gasping. A silent day, but for the loud rumblings of the thunder in the great grand hills.Sylvia sits in her bedroom, crying over the last volume of a Tauchnitz novel, benevolently lent her by Mrs. Scrope, which makes her hotter still. Lenore lies, with heavy eyelids drooped over sunk eyes, on the sofa in our sitting-room; it has been transformed, as much as possible, into the likeness of a couch, and drawn up close to the window, to catch any stray little travelling breeze. Breathing is always difficult to Lenore now, but to-day specially so. I am sitting beside her, fanning her. She expressed a while ago a sudden longing for lemonade, as a nice cool drink. I asked Kolb to make me some, as it is a beverage "which does not grow ready made in these parts. Kolb's lemonade is produced by pouring hot water on lemons; five minutes ago it entered boiling . I have been pouring the whole stock of water contained in my bedroom's tiny ewer and bottle into a washhand basin, and causing the lemonade jug to stand in it, in the forlorn hope of cooling it through the agency of this half-pint of tepid water. Now I have returned to Lenore, and am fanning her again. The languid flies come and march about upon her outflung arms, with their little tickling, maddening legs, and when I strike out wildly and indignantly at them, with a little self-conscious buzz they fly away and elude me. With my resentful eyes I have followed one to the wall, where he stands twisting his hind legs together. Then my sad gaze returns to the place where it has dwelt all morning—Lenore's sunken, weary, pained face; the face that might as well be any one else's, for all resemblance that it bears to hers—hers, our beauty! Oh, bad, cruel Death! Why cannot you take us all at once, without first stealing beauty and grace and harmony? Do you care to hold nothing but disfigurement and decay in your frosty arms! I am sorrowfully pondering on the probability of her passing to-day—half wishing it, and yet half grudging—when her eyes slowly unclose, and she speaks."You fan me badly," she says, feebly and complainingly; "so irregularly, and intermittingly—not half so well as Charlie does. Send him.""But, my dear," I say, gently remonstrating, "you always will talk to him, you know, and you are not up to it.""I mean to talk to him," she says, with a pitiful shadow of her old resolute wilfulness. "I have something to say to him—something I must say to him—a favour to ask of him.""A favour?""Yes," she answers petulantly, "a favour; but it is nothing to you; it is not you that I am going to ask—send him."So I obey. I find him sitting in his own room, his hands thrust into his tossed bright hair, and his eyes, red with watching and weeping, idly fixed on the cruel calm of the unfeeling smiling hills. "She has sent for you," I say, entering listlessly. "She says you fan her so much better than I do. She has also something to say to you, a favour to ask— a favour —what can it be?" I end, a little inquisitively. He does not pay any heed to my curiosity; he is already in the passage when I call him back. "Stay," I say; "before you go, bathe your eyes and try to smile; you know, poor soul, she—she likes us to look cheerful."CHAPTER XLWHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS."How long you have been!" she says, querulously. "I thought you were never coming. You might have made a little haste.""I will be quicker next time, darling," he answers, kneeling down gently beside her, and speaking firmly and cheerfully."Fan me," she says, panting; "fan me strongly and regularly."She lies back exhausted, and he hears her mutter, "At least, wherever I go, I shall have breath."Utter silence for five minutes, save for the gentle noise made by the winnowing of the fan."Lift me," she says, stretching out her arms to him. "Lying down I gasp."He lifts her with delicate care, and her dying head droops in sisterly abandonment on his kind shoulder."Dear old fellow," she says faintly; "kind old brother."Yet another pause; no sustained conversation is possible."I am going very fast, Charlie.""Yes, darling.""I was always one to do things quickly, if I did them at all—I was never a dawdle."No answer."You will get away before the season is over, after all.""Oh, love, hush!""You would do something to oblige me, would not you, Charlie?""Anything possible, beloved.""But supposing it were impossible?""Still I would do it.""That is right," she answers, with a sigh of relief."I am glad."Then she is again silent for a long time. The thunder still grumbles deeply in the hot heart of the hills, and the flies still walk about torpidly upon her white wrapper."You know all the old story—about Paul," she says presently, with a little excitement in her faint and hollow voice."Yes, I know it.""You know the reason why I have borrowed the advertisement sheet of your Times every day?""I—I have guessed it.""I have daily looked carefully through the marriages," she says, with a sort of feeble eagerness, "but I have never seen his .""Neither have I."A long and painful fit of coughing intervenes."Tell me the rest to-morrow," he says, gently bending over her. She smiles slightly."It is all very well for you to talk—you who are rich in to-morrows. How do I know that I have one?"Again he fans her, trying to coax the cool little waves of air to her hot and parted lips."He said it—was—to be immediately ," she murmurs after a pause; "since it has not been yet—perhaps—it will never be.""Perhaps.""Very likely it is broken off," she says, a ray of pleasure lighting up her face. "I never told you so before—but— between ourselves—I do not think—he was very eager about it. No doubt it is broken off.""No doubt."She has taken his hand, and is stroking it with a sort of patronising caressingness."Kind, good, patient Charlie!" she says softly. "Whose errands will you run on when I am gone?"No answer."I have one more errand to send you on," she continues, with feeble eagerness; "longer, disagreeabler, more difficult than any of the others. Will you run on it too?""Oh, beloved, try me!""There is at least one advantage in being in a dying state," she says by-and-by, gravely and solemnly; "as long as I was well I could not send for him—could not ask him to comeback to me—could not move a finger to bring him—all the advances must have come from him . But now—now I may send for whom I please, and no one will call me unmaidenly, will they?""No one," he answers steadily, though his face is drawn with the pain of finding that still, in these last hours, he is second, always second. She is looking earnestly at him; her large grey eyes—unnaturally, unbecomingly large now—are reading his countenance like an open book."It hurts you," she says calmly; "well, I have always hurt you. I suppose you like it, or you would not have stayed with me, but would have gone, as Paul did. Well, have I made you understand? I wish to send for him."For a second he turns away his head, and gathers his strength together; then he says, kindly and gently:"Do you wish me to write or telegraph?""I wish neither," she answers, with a little impatience; "do you think that that is my errand? That would not be a very hard one, just to walk down to the post-office; I might charge even Sylvia with that. Listen; of course you need not do it unless you wish; of course I cannot make , you. I wish to make sure. I wish you to go and fetch him ."He gives an involuntary start of utter pain and anguish."And leave you , oh my darling?""And leave me," she echoes pettishly; "what good do you do me? What good does any one do me? Can you give me breath or sleep?"He rises and walks to the window. The evening draws on, and the thunder is dumb. He looks out on the great mountains—lilac while the sun is setting, grey when he is gone—the mountains whose playfellows the swift snow-storms are, and about whose necks the clouds wreathe their wet white arms; looks at the deep torrent courses that furrow their sides, and at the straight dark pines, which the winter strips not, and to whom lavish spring, with her gentian wreath and her lap full of flowered grasses, brings no embellishment; looks at them all, without seeing them. Then he comes back to the couch side, and says:"I will go.""You think he will not come?" she says, looking wistfully at him. "I see it in your face, but I know better; if you had seen him at Bergun, you would have thought differently. Yes" (with a little shining smile), "he will come!""There is no doubt of it," he replies quietly."Even if he is married he will come," she says, still smiling; "his wife will spare him for these few days, and, if she hesitates, you may tell her that, whatever I was once, I am not a person to be jealous of now."Silence."You will set off to-morrow morning early " she says feverishly. "I am afraid it is too late to-day. You know his address? Oh yes, of course; you have been there?""Yes.""And you will certainly bring him—certainly ?""Yes."She closes her eyes with a long sigh of relief. She lies so still that he is uncertain whether she sleeps, but, after a time, she opens them again."You wonder why I wish so much to see him again," she says slowly;
"when he does not wish to see me; you think it is love . No, it is not. When one is sick as I am one
is past love; only all the night through his face vexes me. I am worried with it; it never leaves me;
I torment myself trying to recall every line of it. I must see whether I have remembered it right: it has been with me every moment in this world. I must take it distinct and clear with me into the next."CHAPTER XII.
WHAT JEMIMA SAYS."Lilies for a bridal bed;Roses for a matron's head;Violets for a maiden dead."CHARLIE is gone. Very early to-day he set off. I stood by him on the steps, in the cool of the young and shining morning, as he prepared to step into the carriage which was to take him up and down the long steep mountain passes to Chur."Keep her till I come back," he said, wringing my hand with unknowing violence. "If I come back to find her gone, I shall never forgive you—never. Promise!""How can I promise?" I said, sorrowfully. "Have I life and death in my hand? How can I hinder her going?"So he is gone, and we are waiting—waiting with strained ears and hot eyes—to see which will win the race to Lenore's side, Death or Paul. Lenore herself fights with all her strength—alas, how little!—with a strength not her own— on Paul's side. She refuses to die. For more than a week past she has turned with loathing from every species of nourishment; now she demands it greedily. She will not speak—will not utter a word—for fear of wasting the little breath that remains to her. People are very kind; every hour of the day solicitous faces meet us on the landing-place, with pitying gestures and expressions of sympathy. Guests in the hotel tread softly, and scold their children when they hear them whooping and noisily tumbling, with the utter unfeelingness of childhood, down the slight stairs and along the thin-walled passages.And now all the days between Scrope's going and his expected backcoming have rolled away. Before he went we calculated accurately together distances and times; this is the day on which he engaged to return. Lenore is still here— still fighting—disputing her life, inch by inch, hand to hand, with the all-victor."He will come to-day," she has said, speaking for the first time for many hours—speaking confidently. "It is my lucky day; something tells me so."I have drawn the scant window-curtain and thrown wide the window, and looked out on the unutterable majesty of the morning hills."I will not die to day!" she says, clenching her feeble hand. "I have some life left in me yet—more than you think. It would be too cruel to go before he came; he would be so disappointed." I turn and gaze mournfully at her. Her voice is stronger, and the inward excitement of her soul has sent a last little flame of colour to her cheeks. "Let us be ready for him," she says, with a tender smile. "Take away all those physic bottles—everything that looks like sickness. Make the room pretty; gather plenty of flowers."So I obey her. All about the room, following her directions, I place the gay sweet flowers. Oh, wonderful, lovely flowers! whence do you steal your tender stains? Is it from the brown earth or the colourless wind? Later on, as the day draws towards noon, she expresses a wish to be dressed. I remonstrate gently, fearing the exhaustion consequent on so unwonted an exertion; but she is resolute."I shall wish so few things any more," she says, simply and pleadingly; "you may as well let me have my way." Thus I tearfully consent. "The old blue gown," she says, with an eager smile; "Louise will find it among my things. It is the only one among my clothes that he ever praised. He never was one to notice clothes, but he liked that. Only the last time I saw him he was talking of it."So, with many pauses, slowly and mournfully, with sorrowful faces, as if we were already dressing her for her grave, we dress her in the old blue gown. Alas! it is pitifully large for her. But she is not yet satisfied. In spite of pain, in spite of utter prostration, she must also have her hair dressed—her long bright hair—the one thing that remains to her."Plait it round and round my head," she says, looking with feverish entreaty into my sad face. "Take great pains. Put no frisettes —nothing artificial; he does not like it; but yet let it be becoming."Becoming! at such a time! Oh, God! Amazed I look at her, and a half doubt enters my mind that I have been allotting her too short a span of further life. Her voice sounds certainly stronger, and there is a ray of living animation in her great sunken eyes. Towards evening she grows very restless, and I hear her murmur to herself, "He must make haste—make haste. The road is long and steep—so many sharp turns and twists. I hope the horses are sure-footed. But it is only for once ; he might make haste." She is as one running a hard race that is nearing the goal, but hears his rival's feet close upon his track, and strains every tense nerve in the effort and agony of attainment. Will she attain her goal? It is the question that, as day droops into night, makes us all ever more and more breathless. She speaks little with her faint lips, but with her hunted piteous eyes she entreats us to keep her. I cannot bear those eyes.The light is gone, and the candles are lit. "Let me read to you a little," I say, softly, in a tear-strangled voice."Yes," she answers; "yes; if you will—if you like."But she is not listening. I sit down with the Bible upon my knees. I can hardly see the page for tears. I scarcely know where I turn. I begin at the words of godlike consolation that fit any grief; that come never amiss: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden." They open the fount of my own sorrow, that requires but a touch to unclose it. "Are you listening?" I ask, gently, trying to scan her face across the candle's feeble flame."Yes," she answers, with a sort of hurry; "yes—to be sure—I am listening!—but read lower; one cannot hear any little noise outside when you read so loud."Sighing, I lay down the book, and walking to the window look out—look out at the little quarter moon, and the travelling stars—the sky, that speaks of sleep and unutterable quietness—the dark mountain bulks, with flashes of silver on their giant flanks—the narrow street, with the lights from the hotel playing on the little houses opposite—the small white cross gleaming in the moonlight—the solitary pacer down the tongueless street—the solemn glacier river that saith nothing light, but singeth ever the same plain, hoarse song."After all—I shall have to go!" she says, with a low wail. "I cannot wait—I cannot. Oh, Paul! you might have hurried!"I have thrust my head as far out of the window as it will go. I am listening. At first, nothing but the river—nothing! Oh, river! I hate you; be silent for once. Then a little noise mixes with it—so small and uncertain that one cannot positively say at first that it is not a part of the stream's roar; then it separates itself—grows distinct—nears. I turn to the bed, with an unspeakable weight lifted from my heart. "He is coming!" I say, with a smile; but already she has heard. Could I expect my ears to be keener than hers? Even in death she looks very joyful. As the carriage noisily rolls up towards the hotel I turn with the intention of going down to meet the travellers; but she stops me."Stay!" she says, stretching out her hand eagerly. "Do not go! I forbid you! I will have the first look!"So we remain in absolute silence for two enormous minutes; then the sound of a step running quickly and lightly up the stairs—a step—surely there is only one! The door opens, and Charlie enters, haggard, travel-stained, and alone . She does not even look at him; her eyes are staring with an awful eager intentness at the door behind him; but no one follows, nor does he leave it open, as if expecting to be followed. On the contrary, he closes it behind him."Great God!" I say, running up to him, half out of my wits with excitement, "What is this? You have come without him? You have not brought him?"He does not answer.Putting me aside he goes hastily to the couch, kneels down beside it, taking her gently in his arms, and says, in a hoarse voice:"My darling, I have broken my promise—but I could not help it;—it was not my fault. He—he—has not come, because—because it was his wedding-day when I got there. Oh, beloved, speak to me! Say you forgive me—you are not going without one word—speak—speak!"But Lenore will never speak to him any more: her head has sunk back, with all its pretty careful plaits, on his shoulder—Lenore has"Gone thro' the strait and dreadful pass of death." THE END. BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, SURREY J.D. &Co. Advert included in back of Broughton's "Good-bye Sweetheart" Advert included in back of Broughton's "Good-bye Sweetheart