Molly Bawn (part 2)

"In our case you have all the franticness to yourself," she says; but as she says it she puts her own soft little hand over the one that encircles her waist, to take the sting out of her words; though why she said it puzzles even herself: nevertheless there is great truth, in her remark, and he knows it.

"Then Philip is handsome," she says: "it is quite a pleasure to look at him. And I admire him very much."

"He is a good-looking fellow," reluctantly, and as though it were a matter of surprise nature's having bestowed beauty upon Philip Shadwell, "but surly."

"'Surly!' not to me."

"Oh, of course not to you! A man must be a brute to be uncivil to a woman. And I don't say he is that," slowly, and as though it were yet an undecided point whether Philip should be classed with the lower creation or not. "Do not let your admiration for him go too far, darling; remember——"

"About that," interrupts she, hurriedly, "you have something to remember also. Your promise to keep our engagement a dead secret. You will not break it?"

"I never," a little stiffly, "break a promise. You need not have reminded me of this one."

Silence.

Glancing up at her companion stealthily, Molly can see his lips are in a degree compressed, and that for the first time since their reunion his eyes are turned determinedly from her. Her heart smites her. So good as he is to her, she has already hurt and wounded him.

With a little caressing, tender movement, she rubs her cheek up and down against his sleeve for a moment or two, and then says, softly:

"Are you cross with me, Teddy? Don't then. I am so glad, so happy, to have you with me again. Do not spoil this one good hour by putting a nasty unbecoming little frown upon your forehead. Come, turn your face to me again: when you look at me, I know you will smile, for my sake."

"My own darling," says Luttrell, passionately.

The morrow brings new faces, and Herst is still further enlivened by the arrival of two men from some distant barracks,—one so tall, and the other so diminutive, as to call for an immediate joke about "the long and the short of it."

Captain Mottie is a jolly, genial little soul, with a perpetual look on all occasions as though he couldn't help it, and just one fault, a fatal tendency toward punning of the weakest description with which he hopes in vain to excite the risibility of his intimates. Having a mind above disappointment, however, he feels no depression on marking the invariable silence that follows his best efforts, and, with a perseverance worthy of a better cause, only nerves himself for fresh failures.

Nature, having been unprodigal to him in the matter of height, makes up for it generously in the matter of breadth, with such lavish generosity, indeed, that he feels the time has come when, with tears in his eyes, he must say "no" to his bitter beer.

His chum, Mr. Longshanks (commonly called "Daddy Longlegs," on account of the length of his lower limbs), is his exact counterpart, being as silent as the other is talkative; seldom exerting himself, indeed, to shine in conversation, or break the mysterious quiet that envelops him, except when he faithfully (though unsmilingly) helps out his friend's endeavors at wit, by saying "ha! ha!" when occasion calls for it. He has a red nose that is rather striking and suggests expense. He has also a weakness for gaudy garments, and gets himself up like a showy commercial traveler.

They are both related in some far-off manner to their host, though how, I believe, both he and they would be puzzled to explain. Still, the relationship beyond dispute is there, which is everything. Enfin they are harmless beings, such as come in useful for padding purposes in country houses during the winter and autumn seasons, being, according to their friends' account, crack shots, "A1 at billiards," and "beggars to ride."

It is four o'clock. The house is almost deserted. All the men have been shooting since early morning. Only Molly and Marcia remain in possession of the sitting-room that overlooks the graveled walk, Mrs. Darley having accompanied Mr. Amherst in his customary drive.

The sound of wheels coming quickly down the avenue compels Molly to glance up from the book she is enjoying.

"Somebody is coming," she says to Marcia; and Marcia, rising with more alacrity than is her wont, says, "It must be Lady Stafford," and goes into the hall to receive her guest. Molly, full of eager curiosity to see this cousin of Tedcastle's whose story has so filled her with interest, rises also, and cranes her neck desperately round the corner of the window to try and catch a glimspe of her, but in vain, the unfriendly porch prevents her, and, sinking back into her seat, she is fain to content herself by listening to the conversation that is going on in the hall between Marcia and the new arrival.

"Oh, Marcia, is that you?" says a high, sweet voice, with a little complaining note running through it, and then there is a pause, evidently filled up by an osculatory movement. "How odiously cool and fresh you do look! while I—what a journey it has been! and how out of the way! I really don't believe it was nearly so far the last time. Have the roads lengthened, or have they pushed the house farther on? I never felt so done up in my life."

"You do look tired, dear. Better go to your room at once, and let me send you up some tea."

"Not tea," says the sweet voice; "anything but that. I am quite too far gone for tea. Say sherry, Marcia, or—no,—Moselle. I think it is Moselle that does me good when I am fatigued to death."

"You shall have it directly. Matthews, show Lady Stafford her room."

"One moment, Marcia. Many people come yet? Tedcastle?"

"Yes, and Captain Mottie, with his devoted attendant, and the Darleys."

"Maudie? Is she as fascinating as ever? I do hope, Marcia, you have got her young man for her this time, as she was simply unbearable last year."

"I have not," laughing: "it is a dead secret, but the fact is, he wouldn't come."

"I like that young man; though I consider he has sold us shamefully. Any one else?"

"My cousin, Eleanor Massereene."

"The cousin! I am so glad. Anything new is such a relief. And I have heard she is beautiful: is she?"

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," quotes Marcia, in a low tone, and with a motion of her hand toward the open door inside which sits Molly, that sends Lady Stafford up-stairs without further parley.

"Is it Lady Stafford?" asks Molly, as Marcia re-enters the room.

"Yes."

"She seems very tired."

"I don't know, really. She thinks she is,—which amounts to the same thing. You will see her in half an hour or so as fresh as though fatigue were a thing unknown."

"How does she do it?" asks Molly, curiously, who has imagined Lady Stafford by her tone to be in the last stage of exhaustion.

"How can I say? I suppose her maid knows."

"Why? Does she—paint?" asks Molly, with hesitation, who has been taught to believe that all London women are a mixture of false hair, rouge, pearl powder, and belladonna.

"Paint!" with a polite disgust, "I should hope not. If you are a judge in that matter you will be able to see for yourself. I know nothing of such things, but I don't think respectable women paint."

"But," says Molly, who feels a sudden anger at her tone, and as sudden a desire to punish her for her insolence, opening her blue eyes innocently wide, "you are respectable, Marcia?"

"What do you mean by that?" growing pale with anger, even through that delicate soupçon of color that of late she has been compelled to use to conceal her pallor. "Do you mean to insinuate that I paint?"

"I certainly thought you did," still innocent, still full of wonder: "you said——"

"I would advise you for the future to restrain such thoughts: experience will teach you they show want of breeding. In the meantime, I beg you to understand that I do not paint."

"Oh, Marcia!"

"You are either extremely impertinent or excessively ignorant, or both!" says Marcia, rising to her full height, and turning flashing eyes upon her cousin, who is regarding her with the liveliest reproach. "I insist on knowing what you mean by your remarks."

"Why, have you forgotten all about those charming water-color sketches in the small gallery up-stairs?" exclaims Molly, with an airy irrepressible laugh. "There, don't be angry: I was only jesting; no one would for a moment suspect you of such a disreputable habit."

"Pray reserve your jests for those who may appreciate them," says Miss Amherst, in a low angry tone: "I do not. They are as vulgar as they are ill-timed."

"But I took a good rise out of her all the same," says Molly to herself, as she slips from the room full of malicious laughter.

Before dinner—not sooner—Lady Stafford makes her appearance, and quite dazzles Molly with her beauty and the sweetness of her manner. She seems in the gayest spirits, and quite corroborates all Marcia has said about her exhibiting no symptoms of fatigue. Her voice, indeed, still retains its sad tone, but it is habitual to her, and does not interfere with the attractive liveliness of her demeanor, but only adds another charm to the many she already possesses.

She is taller than Tedcastle has led Molly to believe, and looks even smaller than she really is. Her eyelids droop at the corners, and give her a pensive expression that softens the laughter of her blue eyes. Her nose is small and clever, her mouth very merry, her skin exquisite, though devoid of the blue veins that usually go with so delicate a white, and her hair is a bright, rich gold. She is extremely lovely, and, what is far better, very pleasing to the eye.

"I am much better," she says, gayly, addressing Marcia, and then, turning to Molly, holds out to her a friendly hand.

"Miss Massereene, I know," she smiles, looking at her, and letting a pleased expression overspread her features as she does so. "Marcia told me of your arrival; I have heard of you also from other people; but their opinion I must reserve until I have become your friend. At all events, they did not lie in their description. No, you must not cross-examine me; I will not tell what they said."

She is a decided addition to the household; they all find her so. Even Mr. Longshanks brightens up, and makes a solitary remark at dinner; but, as nobody catches it, he is hardly as unhappy as otherwise assuredly he would have been.

After dinner she proves herself as agreeable in the drawing-room (during that wretched half-hour devoid of men) as she had been when surrounded by them, and chatters on to Marcia and Molly of all things possible and impossible.

Presently, however, the conversation drifting toward people of whose existence Molly has hitherto been unaware, she moves a little apart from the other two, and amuses herself by turning over a book of Byron's beauties; while wishing heartily those stupid men would weary of their wine,—vain wish!

By degrees the voices on the other sofa wax fainter and fainter, then rise with sudden boldness, as Marcia, secure in her French—says in that language, evidently in answer to some remark, "No; just conceive it,—she is totally uneducated, that is, in the accepted meaning of the word. The very morning after her arrival she confessed to me she knew nothing of French, nothing to signify of music, nothing, in fact, of anything."

"But her air, her whole bearing,—it is inconceivable," says Lady Stafford. "She must have had some education surely."

"She spoke of a National School! Consider the horror of it! I expect her brother must be a very low sort of person. If she can read and write it is as much as we need hope for. That is the worst of living in one of those petty villages, completely out of society."

"What a pity, with her charming face and figure!" says Lady Stafford, also (I regret to say) so far forgetting herself as to speak in the language she believes falsely to be unknown to Molly.

"Yes, she is rather pretty," admits Marcia, against her will; "but beauty when attached to ignorance is only a matter of regret, as it seems to me."

"True," says Lady Stafford, pityingly, letting her eyes fall on Molly.

The latter, whose own eyes have been fixed vacantly on some distant and invisible object outside in the dark garden, now rises, humming softly, and going toward the window presses her forehead against one of the cool panes. So stationed, she is out of sight and hearing.

The door opens, and the men come in by twos. Luttrell makes straight for Molly, and as an excuse for doing so says out loud:

"Miss Massereene, will you sing us something?"

"I don't sing," returns Molly, in a distinct and audible tone,—audible enough to make Marcia raise her shoulders and cast an "I told you so" glance at Cecil Stafford.

Luttrell, bewildered, gazes at Molly.

"But——" he commences, rashly.

"I tell you I don't sing," she says, again, in a lower, more imperative tone, although even now she repents her of the ill-humor that has balked her of a revenge so ready to her hand. To sing a French song, with her divine voice, before Marcia! A triumph indeed!

All night long the conversation between her cousin and Lady Stafford rankles in her mind. What a foolish freak it was her ever permitting Marcia to think of her as one altogether without education! Instinct might have told that her cousin would not scruple about applying such knowledge to her disadvantage. And yet why is Marcia her enemy? How has she ever injured her? With what purpose does she seek to make her visit unpleasant to her?

And to speak contemptuously of her to Lady Stafford, of all people, whom already she likes well enough to covet her regard in return,—it is too bad. Not for worlds would she have had her think so poorly of her.

At all events she will lose no time in explaining, on the morrow; and with this determination full upon her she retires to rest, with some small comfort at her heart.

CHAPTER XIII.

"Music hath charms."

"May I come in?" says Molly, next day, knocking softly at Lady Stafford's door.

"By all means," returns the plaintive voice from within; and Molly, opening the door, finds Cecil has risen, and is coming forward eagerly to meet her.

"I knew your voice," says the blonde, gayly. "Come in and sit down, do. I am ennuyée to the last degree, and will accept it as a positive charity if you will devote half an hour to my society."

"But you are sure I am not in the way?" asks Molly, hesitating; "you are not—busy?"

"Busy! Oh, what a stranger I am to you, my dear," exclaims Cecil, elevating her brows: "it is three long years since last I was busy. I am sure I wish I were: perhaps it might help me to get through the time. I have spent the last hour wondering what on earth brought me to this benighted spot, and I really don't know yet."

"Grandpapa's invitation, I suppose," says Molly, laughing.

"Well, yes, perhaps so; and something else,—something that I verily believe brings us all!—the fact that he has untold money, and can leave it where he pleases. There lies the secret of our yearly visitations. We outsiders don't of course hope to be the heir,—Philip is that, or Marcia, or perhaps both; but still there is a good deal of ready money going, and we all hope to be 'kindly remembered.' Each time we sacrifice ourselves by coming down here, we console ourselves by the reflection that it is at least another hundred tacked on to our legacy."

"What if you are disappointed?"

"I often think of that," says her ladyship, going off into a perfect peal of laughter. "Oh, the fun it would be! Think of our expressions. I assure you I spend whole hours picturing Maud Darley's face under the circumstances; you know she takes those long drives with him every day in the fond hope of cutting us all out and getting the lion's share."

"Poor woman! it is sad if she has all her trouble for nothing. I do not think I should like driving with grandpapa."

"I share your sentiments: neither should I. Still, there is a charm in money. Every night before going to bed I tot up on my fingers the amount of the bequest I feel I ought to receive. It has reached two thousand pounds by this. Next visit will commence a fresh thousand."

"You are sanguine," says Molly. "I wonder if I shall go on hoping like you, year after year."

"I request you will not even insinuate such a thing," cries Lady Stafford in pretended horror. "'Year after year!' Why, how long do you mean him to live? If he doesn't die soon, I shall certainly throw up my chance and cut his acquaintance." Then, with sudden self-reproach, "Poor old fellow," she says, "it is a shame to speak of him like this even in jest. He may live forever, as far as I am concerned. Now tell me something about yourself, and do take a more comfortable chair: you don't look half cozy."

"Don't make me too comfortable, or perhaps I shall bore you to death with the frequency of my visits. You will have me again to-morrow if you don't take care."

"Well, I hope so. Remember you have carte blanche to come here whenever you choose. I was fast falling into the blues when I heard you knock, so you may fancy how welcome you were, almost as welcome as my cousin."

"Marcia?" asks Molly, feeling slightly disappointed at the "almost."

"Oh, dear, no,—not Marcia; she and I don't get on a bit too well together, and she was excessively disagreeable all this morning: she is her grandfather's own child. I am sure she need not visit Philip's defection on me; but she has a horrible temper, and that's the truth. No, I meant Tedcastle; he is my cousin also. I do so like Tedcastle: don't you?"

"Very much indeed," coloring faintly. "But," hastily, "I have not yet told you what brought me here to-day."

"Do you mean to tell me you had an object in coming?" cries her ladyship, throwing up her little white jeweled hands in affected reproach. "That something keener than a desire for my society has brought you to my boudoir? You reduce me to despair! I did for one short quarter of an hour believe you 'loved me for myself alone.'"

"No," laughing, and blushing, too, all through her pale clear skin, "I confess to the object. I—the fact is—I have felt a little deceitful ever since last night. Because—in spite of Marcia's superior information on the subject, I have had some slight education, and I do know a little French!"

"Ah!" cries Lady Stafford, rising and blushing herself, a vivid crimson: "you heard, you understood all. Well," with a sudden revival, and a happy remembrance of her own words, "I didn't say anything bad, did I?"

"No, no: I would not have come here if you had. You said all there was of the kindest. You were so kind. I could not bear to deceive you or let you retain a false opinion of me. Marcia, indeed, outdid herself, though I am guiltless of offense toward her. She is evidently not aware of the fact that one part of my life was spent in London with my aunt, my father's sister, and that while with her I had the best masters to be found. I am sorry for Marcia, but I could not bring myself to speak just then."

Cecil burst into a merry, irresistible laugh.

"It is delicious!" cries she, wickedly. "A very comedy of errors. If we could but manage some effective way of showing Marcia her mistake. Can you," with sudden inspiration, "sing?"

"I can," says Molly, calmly.

"You can. That sounds promising. I wonder you don't say 'a little,' as all young ladies do, more especially when they sing a good deal more than any one wants them to! Come here, and let me see what you mean by that uncompromising 'can.'"

Opening a small cottage piano at the other end of her pretty sitting-room, she motions Molly to the instrument.

"Play for me," Molly says, bent on doing her very best. "I can sing better standing."

"What, then?"

"This," taking up a song of Sullivan's, after a rapid survey of the pile of music lying on one side.

She sings, her lovely voice thrilling and sobbing through the room, sings with a passionate desire to prove her powers, and well succeeds. For a minute after she has finished, Cecil does not speak, and then goes into raptures, as "is her nature to."

"Oh that I had your voice!" cries she, with genuine tears in her eyes. "I would have the world at my feet. What a gift! a voice for a goddess! Molly—may I call you so?—I absolutely pity Marcia when I think of her consternation."

"She deserves it," says Molly, who feels her cousin's conduct deeply. "I will sing to-night, if you will get Marcia to ask me."

So the two conspirators arrange their little plan, Cecil Stafford being quite mischievous enough to enjoy the thought of Miss Amherst's approaching discomfiture, while Molly feels all a woman's desire to restore her hurt vanity.

Dinner is half over; and so far it has been highly successful. Mr. Amherst's temper has taken this satisfactory turn,—he absolutely refuses to speak to any of his guests.

Under these circumstances every one feels it will be the better part of valor not to address him,—all, that is, except Mrs. Darley, who, believing herself irresistible, goes in for the doubtful task of soothing the bear and coaxing him from his den.

"I am afraid you have a headache, dear Mr. Amherst," she says, beaming sweetly upon him.

"Are you, madam? Even if I were a victim to that foolish disorder, I hardly see why the fact should arouse a feeling of terror in your breast. Only weak-minded girls have headaches."

A faint pause. Conversation is languishing, dying, among the other guests; they smell the fight afar, and pause in hungry expectation of what is surely coming.

"I pity any one so afflicted," says Mrs. Darley, going valiantly to her death: "I am a perfect martyr to them myself." Here she gives way to a little sympathetic sigh, being still evidently bent on believing him weighed down with pain heroically borne.

"Are you?" says Mr. Amherst, with elaborate politeness. "You astonish me. I should never have thought it. Rheumatism, now, I might. But how old are you, madam?"

"Well, really," says Mrs. Darley, with a pretty childish laugh which she rather cultivates, being under the impression that it is fascinating to the last degree, "asking me so suddenly puts the precise day I was born out of my head. I hardly remember—exactly—when——"

Conversation has died. Every one's attention is fixed; by experience they know the end is nigh.

"Just so; I don't suppose you could, it happened such a long time ago!" says this terrible old man, with an audible chuckle, that falls upon a silent and (must it be said?) appreciative audience.

Mrs. Darley says no more; what is there left to say? and conversation is once more taken up, and flows on as smoothly as it can, when everybody else is talking for a purpose.

"Is she old?" Molly asks Philip, presently, in a low tone, when the buzz is at its highest; "very old, I mean? She looks so babyish."

"How old would you say?" speaking in the same guarded tone as her own, which has the effect of making Luttrell and Marcia believe them deep in a growing flirtation.

"About twenty-two or three."

"She does it uncommonly well then," says Philip, regarding Mrs. Darley with much admiration,—"uncommonly well; her maid must be a treasure."

"But why? Is she older than that?"

"I don't know, I am sure," says Philip, unkindly, with an amused smile. "She used to be my age, but I haven't the faintest idea in the world what she is—now!"

After one or two more playful sallies on the part of their host,—for having once found his tongue he takes very good care to use it, and appears fatally bent on making his hearers well aware of its restoration,—the ladies adjourn to the drawing-room, where Mrs. Darley instantly retires behind her handkerchief and gives way to a gentle sob.

"That detestable old man!" she says, viciously; "how I hate him! What have I done, that he should treat me with such exceeding rudeness? One would think I was as old as—as—Methuselah! Not that his mentioning my age puts me out in the least,—why should it?—only his manner is so offensive!"

And as she finishes she rolls up the corners of her handkerchief into a little point, and carefully picks out, one by one, the two tears that adorn her eyes, lest by any chance they should escape, and, running down her cheeks, destroy the evening's painting.

"Don't distress yourself about it, Maud," says Lady Stafford, kindly, although strongly divided between pity for the angry Maud and a growing desire to laugh; "nobody minds him: you know we all suffer in turn. Something tells me it will be my turn next, and then you will indeed see a noble example of fortitude under affliction."

There is no time for more; the door opens and the men come in, more speedily to-night than is their wont, no doubt driven thereto by the amiability of Mr. Amherst.

Maud suppresses the tell-tale handkerchief, and puts on such a sweet smile as utterly precludes the idea of chagrin. The men, with the usual amount of bungling, fall into their places, and Cecil seizes the opportunity to say to Marcia, in a low tone:

"You say Miss Massereene sings. Ask her to give us something now. It is so slow doing nothing all the evening, and I feel Mr. Amherst is bent on mischief. Besides, it is hard on you, expecting you to play all the night through."

"I will ask her if you wish it," Marcia says, indifferently, "but remember, you need not look for a musical treat. I detest bad singing myself."

"Oh, anything, anything," says Cecil, languidly sinking back into her chair.

Thus instigated, Marcia does ask Molly to sing.

"If you will care to hear me," Molly answers, coldly rather than diffidently, and rising, goes to the piano.

"Perhaps there may be something of mine here that you may know," Marcia says, superciliously, pointing to the stand; but Molly, declaring that she can manage without music, sits down and plays the opening chords of Gounod's "Berceuse."

A moment later, and her glorious voice, rarely soft, and sweet as a child's, yet powerful withal, rings through the room, swells, faints, every note a separate delight, falling like rounded pearls from her lips.

A silence—truest praise of all—follows. One by one the talkers cease their chatter; the last word remains a last word; they forget the thought of a moment before.

A dead calm reigns, while Molly sings on, until the final note drops from her with lingering tenderness.

Even then they seem in no hurry to thank her; almost half a minute elapses before any one congratulates her on the exquisite gift that has been given her.

"You have been days in the house, and never until now have let us hear you," Philip says, leaning on the top of the piano; he is an enthusiast where music is concerned. "How selfish! how unkind! I could hardly have believed it of you."

"Was I ever asked before?" Molly says, raising her eyes to his, while her fingers still run lightly over the notes.

"I don't know. I suppose it never occurred to us, and, as you may have noticed, there is a dearth of graciousness among us. But for you to keep such a possession a secret was more than cruel. Sing again."

"I must not monopolize the piano: other people can sing too."

"Not like you." He pauses, and then says, slowly, "I used to think nature was impartial in the distribution of her gifts,—that, as a rule, we all received pretty much the same amount of good at her hands; to one beauty, to another talent, and so on; but I was wrong: she has her favorites, it appears. Surely already you had had more than your share, without throwing in your perfect voice."

Molly lowers her eyes, but makes no reply; experience has taught her that this is one of the occasions on which "silence is golden."

"You sing yourself, perhaps?" she says, presently, when she has tired of waiting for him to start a subject.

"Occasionally. Will you sing this with me?" taking up a celebrated duet and placing it before her. "Do you know it?"

"Yes, Mr. Luttrell and I used to sing it often at Brooklyn: it was a great favorite of ours."

"Oh, that! Indeed!" laying it aside with suspicious haste. "Shall we try something else?"

"And why something else?" composedly. "Does that not suit your voice? If it does, I will sing it with you with pleasure."

"Really?" regarding her closely, with what is decidedly more than admiration in his gaze. "Are there no recollections hidden in that song?"

"How can I tell? I never saw that particular edition before. Open it, and let us see," returns Molly, with a merry laugh. "Who knows what we may find between the pages?"

"If I might only believe you," he says, earnestly, still only half convinced. "Do you mean to tell me Luttrell spent an entire month with you, and left you heart-whole? I cannot believe it."

"Then don't," still laughing.

At this instant, Luttrell, who has with moody eyes been watching Philip's eager face from the other end of the room, saunters up, and seeing the old well-remembered duet lying open before Molly, suddenly thinks it may be there for him, and cheering up, says pleasantly:

"Are you going to sing it with me?"

"Not to-night," Molly replies, kindly; "Philip has just asked me to sing it with him. Some other time."

"Ah!" says Luttrell, more wounded than he cares to confess; for is not that very song endeared to him by a thousand memories? and turning on his heel, he walks away.

With a little impulsive gesture Molly rises from the piano-stool, and, without again looking at Philip, moves across the room to the seat she had originally vacated. As she does so she passes close by Marcia, who, ever since her cousin's voice first sounded in her ears, has been sitting silent, now pale, now red.

She stays Molly by a slight movement of the hand, and says, coldly:

"I thought you told me you could neither sing nor understand French?"

"I don't think I could have said quite that," Molly replies, quietly; "I told you I sang a little; it is not customary to laud one's own performances."

"You are a clever actress," says Marcia, so low as to be unheard by all but Molly: "with such a voice as yours, and such masterly command of all emotion and expression, you should make the stage your home."

"Perhaps I shall find your hint useful in the future," says Molly, with a slight shrug of her shoulders: "when one is poor it is always well to know there is something one can put one's hand to when things come to the worst; but at present I feel sufficiently at home where I am. I am glad," calmly, "my singing pleased you,—if, indeed, it did."

"You sing magnificently," Marcia says, aloud, giving her meed of praise justly, but unwillingly.

"And such a charming song as that is!" breaks in Mrs. Darley: "I remember hearing it for the first time, just after my marriage; indeed, while we were yet enjoying our wedding tour. Do you remember it, dearest?" As she murmurs the tender words, she turns upon her lord two azure eyes so limpid and full of trust and love that any man ignorant of the truth would have sworn by all his gods her desire was with her husband, whereas every inch of heart she possesses has long since been handed over to a man in the Horse Guards Blue.

"Humph!" says Henry Darley, eloquently; and without further rejoinder goes on with the game of chess he is playing with Mr. Amherst.

"Let us have something else, Eleanor," her grandfather says, looking up for an instant from his beloved queens and kings and castles; "another song."

This is such a wonderful request coming from Mr. Amherst, who is known to abhor Marcia's attempts, that every one looks surprised.

"Willingly, grandpapa," says Molly, and, going once more to the piano, gladly puts the obnoxious duet away, feeling sure its appearance has caused Tedcastle's annoyance. "Though if he is going to be jealous so early in the game as this," thinks she, "I don't fancy I shall have an altogether festive time of it."

"What shall it be?" she asks, aloud.

"Nothing Italian, at all events," says Mr. Amherst (all Marcia's endeavors are in that language); "I like something I can understand, and I hate your runs and trills."

"I will sing you my own song," says Molly, gayly, and gives them "Molly Bawn" deliciously.

"How pretty that is!" says Lady Stafford; "and so wild,—quite Irish! But your name, after all, is Eleanor, is it not?"

"There is, I believe, a tradition in the family to that effect," says Molly, smiling, "but it is used up, and no one now pays to it the least attention. I myself much prefer Molly. I am always called Molly Bawn at home."

Her voice lingers on the word "home." In an instant, amidst all the luxuries and charms of this beautiful drawing-room at Herst, her mind goes back to the old, homely, beloved sanctum at Brooklyn, where she sees John, and Letty, and all the happy, merry, good-hearted children, harmoniously mixed up together.

"It is a pity," says Mr. Amherst, purposely, seeing an opening for one of his cheerful remarks, "that everything about Ireland should be so wretchedly low."

"It is swampy," replies Miss Molly, promptly.

At this dangerous moment the door is thrown wide open, and a servant announces "Mr. Potts."

The effect is electric. Everybody looks up, and pleased, and glad; while the owner of this euphonious name comes forward, and, having shaken hands with Marcia, turns to old Amherst.

"How d'ye do, sir?" he says, heartily. "I hope you are better."

"Do you?" says Mr. Amherst, unamiably, feeling still a keen regret that the neat retort intended for Molly must wait another occasion. "I would believe you if I could, but it isn't in human nature. Yes, I am better, thank you; much better. I dare say with care I shall last this winter, and probably the next, and perhaps outlive a good many of you." He chuckles odiously as he winds up this pleasing speech.

Mr. Potts, rather taken aback, mutters something inaudible, and turns to Lady Stafford, who receives him warmly.

He is a young man of about twenty-four (though he might, in appearance, be any age from that to forty-four), and is short rather than tall. His eyes are gray, small, and bright, and full of fun, bespeaking imperturbable good humor.

His hair is red. It is hair that admits of no compromise; it is neither auburn, golden, nor light brown—it is a distinct and fiery red. His nose is "poor, but honest," and he has a thorough and most apparent appreciation of himself.

As I said before, Lady Stafford greets him warmly; he is one of her special pets.

"How are you getting on?" he asks, mysteriously, when the first questions and answers have been gone through. "Old boy evidently worse than ever. The wine theory would not suit his case; age does anything but improve him. He has gone to the bad altogether. I suppose you've been putting in an awful bad time of it?"

"We have, indeed," says Lady Stafford; "he has been unbearable all through dinner, though he was pretty well yesterday. I think myself it must be gout; every twinge brings forth a caustic speech."

By this time every one had shaken hands with the newcomer, and welcomed him heartily. He seems specially pleased to see Tedcastle.

"Luttrell! you here? Never had a hint of it. So glad to see you, old man! Why, you're looking as fit as even your best friend could wish you."

"Meaning yourself," says Luttrell. "Now, let's have a look at you. Why, Planty, what an exquisite get up! New coat and—etc. latest tie, and diamonds ad lib. Quite coquettish, upon my word. Who gave you the diamonds, Potts? Your mother?"

"No; I got tired of hinting there," says Potts, ingenuously, "so gave it up, and bought 'em myself. They are fetching, I take it. Luttrell, who is the girl at the piano? Never saw anything so lovely in all my life."

"Miss Massereene."

"Indeed! Been received, and all that? Well, there's been nothing this season to touch on her. Introduce me, Ted, do!"

He is introduced. And Molly, smiling up at him one of her own brightest, kindliest smiles, makes him then and there her slave forever. On the spot, without a second's delay, he falls head over ears in love with her.

By degrees he gets back to Lady Stafford, and sinks upon the sofa beside her. I say "sinks" unadvisedly; he drops upon the sofa, and very nearly makes havoc of the springs in doing so.

"I want to tell you who I saw in town the day before I left—a week ago," he says, cautiously.

"A week ago! And have you been ever since getting here?"

"No; I did it by degrees. First, I went down to the Maplesons', and spent two days there—very slow, indeed; then I got on to the Blouts', and found it much slower there; finally, I drove to Talbot Lowry's night before last, and stayed there until this evening. You know he lives only three miles from here."

"He is at home now, then?"

"Yes. He always is at home, I notice, when—you are here!"

"No!" says Cecil, with a little faint laugh. "You don't say so! what a remarkable coincidence!"

"An annual coincidence. But you don't ask me who it was I saw in London. Guess."

"The Christy Minstrels, without doubt. They never perform out of London, so I suppose are the only people in it now."

"Wrong. There was one other person—Sir Penthony Stafford!"

"Really!" says Cecil, coloring warmly, and sitting in a more upright position. "He has returned, then? I thought he was in Egypt."

"So he was, but he has come back, looking uncommon well, too—as brown as a berry. To my thinking, as good a fellow to look at as there is in England, and a capital fellow all round into the bargain!"

"Dear me!" says Cecil. "What a loss Egypt has sustained! And what a partisan you have become! May I ask," suppressing a pretended yawn behind her perfumed fan, "where your rara avis is at present hiding?"

"I asked him," says Mr. Potts, "but he rather evaded the question."

"And is that your Mr. Potts?" asks Molly, finding herself close to Tedcastle, speaking with heavy and suspicious emphasis.

"Yes," Tedcastle admits, coloring slightly as he remembers the glowing terms in which he has described his friend. "Don't you—eh, don't you like him?"

"Oh! like him? I cannot answer that yet; but," laughing, "I certainly don't admire him."

And indeed Mr. Potts's beauty is not of the sort to call forth raptures at first sight.

"I have seen many different shades of red in people's hair," says Molly, "but I have never seen it rosy until now. Is it dyed? It is the most curious thing I ever looked at."

As indeed it is. When introduced to poor Potts, when covering him with a first dispassionate glance, one thinks not of his pale gray orbs, his large good-humored mouth, his freckles, or his enormous nose, but only of his hair. Molly is struck by it at once.

"He is a right good fellow," says Luttrell, rather indignantly, being scarcely in the mood to laugh at Molly's sarcasms.

"He may be," is her calm reply, "but if I were he, rather than go through life with that complexion and that unhappy head, I would commit suicide."

Then there is a little more music. Marcia plays brilliantly enough, but it is almost impossible to forget during her playing that she has had an excellent master. It is not genuine, or from the heart. It is clever, but it is acquired, and falls very flatly after Molly's perfect singing, and no one in the room feels this more acutely than Marcia herself.

Then Luttrell, who has a charming voice, sings for them something pathetic and reproachful, you may be sure, as it is meant for Molly's ears; and then the evening is at an end, and they all go to their own rooms.

What a haven of rest and security is one's own room! How instinctively in grief or joy one turns to it, to hide from prying eyes one's inmost thoughts, one's hopes, and despairs!

To-night there are two sad hearts at Herst; Marcia's, perhaps, the saddest, for it is full of that most maddening, most intolerable of all pains, jealousy.

For hours she sits by her casement, pondering on the cruelty of her fate, while the unsympathetic moon pours its white rays upon her.

"Already his love is dead," she murmurs, leaning naked arms upon the window-sill, and turning her lustrous southern eyes up to the skies above her. "Already. In two short months. And how have I fallen short? how have I lost him? By over-loving, perhaps. While she, who does not value it, has gained my all."

A little groan escapes her, and she lets her dark head sink upon her outstretched arms. For there is something in Philip's eyes as they rest on Molly, something undefined, hardly formed, but surely there, that betrays to Marcia the secret feeling, of which he himself is scarcely yet aware.

One hardly knows how it is, but Molly, with a glance, a gesture, three little words pointed by a smile from the liquid eyes, can draw him to her side. And when a man of his cold, reserved nature truly loves, be sure it is a passion that will last him his life.

Tedcastle, too, is thoroughly unhappy to-night. His honest, unprying mind, made sharp by "love's conflict," has seen through Philip's infatuation, and over his last cigar before turning in (a cigar that to-night has somehow lost half its soothing properties) makes out with a sinking of the heart what it all means.

He thinks, too, yet upbraids himself for so thinking, that Miss Massereene must see that Philip Shadwell, heir to Herst and twenty thousand pounds a year, is a better catch than Teddy Luttrell, with only his great love for her, and a paltry six hundred pounds a year.

Is it not selfish of him to seek to keep her from what is so evidently to her advantage? Perhaps he ought to throw up his engagement, and, passing out of her life, leave her to reap the "good the gods provide."

In vain he tries to argue himself into this heroic frame of mind. The more he tries, the more obnoxious grows the idea. He cannot, he will not give her up.

"Faint heart," says Teddy, flinging the remnant of his cigar with fierce determination into the grate, "never won fair lady; she is mine, so far, the fairest darling that ever breathed, and be it selfish or otherwise, keep her I will if I can."

But he sighs as he utters the word "can," and finds his couch, when at length he does seek it, by no means a bed of roses.

While Molly, the pretty cause of all this heart-burning, lies in slumber, soft and sweet, and happy as can be, with her "red, red" lips apart and smiling, her breathing pure and regular as a little child's, and all her "nut-brown" hair like a silken garment round her.

Cecil Stafford, walking leisurely up and down her apartment, is feeling half frightened, half amused, at the news conveyed to her by Mr. Potts, of her husband's arrival in England. Now, at last, after these three years, she may meet him at any moment face to face.

Surely never was a story so odd, so strange as hers! A bride unknown, a wife whose face has never yet been seen!

"Well," thinks Cecil, as she seats herself while her maid binds up her long fair hair, "no use troubling about it beforehand. What must be must be. And at all events the dreaded interview cannot be too soon, as until my return to town I believe I am pretty safe from him here."

But in saying this she reckons without her host in every sense of the word.

CHAPTER XIV.

"Oh, beware, my lord, of jealousy;

It is the green-eyed monster who doth mock

The meat it feeds on."

—Othello.

Next day at luncheon Mr. Amherst, having carefully mapped out one of his agreeable little surprises, and having selected a moment when every one is present, says to her, with a wicked gleam of anticipative amusement in his cunning old eyes:

"Sir Penthony is in England."

Although she has neither hint nor warning of what is coming, Lady Stafford is a match for him. Mr. Potts's intelligence of the evening before stands her now in good stead.

"Indeed!" she says, without betraying any former knowledge, turning eyes of the calmest upon him; "you surprise me. Tired so soon of Egyptian sphinxes! I always knew he had no taste. I hope he is quite well. I suppose you heard from him?"

"Yes. He is well, but evidently pines for home quarters and old friends. Thinking you would like to see him after so long a separation, I have invited him here. You—you don't object?"

"I?" says her ladyship, promptly, reddening, but laughing too very successfully. "Now, why should I object? On the contrary, I shall be charmed; he will be quite an acquisition. If I remember rightly,"—with a little affected drooping of the lids,—"he is a very handsome man, and, I hear, amusing."

Mr. Amherst, foiled in his amiable intention of drawing confusion on the head of somebody, subsides into a grunt and his easy-chair. To have gone to all this trouble for nothing, to have invited secretly this man, who interests him not at all, in hopes of a little excitement, and to have those hopes frustrated, disgusts him.

Yet, after all, there will, there must be some amusement in store for him, in watching the meeting between this strange pair. He at least may not prove as cool and indifferent as his pretty wife.

"He will be here to dinner to-day," he says, grumpishly, knowing that all around him are inwardly rejoicing at his defeat.

This is a thunder-bolt, though he is too much disheartened by his first defeat to notice it. Lady Stafford grows several shades paler, and—luncheon being at an end—rises hurriedly. Going toward the door, she glances back, and draws Molly by a look to her side.

"Come with me," she says; "I must speak to some one, and to you before any of the others."

When they have reached Cecil's pretty sitting-room, off which her bedroom opens, the first thing her ladyship does is to subside into a seat and laugh a little.

"It is like a play," she says, "the idea of his coming down here, to find me before him. It will be a surprise; for I would swear that horrible old man never told him of my being in the house, or he would not have come. Am I talking Greek to you, Molly? You know my story, surely?"

"I have heard something of it—not much—from Mr. Luttrell," says Molly, truthfully.

"It is a curious one, is it not? and one not easily matched. It all came of that horrible will. Could there be anything more stupid than for an old man to depart this life and leave behind him a document binding two young people in such a way as makes it 'do or die' with them? I had never seen my cousin in all my life, and he had never seen me; yet we were compelled at a moment's notice to marry each other or forfeit a dazzling fortune."

"Why could you not divide it?"

"Because the lawyers said we couldn't. Lawyers are always aggressive. My great-uncle had particularly declared it should not be divided. It was to be all or none, and whichever of us refused to marry the other got nothing. And there was so much!" says her ladyship, with an expressive sigh.

"It was a hard case," Molly says, with deep sympathy.

"It was. Yet, as I managed it, it wasn't half so bad. Now, I dare say many women would have gone into violent hysterics, would have driven their relations to the verge of despair and the shivering bridegroom to the brink of delirious joy, and then given in,—married the man, lived with him, and been miserable ever after. But not I."

Here she pauses, charmed at her own superior wisdom, and, leaning back in her chair, with a contented smile, puts the tips of her fingers together daintily.

"Well, and you?" says Molly, feeling intensely interested.

"I? I just reviewed the case calmly. I saw it was a great deal of money,—too much to hesitate about,—too much also to make it likely a man would dream of resigning it for the sake of a woman more or less. So I wrote to my cousin explaining that, as we had never known each other, there could be very little love lost between us, and that I saw no necessity why we ever should know each other,—and that I was quite willing to marry him, and take a third of the money, if he would allow me to be as little to him in the future as I was in the present, by drawing up a formal deed of separation, to be put in force at the church-door, or the door of any room where the marriage ceremony should be performed."

"Well?"

"Well, I don't know how it would have been but that, to aid my request, I inclosed a photograph of our parlormaid (one of the ugliest women it has ever been my misfortune to see), got up in her best black silk, minus the cap, and with a flaming gold chain round her neck,—you know the sort of thing,—and I never said who it was."

"Oh, Cecil, how could you?"

"How couldn't I? you mean. And, after all, my crime was of the passive order; I merely sent the picture, without saying anything. How could I help it if he mistook me for Mary Jane? Besides, I was fighting for dear life, and all is fair in love and war. I could not put up with the whims and caprices of a man to whom I was indifferent."

"Did you know he had whims and caprices?"

"Molly," says Lady Stafford, slowly, with a fine show of pity, "you are disgracefully young: cure yourself, my dear, as fast as ever you can, and as a first lesson take this to heart: if ever there was a mortal man born upon this earth without caprices it must have been in the year one, because no one that I have met knows anything about him."

"Well, for the matter of that," says Molly, laughing, "I don't suppose I should like a perfect man, even if I did chance to meet him. By all accounts they are stilted, disagreeable people, with a talent for making everybody else seem small. But go on with your story. What was his reply?"

"He agreed cordially to all my suggestions, named a very handsome sum as my portion, swore by all that was honorable he would never interfere with me in any way, was evidently ready to promise anything, and—sent me back my parlor-maid. Was not that insulting?"

"But when he came to marry you he must have seen you?"

"Scarcely. I decided on having the wedding in our drawing-room, and wrote again to say it would greatly convenience my cousin and myself (I lived with an old cousin) if he would not come down until the very morning of the wedding. Need I say he grasped at this proposition also? I was dressed and ready for my wedding by the time he arrived, and shook hands with him with my veil down. You may be sure I had secured a very thick one."

"Do you mean to tell me," says Molly, rising in her excitement, "that he never asked you to raise your veil?"

"Never, my dear. I assure you the 'best man' he brought down with him was by far the more curious of the two. But then, you must remember, Sir Penthony had seen my picture." Here Cecil goes off into a hearty burst of laughter. "If you had seen that maid once, my dear, you would not have been ambitious of a second view."

"Still I never heard of anything so cold, so unnatural," says Miss Massereene, in high disgust. "I declare I would have broken off with him then and there, had it been me."

"Not if you lived with my cousin Amelia, feeling yourself a dependent on her bounty. She was a startling instance of how a woman can worry and torment. The very thought of her makes my heart sore in my body and chills my blood to this day. I rejoice to say she is no more."

"Well, you got married?"

"Yes, in Amelia's drawing-room. I had a little gold band put on my third finger, I had a cold shake-hands from my husband, a sympathetic one from his groomsman, and then found myself once more alone, with a title and plenty of money, and—that's all."

"What was his friend's name?"

"Talbot Lowry. He lives about three miles from here, and"—with an airy laugh—"is rather too fond of me."

"What a strange story!" says Molly, regarding her wistfully. "Do you never wish you had married some one you loved?"

"I never do," gayly. "Don't look to me for sentiment, Molly, because I am utterly devoid of it. I know I suffer in your estimation by this confession, but it is the simple truth. I don't wish for anything. And yet"—pausing suddenly—"I do. I have been wishing for something ever since that old person down-stairs tried to take me back this morning, and failed so egregiously."

"And your wish is——"

"That I could make my husband fall madly in love with me. Oh, Molly, what a revenge that would be! And why should he not, indeed?" Going over to a glass and gazing earnestly at herself. "I am pretty,—very pretty, I think. Speak, Molly, and encourage me."

"You know you are lovely," says Molly, in such good faith that Cecil kisses her on the spot. "But what if you should fall in love with him?"

"Perhaps I have done so long ago," her ladyship replies, in a tone impossible to translate, being still intent on the contemplation of her many charms. Then, quickly, "No, no, Molly, I am fire-proof."

"Yet any day you may meet some one to whom you must give your love."

"Not a bit of it. I should despise myself forever if I once found myself letting my pulse beat half a second faster for one man than for another."

"Do you mean to tell me you have never loved?"

"Never, never, never. And, indeed, to give myself due credit, I believe the fact that I have a husband somewhere would utterly prevent anything of the sort."

"That is a good thing, if the idea lasts. But won't you feel awkward in meeting him this evening?"

"I? No, but I dare say he will; and I hope so too," says her ladyship, maliciously. "For three long years he has never been to see whether I were well or ill—or pining for him," laughing. "And yet, Molly, I do feel nervous, awfully, ridiculously nervous, at the bare idea of our so soon coming face to face.

"Is he handsome?"

"Ye—es, pretty well. Lanky sort of man, with a good deal of nose, you know, and very little whisker. On my word, now I think of it, I don't think he had any at all."

"Nose?"

"No, whisker. He was clean-shaven, all but the moustache. I suppose you know he was in Ted's regiment for some time?"

"So he told me."

"I wonder what he hasn't told you? Shall I confess, Molly, that I know your secret, and that it was I chose that diamond ring upon your finger? There, do not grudge me your confidence; I have given you mine and anything I have heard is safe with me. Oh, what a lovely blush, and what a shame to waste such a charming bit of color upon me! Keep it for dessert."

"How will Sir Penthony like Mr. Lowry's close proximity?" Molly asks, presently, when she has confessed a few interesting little facts to her friend.

"I hope he won't like it. If I thought I could make him jealous I would flirt with poor Talbot under his nose," says Cecil, with eloquent vulgarity. "I feel spitefully toward him somehow, although our separation was my own contrivance."

"Have you a headache, dear?" Seeing her put her hand to her head.

"A slight one,—I suppose from the nerves. I think I will lie down for an hour or two before commencing the important task of arming for conquest. And—are you going out, Molly? Will you gather me a few fresh flowers—anything white—for my hair and the bosom of my dress?"

"I will," says Molly, and, having made her comfortable with pillows and perfumes, leaves her to her siesta.

"Anything white." Molly travels the gardens up and down in search of all there is of the loveliest. Little rosebuds, fresh though late, and dainty bells, with sweet-scented geraniums and drooping heaths,—a pure and innocent bouquet.

Yet surely it lacks something,—a little fleck of green, to throw out its virgin fairness. Above, high over her head, a creeping rosebush grows, bedecked with palest, juiciest leaves.

Reaching up her hand to gather one of the taller branches, a mote, a bit of bark—some hateful thing—falls into Molly's right eye. Instant agony is the result. Tears stream from the offended pupil; the other eye joins in the general tribulation; and Molly, standing in the centre of the grass-plot, with her handkerchief pressed frantically to her face, and her lithe body swaying slightly to and fro through force of pain, looks the very personification of woe.

So thinks Philip Shadwell as, coming round the corner, he unperceived approaches.

"What is it?" he asks, trying to see her face, his tones absolutely trembling from agitation on her behalf. "Molly, you are in trouble. Can I do anything for you?"

"You can," replies Miss Massereene, in a lugubrious voice; though, in spite of her pain, she can with difficulty repress an inclination to laugh, so dismal is his manner. "Oh! you can."

"Tell me what. There is nothing—Speak, Molly."

"Well, I'm not exactly weeping," says Miss Massereene, slowly withdrawing one hand from her face, so as to let the best eye rest upon him; "it is hardly mental anguish I'm enduring. But if you can get this awful thing that is in my eye out of it I shall be intensely grateful."

"Is that all?" asks Philip, much relieved.

"And plenty, too, I think. Here, do try if you can see anything."

"Poor eye!"—pathetically—"how inflamed it is! Let me see—there—don't blink—I won't be able to get at it if you do. Now, turn your eye to the right. No. Now to the left. Yes, there is," excitedly. "No, it isn't," disappointedly. "Now let me look below; it must be there."

Just at this delicate moment who should turn the corner but Luttrell! Oh, those unlucky corners that will occur in life, bringing people upon the scene, without a word of warning, at the very time when they are least wanted!

Luttrell, coming briskly onward in search of his ladylove, sees, marks, and comes to a dead stop. And this is what he sees.

Molly in Philip's—well, if not exactly in his embrace, something very near it; Philip looking with wild anxiety into the very depths of Molly's lovely eyes, while the lovely eyes look back at Philip full of deep entreaty. Tableau!

It is too much. Luttrell, stung cruelly, turns as if to withdraw, but after a step or two finds himself unable to carry out the dignified intention, and pauses irresolutely. His back being turned, however, he is not in at the closing act, when Philip produces triumphantly on the tip of his finger such a mere atom of matter as makes one wonder how it could ever have caused so much annoyance.

"Are you better now?" he asks, anxiously, yet with pardonable pride.

"I—am—thank you." Blinking thoughtfully, as though not yet assured of the relief. "I am so much obliged to you. And—yes, I am better. Quite well, I think. What should I have done without you?"

"Ah, that I could believe myself necessary to you at any time!" Philip is beginning, with fluent sentimentality, when, catching sight of Tedcastle, he stops abruptly. "Here is Luttrell," he says, in an injured tone, and seeing no further prospect of a tête-à-tête, takes his departure.

Molly is still petting her wounded member when Luttrell reaches her side.

"What is the matter with you?" he asks, with odious want of sympathy. "Have you been crying?"

"No," replies Molly, indignant at his tone,—so unlike Shadwell's. "Why should you think so?"

"Why? Because your eyes are red; and certainly as I came up, Shadwell appeared to be doing his utmost to console you."

"Anything the matter with you, Teddy?" asks Miss Massereene, with suspicious sweetness. "You seem put out."

"Yes,"—sternly,—"and with cause. I do not relish coming upon you suddenly and finding you in Shadwell's arms."

"Where?"

"Well, if not exactly in his arms, very nearly there," says Tedcastle, vehemently.

"You are forgetting yourself." Coldly. "If you are jealous of Philip, say so, but do not disgrace yourself by using coarse language. There was a bit of bark in my eyes. I suppose you think it would have been better for me to endure torments than allow Philip—who was very kind—to take it out? If you do, I differ from you."

"I am not speaking alone of this particular instance in which you seem to favor Shadwell," says the young man, moodily, his eyes fixed upon the sward beneath him. "Every day it grows more palpable. You scarcely care to hide your sentiments now."

"You mean"—impatiently—"you would wish me to speak to no one except you. You don't take into account how slow this would be for me." She says this cruelly. "I care no more for Philip than I do for any other man."

"Just so. I am the other man, no doubt. I have never been blind to the fact that you do not care for me. Why take the trouble of acting a part any longer?"

"'Acting a part'! Nonsense!" says Molly. "I always think that the most absurd phrase in the world. Who does not act a part? The thing is to act a good one."

"Is yours a good part?" Bitterly.

"You are the best judge of that," returns she, haughtily. "If you do not think so, why keep to our engagement? If you wish to break it, you need fear no opposition from me." So saying, she sweeps past him and enters the house.

Yet in spite of her anger and offended pride, her eyes are wet and her hands trembling as she reaches Cecil's room and lays the snow-white flowers upon her table.

Cecil is still lying comfortably ensconced among her pillows, but has sufficient wakefulness about her to notice Molly's agitation.

"You have been quarreling, ma belle," she says, raising herself on her elbow; "don't deny it. Was it with Marcia or Tedcastle?"

"Tedcastle," Molly replies, laughing against her will at the other's shrewdness, and in consequence wiping away a few tears directly afterward. "It is nothing; but he is really intolerably jealous, and I can't and won't put up with it."

"Oh, that some one was jealous about me!" says Cecil, with a prolonged sigh. "Go on."

"It was nothing, I tell you. All because Philip kindly picked a little bit of dust out of my eye."

"How good of Philip! considering all the dust you have thrown into his of late. And Ted objected?"

"Yes, and was very rude into the bargain. I wouldn't have believed it of him."

"Well, you know yourself you have been going on anyhow with Philip during the past few days."

"Oh, Cecil, how can you say so? Am I to turn my back on him when he comes to speak to me? And even supposing I had flirted egregiously with him (which is not the case), is that a reason why one is to be scolded and abused and have all sorts of the most dreadful things said to one?" (I leave my readers to deplore the glaring exaggeration of this speech.) "He looked, too, as if he could have eaten me then and there. I know this, I shan't forgive him in a hurry."

"Poor Ted! I expect he doesn't have much of a time with you," says Cecil, shaking her head.

"Are you laughing at me?" cries Molly, wrathfully. "Then make ready for death." And, taking the smaller Cecil in her arms, she most unkindly lifts her from among her cozy cushions and deposits her upon the floor. "There! Now will you repent? But come, Cecil, get up, and prepare for your husband's reception. I will be your maid to-night, if you will let me. What will you wear?"

"Pale blue. It suits me best. See, that is my dress." Pointing to a light-blue silk, trimmed with white lace, that lies upon the bed. "Will you really help me to dress? But you cannot do my hair?"

"Try me."

She does try, and proves so highly satisfactory that Cecil is tempted to offer splendid wages if she will consent to come and live with her.

The hair is a marvel of artistic softness. Every fresh jewel lends a grace; and when at length Cecil is attired in her blue gown, she is all that any one could possibly desire.

"Now, honestly, how do I look?" she asks, turning round to face Molly. "Anything like a housemaid?" With a faint laugh that has something tremulous about it.

"I never saw you half so charming," Molly answers, deliberately. "Oh, Cecil! what will he say when he finds out—when he discovers how you have deceived him?"

"Anything he likes, my dear!" exclaims Cecil, gayly giving a last touch to the little soft fair locks near her temples. "He ought to be pleased. It would be a different thing altogether, and a real grievance, if, being like the housemaid, I had sent him a photo of Venus. He might justly complain then; but now—— There, I can do no more!" says her ladyship, with a sigh, half pleased, half fearful. "If I weren't so shamefully nervous I would do very well."

"I don't believe you are half as frightened for yourself at this moment as I am for you. If I were in your shoes I should faint. It is to me an awful ordeal."

"I am so white, too," says Cecil, impatiently. "You haven't—I suppose, Molly—but of course you haven't——"

"What, dear?"

"Rouge. After all, Therese was right. When leaving town she asked me should she get some; and, when I rejected the idea with scorn, said there was no knowing when one might require it. Perhaps afterward she did put it in. Let us ring and ask her."

"Never mind it. You are no comparison prettier without it. Cecil,"—doubtingly,—"I hope when it comes to the last moment you will have nerve."

"Be happy," says Cecil. "I am always quite composed at last moments; that is one of my principal charms. I never create sensations through vulgar excitement. I shall probably astonish you (and myself also) by my extreme coolness. In the meantime I"—smiling—"I own I should like a glass of sherry. What o'clock is it, Molly?"

"Just seven."

"Ah! he must be here now. How I wish it was over!" says Lady Stafford, with a little sinking of the heart.

"And I am not yet dressed. I must run," exclaims Molly. "Good-bye, Cecil. Keep up your spirits, and remember above all things how well your dress becomes you."

Two or three minutes elapse,—five,—and still Cecil cannot bring herself to descend. She is more nervous about this inevitable meeting than she cares to own. Will he be openly cold, or anxious to conciliate, or annoyed? The latter she greatly fears. What if he should suspect her of having asked Mr. Amherst to invite him? This idea torments her more than all the others, and chains her to her room.

She takes up another bracelet and tries it on. Disliking the effect, she takes it off again. So she trifles, in fond hope of cheating time, and would probably be trifling now had not the handle of her door been boldly turned, the door opened, and a young man come confidently forward.

His confidence comes to an untimely end as his astonished eyes rest on Cecil.

"I beg your pardon, I'm sure," he says, beating a hasty retreat back to the landing outside. "I had no idea—I'm awfully sorry—but this room used to be mine."

"It is mine now," says Cecil, accepting the situation at a glance, recognizing Sir Penthony without hesitation.

He is a tall young man,—"lanky," as she has herself expressed him,—with thick brown hair, closely cropped. He has handsome dark eyes, with a rather mocking expression in them, and has a trick of shutting them slightly if puzzled or annoyed. His voice is extremely charming, though it has a distinct croak (that can hardly be called husky or hoarse) that is rather fascinating. His short upper lip is covered by a heavy brown moustache that hides a laughing mouth. He is aristocratic and good-looking, without being able to lay claim to actual beauty.

Just now he is overwhelmed with confusion, as Cecil, feeling compelled thereto, steps forward, smiling, to reassure him.

"You have made a mistake,—you have lost your way," she says, in a tone that trembles ever such a little in spite of her efforts to be calm.

"To my shame I confess it," he says, laughing, gazing with ill-concealed admiration at this charming azure vision standing before him. "Foolishly I forgot to ask for my room, and ran up the stairs, feeling certain that the one that used to be mine long ago must be so still. Can you forgive me?"

"I think I can. Meantime, if you are Sir Penthony Stafford, your room lies there," pointing to the last door opening on the corridor.

"Thank you," yet making no haste to reach the discovered shelter. "May I not know to whom I am indebted for so much kindness?"

"I dare say you will be introduced in proper form by and by," says Cecil, demurely, making a movement as though to leave him. "When you are dressed you shall be formally presented."

"At least," he asks, hastily, with a view to detaining her, "do me one more service before you go. If you know me so well, perhaps you can tell me if any of my friends are staying here at present?"

"Several. Teddy Luttrell for one."

"Indeed! And——"

"The Darleys. You know them?"

"Little woman,—dolly,—bizarre in manner and dress?"

"A most accurate description. And there is another friend,—one who ought to be your dearest: I allude to Lady Stafford."

"Lady Stafford!"

"Yes, your wife. You don't seem over and above pleased at my news."

"Is a man always pleased at his wife's unexpected appearance?" asks Sir Penthony, recovering himself with a rather forced laugh. "I had no idea she was here. I—— Is she a friend of yours?"

"The dearest friend I have. I know no one," declares her ladyship, fervently, "I love so fondly."

"Happy Lady Stafford! I almost think I would change places with her this moment. At all events, whatever faults she may possess, she has rare taste in friends."

"You speak disparagingly. Has she a fault?"

"The greatest a woman can have: she lacks that one quality that would make her a 'joy forever.'"

"Your severity makes you unkind. And yet, do you know she is greatly liked. Nay, she has been loved. Perhaps when you come to know her a little better (I do not conceal from you that I have heard something of your story), you will think more tenderly of her. Remember, 'beauty is only skin deep.'"

"Yes,"—with a light laugh,—"But 'ugliness goes to the bone.'"

"That is the retort discourteous. I see it is time wasted to plead my friend's cause. Although, perhaps,"—reproachfully,—"not blessed with actual beauty, still——"

"No, there's not much beauty about her," says Sir Penthony, with something akin to a groan. Then, "I beg your pardon," he murmurs; "pray excuse me. Why should I trouble a stranger with my affairs?" He stands aside, with a slight bow, to let her pass. "And you won't tell me your name?" he cannot resist saying before losing sight of her.

"Make haste with your dressing; you shall know then," glancing back at him, with a bewitching smile.

"Be sure I shall waste no time. If, in my hurry, I appear to less advantage than usual to-night, you must not be the one to blame me."

"A very fair beginning," says Cecil, as she slips away. "Now I must be firm. But, oh dear, oh dear! he is much handsomer even than I thought."

CHAPTER XV.

"If I am not worth the wooing,

I surely am not worth the winning."

—Miles Standish.

The minutes, selfishly thoughtless of all but themselves, fly rapidly. Cecil makes her way to the drawing-room, where she is followed presently by Molly, then by Luttrell; but, as these two latter refuse to converse with each other, conversation is rather one-sided.

Mr. Amherst, contrary to his usual custom, appears very early on the field, evidently desirous of enjoying the fray to its utmost. He looks quite jubilant and fresh for him, and his nose is in a degree sharper than its wont. He opens an animated discourse with Cecil; but Lady Stafford, although distrait and with her mind on the stretch, listening for every sound outside, replies brilliantly, and, woman-like, conceals her anxiety with her tongue.

At length the dreaded moment comes. There is a sound of footfalls, nearer—nearer still—then, "clearer, deadlier than before," and the door opens, to discover Sir Penthony upon the threshold.

Lady Stafford is sitting within the embrasure of the window.

"Fortune favors me," she says hurriedly to Molly, alluding to the other guests' non-appearance.

"Your wife is staying with me," Mr. Amherst begins, complacently; and, pointing to Cecil, "Allow me to introduce you to——"

"Lady Stafford," Cecil interrupts, coming forward while a good deal of rich crimson mantles in her cheeks. She is looking lovely from excitement; and her pretty, rounded, graceful figure is shown off to the best advantage by the heavy fall of the red draperies behind her.

Sir Penthony gazes, spell-bound, at the gracious creature before him; the color recedes from his lips and brow; his eyes grow darker. Luttrell with difficulty suppresses a smile. Mr. Amherst is almost satisfied.

"You are welcome," Cecil says, with perfect self-possession, putting out her hand and absolutely taking his; for so stunned is he by her words that he even forgets to offer it.

Drawing him into a recess of the window, she says, reproachfully, "Why do you look so astonished? Do you not know that you are gratifying that abominable old man? And will you not say you are glad to see me after all these long three years?"

"I don't understand," Sir Penthony says, vaguely. "Are there two Lady Staffords? And whose wife are you?"

"Yours! Although you don't seem in a hurry to claim me," she says, with a rarely pretty pout.

"Impossible!"

"I am sorry to undeceive you, but it is indeed the truth I speak."

"And whose picture did I get?" he asks, a faint glimmer of the real facts breaking in upon him.

"The parlor-maid's," says Cecil, now the strain is off her, laughing heartily and naturally,—so much so that the other occupants of the room turn to wonder enviously what is going on behind the curtains. "The parlor-maid! And such a girl as she was! Do you remember her nose? It was celestial. When that deed on which we agreed was sealed, signed, and delivered, without hope of change, I meant to send you my real photo, but somehow I didn't. I waited until we should meet; and now we have met and—— Why do you look so disconsolate? Surely, surely, I am an improvement on Mary Jane?"

"It isn't that," he says, "but—what a fool I have been!"

"You have indeed," quickly. "The idea of letting that odious old man see your discomfiture! By the bye, does my 'ugliness go to the bone,' Sir Penthony?"

"Don't! When I realize my position I hate myself."

"Could you not even see my hair was yellow, whilst Mary Jane's was black,—a sooty black?"

"How could I see anything? Your veil was so thick, and, besides, I never doubted the truth of——"

"Oh, that veil! What trouble I had with it!" laughs Cecil. "First I doubled it, and then nearly died with fright lest you should imagine me the Pig-faced Lady, and insist on seeing me."

"Well, and if I had?"

"Without doubt you would have fallen in love with me," coquettishly.

"Would not that have been desirable? Is it not a good thing for a man to fall in love with the woman he is going to marry?"

"Not unless the woman falls in love with him," with a little expressive nod that speaks volumes.

"Ah! true," says Sir Penthony, rather nettled.

"However, you showed no vulgar curiosity on the occasion, although I think Mr. Lowry, who supported you at the last moment, suggested the advisability of seeing your bride. Ah, that reminds me he lives near here. You will be glad to renew acquaintance with so particular a friend."

"There was nothing particular about our friendship; I met him by chance in London at the time, and—er—he did as well as any other fellow."

"Better, I should say. He is a particular friend of mine."

"Indeed! I shouldn't have thought him your style. Like Cassius, he used to have a 'lean and hungry look.'"

"Used he? I think him quite good-looking."

"He must have developed, then, in body as in intellect. Three years ago he was a very gaunt youth indeed."

"Of course, Stafford," breaks in Mr. Amherst's rasping voice, "we can all make allowances for your joy on seeing your wife again after such a long absence. But you must not monopolize her. Remember she is the life of our party."

"Thank you, Mr. Amherst. What a delightful compliment!" says Cecil, with considerable empressement. "Sir Penthony was just telling me what an enjoyable voyage he had; and I was congratulating him. There is nothing on earth so depressing or so humiliating as sea-sickness. Don't you agree with me?"

Mr. Amherst mutters something in which the word "brazen" is distinctly heard; while Cecil, turning to her companion, says hastily, holding out her hand, with a soft, graceful movement:

"We are friends?"

"Forever, I trust," he replies, taking the little plump white hand within his own, and giving it a hearty squeeze.

To some the evening is a long one,—to Luttrell and Molly, for instance, who are at daggers drawn and maintain a dignified silence toward each other.

Tedcastle, indeed, holds his head so high that if by chance his gaze should rest in Molly's direction, it must perforce pass over her without fear of descending to her face. (This is wise, because to look at Molly is to find one's self disarmed.) There is an air of settled hostility about him that angers her beyond all words.

"What does he mean by glowering like that, and looking as though he could devour somebody? How different he used to be in dear old Brooklyn! Who could have thought he would turn out such a Tartar? Well, there is no knowing any man; and yet—— It is a pity not to give him something to glower about," thinks Miss Massereene, in an access of rage, and forthwith deliberately sets herself out to encourage Shadwell and Mr. Potts.

She has a brilliant success, and, although secretly sore at heart, manages to pass her time agreeably, and, let us hope, profitably.

Marcia, whose hatred toward her rival grows with every glance cast at her from Philip's eyes, turns to Tedcastle and takes him in hand. Her voice is low, her manner subdued, but designing. Whatever she may be saying is hardly likely to act as cure to Teddy's heart-ache; at least so thinks Cecil, and, coming to the rescue, sends Sir Penthony across to talk to him, and drawing him from Marcia's side, leads him into a lengthened history of all those who have come and gone in the old regiment since he sold out.

The ruse is successful, but leaves Cecil still indignant with Molly. "What a wretched little flirt she is!" She turns an enraged glance upon where Miss Massereene is sitting deep in a discussion with Mr. Potts.

"Have you any Christian name?" Molly is asking, with a beaming smile, fixing her liquid Irish eyes upon the enslaved Potts. "I hear you addressed as Mr. Potts,—as Potts even—but never by anything that might be mistaken for a first name."

"Yes," replies Mr. Potts, proudly. "I was christened Plantagenet. Good sound, hasn't it? Something to do with the Dark Ages and Pinnock, only I never remember clearly what. Our fellows have rather a low way of abbreviating it and bringing it down to 'Planty.' And—would you believe it?—on one or two occasions they have so far forgotten themselves as to call me 'the regular Plant.'"

"What a shame!" says Miss Massereene, with deep sympathy.

"Let 'em," says Mr. Potts, heroic, if vulgar, shaking his crimson head. "It's fun to them, and it's by no means 'death' to me. It does no harm. But it's a nuisance to have one's mother put to the trouble of concocting a fine name, if one doesn't get the benefit of it."

"I agree with you. Were I a man, and rejoiced in such a name as Plantagenet, I would insist upon having every syllable of it distinctly sounded, or I'd know the reason why. 'All or nothing' should be my motto."

"I never think of it, I don't see my wife's cards," says Mr. Potts, who has had a good deal of champagne, and is rather moist about the eyes. "'Mrs. Plantagenet Potts' would look well, wouldn't it?"

"Very aristocratic," says false Molly, with an admiring nod. "I almost think,—I am not quite sure,—but I almost think I would marry a man to bear a name like that."

"Would you?" cries Mr. Potts, his tongue growing freer, while enthusiasm sparkles in every feature. "If I only thought that, Miss Molly——"

"How pretty Mrs. Darley is looking to-night!" interrupts Molly, adroitly; "what a clear complexion she has!—just like a child's."

"Not a bit of it," says Mr. Potts. "Children don't require 'cream of roses' and 'Hebe bloom' and—and all that sort of thing, you know—to get 'emselves up."

"Ah! my principal pity for her is that she doesn't seem to have anything to say."

"Englishwomen never have, as a rule; they are dull to the last degree. Now, you are a singular exception."

"English! I am not English," says Molly, with exaggerated disgust. "Do not offend me. I am Irish—altogether, thoroughly Irish,—heart and mind a Paddy."

"No! are you, by Jove?" says Mr. Potts. "So am I—at least, partly so. My mother is Irish."

So she had been English, Welsh, and Scotch on various occasions; there is scarcely anything Mrs. Potts had not been. There was even one memorable occasion on which she had had Spanish blood in her veins, and (according to Plantagenet's account) never went out without a lace mantilla flowing from her foxy head. It would, indeed, be rash to fix on any nationality to which the venerable lady might not lay claim, when her son's interests so willed it.

"She came from—er—Galway," he says now; "good old family too—but—out at elbows and—and—that."

"Yes?" Molly says, interested. "And her name?"

"Blake," replies he, unblushingly, knowing there never was a Blake that did not come out of Galway.

"I feel quite as though I had known you forever," says Molly, much pleased. "You know my principal crime is my Hibernian extraction, which perhaps makes me cling to the fact more and more. Mr. Amherst cannot forgive me—my father."

"Yet he was of good family, I believe, and all that?" questioningly.

"Beyond all doubt. What a question for you to ask! Did you ever hear of an Irishman who wasn't of good family? My father"—with a mischievous smile—"was a direct descendant of King O'Toole or Brian Boru,—I don't know which; and if the king had only got his own, my dear brother would at this moment be dispensing hospitality in a palace."

"You terrify me," said Mr. Potts, profoundly serious. "Why, the blood of all the Howards would be weak as water next to yours. Not that there is anything to be surprised at; for if over there was any one in the world who ought to be a princess it is——"

"Molly, will you sing us something?" Lady Stafford breaks in, impatiently, at this juncture, putting a stop to Mr. Potts's half-finished compliment.

"Molly, I want to speak to you for a moment," Luttrell says next day, coming upon her suddenly in the garden.

"Yes?" coldly. "Well, hurry, then; they are waiting for me in the tennis-ground."

"It seems to me that some one is always waiting for you now when I want to speak to you," says the young man, bitterly.

"For me?" with a would-be-astonished uplifting of her straight brows. "Oh, no, I am not in such request at Herst. I am ready to listen to you at any time; although I must confess I do not take kindly to lecturing."

"Do I lecture you?"

"Do not let us waste time going into details: ask me this all-important question and let me be gone."

"I want to know"—severely, yet anxiously—"whether you really meant all you said yesterday morning?"

"Yesterday morning!" says Miss Massereene, running all her ten little white fingers through her rebellious locks, and glancing up at him despairingly. "Do you really expect me to remember all I may have said yesterday morning? Think how long ago it is."

"Shall I refresh your memory? You gave me to understand that if our engagement came to an end you would be rather relieved than otherwise."

"Did I? How very odd! Yes, by the bye, I do recollect something of the kind. And you led up to it, did you not?—almost asked me to say it, I think, by your unkind remarks."

"Let us keep to the truth," says Luttrell, sternly. "You know such an idea would never cross my mind. While you—I hardly know what to think. All last night you devoted yourself to Shadwell."

"That is wrong; he devoted himself to me. Besides, I spoke a little to Mr. Potts."

"Yes, I suppose you could not be satisfied to let even an idiot like Potts go free."

"Idiot! Good gracious! are you talking of your friend Mr. Potts? Why, I was tired to death of hearing his praises sung in my ears morning, noon, and night at Brooklyn; and now, because I am barely civil to him, he must be called an idiot! That is rather severe on him, is it not?"

"Never mind Potts. I am thinking principally of Shadwell. Of course, you are quite at liberty to spend your time with whom you choose, but at all events I have the right to know what you mean seriously to do. You have to decide between Shadwell and me."

"I shall certainly not be rude to Philip," Molly says, decisively, leaning against the trunk of a flowering tree, and raising defiant, beautiful violet eyes to his. "You seem to pass your time very agreeably with Marcia. I do not complain, mind, but I like fairness in all things."

"I thought little country girls like you were all sweetness, and freshness, and simplicity," says Luttrell, with sudden vehemence. "What lies one hears in one's lifetime! Why, you might give lessons in coquetry and cruelty to many a town-bred woman."

"Might I? I am glad you appraise me so highly. I am glad I have escaped all the 'sweetness, and freshness,' and general imbecility the orthodox village maiden is supposed to possess. Though why a girl must necessarily be devoid of wit simply because she has spent her time in good, healthy air, is a thing that puzzles me. Have you delayed me only to say this?"

"No, Molly," cries Luttrell, desperately, while Molly, with cool fingers and a calm face, plucks a flower to pieces, "it is impossible you can have so soon forgotten. Think of all the happy days at Brooklyn, all the vows we interchanged. Is there inconstancy in the very air at Herst?"

His words are full of entreaty, his manner is not. There is an acidity about the latter that irritates Molly.

"All Irish people are fickle," she says recklessly, "and I am essentially Irish."

"All Irish people are kind-hearted, and you are not so," retorts he. "Every hour yields me an additional pang. For the last two days you have avoided me,—you do not care to speak to me,—you——"

"How can I, when you spend your entire time upbraiding me and accusing me of things of which I am innocent?"

"I neither accuse nor upbraid; I only say that——"

"Well, I don't think you can say much more,"—maliciously,—"because—I see Philip coming."

He has taken her hand, but now, stung by her words and her evident delight at Shadwell's proximity, flings it furiously from him.

"If so, it is time I went," he says, and turning abruptly from her, walks toward the corner that must conceal him from view.

A passing madness seizes Molly. Fully conscious that Luttrell is still within hearing, fatally conscious that it is within her power to wound him and gain a swift revenge for all the hard words she chooses to believe he has showered down on her, she sings,—slightly altering the ideas of the poet to suit her own taste,—she sings, as though to the approaching Philip:

"He is coming, my love, my sweet!

Was it ever so airy a tread,

My heart would know it and beat,

Had it lain for a century dead."

She smiles coquettishly, and glances at Shadwell from under her long dark lashes. He is near enough to hear and understand; so is Luttrell. With a suppressed curse the latter grinds his heel into the innocent gravel and departs.

CHAPTER XVI.

"Love is hurt with jar and fret,

Love is made a vague regret,

Eyes with idle tears are wet."

—The Miller's Daughter.

It is evening; the shadows are swiftly gathering. Already the dusk—sure herald of night—is here. Above in the trees the birds are crooning their last faint songs and ruffling their feathers on their night-perches.

How short the days have grown! Even into the very morning of sweet September there has fallen a breath of winter,—a chill, cold breath that tells us summer lies behind.

Luttrell, with downcast eyes and embittered heart, tramples through the same green wood (now, alas, fuller of fallen leaves) where first, at Herst, he and Molly re-met.

With a temperament as warm but less hopeful than hers, he sees the imaginary end that lies before him and his beloved. She has forsaken him, she is the bride of another,—that other is Shadwell. She is happy with him. This last thought, strange to say, is the unkindest cut of all.

He has within his hand a stout stick he took from a tree as he walked along; at this point of the proceeding he breaks it in two and flings it to one side. Happy! away from him, with perhaps only a jesting recollection of all the sweet words, the tender thoughts he has bestowed upon her! The thought is agony; and, if so, what will the reality be?

At all events he need not witness it. He will throw up his commission, and go abroad,—that universal refuge for broken hearts; though why we must intrude our griefs and low spirits and general unpleasantnesses upon our foreign neighbors is a subject not yet sufficiently canvassed. It seems so unkind toward our foreign neighbors.

A rather shaky but consequently picturesque bridge stretches across a little stream that slowly, lovingly babbles through this part of the wood. Leaning upon its parapet, Luttrell gives himself up a prey to gloomiest forebodings, and with the utmost industry calls up before him all the most miserable possibilities. He has reached the verge of suicide,—in a moment more (in his "mind's eye") he will be over, when a delicious voice behind him says, demurely:

"May I pass, please?"

It is Molly: such a lovely Molly!—such a naughty unrepentant, winsome Molly, with the daintiest and widest of straw hats, twined with wild flowers, thrown somewhat recklessly toward the back of her head.

"I am sorry to disturb you," says this apparition, gazing at him unflinchingly with big, innocent eyes, "but I do not think there is room on this bridge for two to pass."

Luttrell instantly draws his tall, slight, handsome figure to its fullest height, and, without looking at her, literally crushes himself against the frail railing behind him, lest by any means he should touch her as she passes. But she seems in no hurry to pass.

"It is my opinion," she says, in a matter-of-fact tone of warning, "that those wooden railings have seen their best days; and if you try them much harder you will find, if not a watery grave, at all events an exceedingly moist coat."

There is so much truth in this remark that Luttrell sees the wisdom of abstaining from further trial of their strength, and, falling into an easier position, makes as though he too would leave the bridge by the side from which she came on it. This brings them nearly face to face.

Now, dear reader, were you ever in the middle of a crossing, eager to reach the other side of the street? And did you ever meet anybody coming toward you on that crossing, also anxious to reach his other side of the street? And did you ever find yourself and that person politely dancing before each other for a minute or so, debarring each other's progress, because, unhappily, both your thoughts led you in the same direction? And did you ever feel an irresistible desire to stop short and laugh aloud in that person's face? Because now all this happens to Molly and Luttrell.

Each appears full of a dignified haste to quit the other's society. Molly steps to the right, so does Luttrell to the left, at the very same instant; Luttrell, with angry correction of his first movement, steps again to his first position, and so, without pausing, does Molly. Each essay only leaves them as they began, looking fair into each other's eyes. When this has happened three times, Molly stops short and bursts into a hearty laugh.

"Do try to stay still for one second," she says, with a smile, "and then perhaps we shall manage it. Thank you."

Then, being angry with herself, for her mistaken merriment, like a true woman she vents her displeasure upon him.

"I suppose you knew I was coming here this evening," she exclaims, with ridiculous injustice, "and followed to spoil any little peace I might have?"

"I did not know you were coming here. Had I known it——"

A pause.

"Well,"—imperiously,—"why do you hesitate? Say the unkind thing. I hate innuendoes. Had you known it——"

"I should certainly have gone the other way." Coldly: "Meanly as you may think of me, I have not fallen so low that I should seek to annoy you by my presence."

"Then without doubt you have come to this quiet place searching for solitude, in which to think out all your hard thoughts of me."

"I never think hardly of you, Molly."

"You certainly were not thinking kindly."

Now, he might easily have abashed her at this point by asking "where was the necessity to think of her at all?" but there is an innate courtesy, a natural gentleness about Luttrell that utterly forbids him.

"And," goes on his tormentor, the more angry that she cannot induce him to revile her, "I do not wish you to call me 'Molly' any more. Only those who—who love me call me by that name. Marcia and my grandfather (two people I detest) call me Eleanor. You can follow their example for the future."

"There will not be any future. I have been making up my mind, and—I shall sell out and go abroad immediately."

"Indeed!" There was a slight, a very slight, tremble in her saucy tones. "What a sudden determination! Well, I hope you will enjoy yourself. It is charming weather for a pleasure-trip."

"It is."

"You shouldn't lose much more time, however. Winter will soon be here; and it must be dismal in the extreme traveling in frost and snow."

"I assure you"—bitterly—"there is no occasion to hurry me. I am as anxious to go as ever you could desire."

"May I ask when you are going, and where?"

"No, you may not," cries he, at length fiercely goaded past endurance; "only, be assured of this: I am going as far from you as steam can take me; I am going where your fatal beauty and heartlessness cannot touch me; where I shall not be maddened day by day by your coquetry, and where perhaps—in time—I may learn to forget you."

His indignation has made him appear at least two inches taller than his ordinary six feet. His face is white as death, his lips are compressed beneath his blonde moustache, his dark blue eyes—not unlike Molly's own—are flashing fire.

"Thank you," says his companion, with exaggerated emphasis and a graceful curtsey; "thank you very much, Mr. Luttrell. I had no idea, when I lingered here for one little moment, I was going to hear so many home truths. I certainly do not want to hear any more."

"Then why don't you go?" puts in Luttrell, savagely.

"I would—only—perhaps you may not be aware of it, but you have your foot exactly on the very end of my gown."

Luttrell raises his foot and replaces it upon the shaking planks with something that strongly resembles a stamp,—so strongly as to make the treacherous bridge quake and tremble; while Molly moves slowly away from him until she reaches the very edge of their uncertain resting-place.

Here she pauses, glances backward, and takes another step, only to pause again,—this time with decision.

"Teddy," she says, softly.

No answer.

"Dear Teddy," more softly still.

No answer.

"Dearest Teddy."

Still no answer.

"Teddy—darling!" murmurs Molly, in the faintest, fondest tone, using toward him for the first time this tenderest of all tender love words.

In another moment his arms are around her, her head is on his breast. He is vanquished,—routed with slaughter.

In the heart of this weak-minded, infatuated young man there lingers not the slightest thought of bitterness toward this girl who has caused him so many hours of torment, and whose cool, soft cheek now rests contentedly against his.

"My love,—my own,—you do care for me a little?" he asks, in tones that tremble with gladness and sorrow, and disbelief.

"Of course, foolish boy." With a bright smile that revives him. "That is, at times, when you do not speak to me as though I were the fell destroyer of your peace or the veriest shrew that ever walked the earth. Sometimes, you know,"—with a sigh,—"you are a very uncomfortable Teddy."

She slips a fond warm arm around his shoulder and caresses the back of his neck with her soft fingers. Coquette she may be, flirt she is to her finger-tips, but nothing can take away from her lovableness. To Luttrell she is at this moment the most charming thing on which the sun ever shone.

"How can you be so unkind to me," he says, "so cold? Don't you know it breaks my heart?"

"I cold!" With reproachful wonder. "I unkind! Oh, Teddy! and what are you? Think of all you said to me yesterday and this morning; and now, now you called me a coquette! What could be worse than that? To say it of me, of all people! Ted,"—with much solemnity,—"stare at me,—stare hard,—and see do I look the very least bit in the world like a coquette?"

He does stare hard, and doing so forgets the question in hand, remembering only that her eyes, her lips, her hair are all the most perfect of their kind.

"My beloved," he whispers, caressingly.

"It is all your own fault," goes on Circe, strong in argument. "When I provoke you I care nothing for Philip Shadwell, or your Mr. Potts, or any of them: but when you are uncivil to me, what am I to do? I am driven into speaking to some one, although I don't in the least care for general admiration, as you well know."

He does not know; common sense forbids him to know; but she is telling her fibs with so much grace of feature and voice that he refuses to see her sin. He tries, therefore, to look as if he agreed with her, and succeeds very fairly.

"Then you did not mean anything you said?" he asks, eagerly.

"Not a syllable," says Molly. "Though even if I did you will forgive me, won't you? You always do forgive me, don't you?"

It would be impossible to describe the amount of pleading, sauciness, coaxing she throws into the "won't you?" and "don't you?" holding up her face, too, and looking at him out of half-shut, laughing, violet eyes.

"I suppose so," he says, smiling. "So abject a subject have I become that I can no longer conceal even from myself the fact that you can wind me round your little finger."

He tightens his arm about her, and considering, I dare say, she owes him some return for so humble a speech—stoops as though to put his lips to hers.

"Not yet," she says, pressing her fingers against his mouth. "I have many things to say to you yet before—— For one, I am not a coquette?"

"No."

"And you are not going abroad to—forget me? Oh, Teddy!"

"If I went to the world's end I could not compass that. No, I shall not go abroad now."

"And"—half removing the barring fingers—"I am the dearest, sweetest, best Molly to be found anywhere?"

"Oh, darling! don't you know I think so?" says Luttrell, with passionate fondness.

"And you will never forgive yourself for making me so unhappy?"

"Never."

"Very well,"—taking away her hand, with a contented sigh,—"now you may kiss me."

So their quarrel ends, as all her quarrels do, by every one being in the wrong except herself. It is their first bad quarrel; and although we are told "the falling out of faithful friends is but the renewal of love," still, believe me, each angry word creates a gap in the chain of love,—a gap that widens and ever widens more and more, until at length comes the terrible day when the cherished chain falls quite asunder. A second coldness is so much easier than a first!

CHAPTER XVII.

"One silly cross

Wrought all my loss.
O frowning fortune!"

—The Passionate Pilgrim.

It was an unfortunate thing,—nay, more, it was an unheard-of thing (because for a man to fall in love with his own wife has in it all the elements of absurdity, and makes one lose faith in the wise saws and settled convictions of centuries),—but the fact remained. From the moment Sir Penthony Stafford came face to face with his wife in the corridor at Herst he lost his heart to her.

There only rested one thing more to make the catastrophe complete, and that also came to pass: Cecil was fully and entirely aware of his sentiments with regard to her.

What woman but knows when a man loves her? What woman but knows (in spite of all the lies she may utter to her own heart) when a man has ceased to love her? In dark moments, in the cruel quiet of midnight, has not the terrible certainty of her loss made her youth grow dead within her?

Cecil's revenge has come, and I hardly think she spares it. Scrupulously, carefully, she adheres to her rôle of friend, never for an instant permitting him to break through the cold barricade of mere good-fellowship she has raised between them.

Should he in an imprudent moment seek to undermine this barrier, by a word, a smile, sweet but chilling, she expresses either astonishment or amusement at his presumption (the latter being perhaps the more murderous weapon of the two, as ridicule is death to love), and so checks him.

To her Sir Penthony is an acquaintance,—a rather amusing one, but still an acquaintance only,—and so she gives him to understand; while he chafes and curses his luck a good deal at times, and—grows desperately jealous.

The development of this last quality delights Cecil. Her flirtation with Talbot Lowry,—not that it can be called a flirtation, being a very one-sided affair, the affection Talbot entertains for her being the only affection about it,—carefully as he seeks to hide it, irritates Sir Penthony beyond endurance, and, together with her marked coldness and apparent want of desire for his society, renders him thoroughly unhappy.

All this gratifies Cecil, who is much too real a woman not to find pleasure in seeing a man made miserable for love of her.

"I wish you could bring yourself to speak to me now and then without putting that odious 'Sir' before my name," he says to her one day. "Anybody would say we were utter strangers."

"Well, and so we are," Cecil replies, opening wide her eyes in affected astonishment. "How can you dispute it? Why, you never even saw me until a few days ago."

"You are my wife at all events," says the young man, slightly discomfited.

"Ay, more's the pity," murmurs her ladyship, with such a sudden, bewitching, aggravating smile as entirely condones the incivility of her speech. Sir Penthony smiles too.

"Cecil—Cis,—a pretty name.—It rhymes with kiss," he says, rather sentimentally.

"So it does. And Penthony,—what does that rhyme with? Tony—money. Ah! that was our stumbling block."

"It might have been a worse one. There are more disagreeable things than money. There was once upon a time a stubborn mare, and even she was made to go by this same much-abused money. By the bye,"—thoughtfully,—"you don't object to your share of it, do you?"

"By no means. I purchased it so dearly I have quite a veneration for it."

"I see. I don't think my remark called for so ungracious a reply. To look at you one could hardly imagine a cruel sentiment coming from your lips."

"That shows how deceitful appearances can be. Had you troubled yourself to raise my veil upon your wedding-day you might have made yourself miserable for life. Really, Sir Penthony, I think you owe me a debt of gratitude."

"Do you? Then I confess myself ungrateful. Oh, Cecil, had I only known——" Here he pauses, warned by the superciliousness of her bearing, and goes on rather lamely. "Are you cold? Shall I get you a shawl?" They are standing on the veranda, and the evening is closing in.

"Cold? No. Who could feel cold on so divine an evening? It reminds one of the very heart of summer, and—— Ah!" with a little start and a pleased smile, "here is Mr. Lowry coming across the grass."

"Lowry! It seems to me he always is coming across the grass." Testily. "Has he no servants, no cook, no roof over his head? Or what on earth brings him here, morning, noon, and night?"

"I really think he must come to see me," says Lady Stafford, with modest hesitation. "He was so much with me in town, off and on, that I dare say he misses me now. He was very attentive about bringing me flowers and—and that."

"No doubt. It is amazing how thoughtful men can be on occasions. You like him very much?"

"Very much indeed. He is amiable, good-natured, and has such kind brown eyes."

"Has he?" With exaggerated surprise. "Is he indeed all that you say? It is strange how blind a man can be to his neighbor's virtues, whatever he may be to his faults. Now, if I had been asked my opinion of Talbot Lowry, I would have said he was the greatest bore and about the ugliest fellow I ever met in my life."

"Well, of course, strictly speaking, no one could call him handsome," Cecil says, feeling apologetic on the score of Mr. Lowry; "but he has excellent points; and, after all, with me, good looks count for very little." She takes a calm survey of her companion's patrician features as she speaks; but Sir Penthony takes no notice of her examination, as he is looking straight before him at nothing in the world, as far as she can judge.

"I never meet him without thinking of Master Shallow," he says, rather witheringly. "May I ask how he managed to make himself so endurable to you?"

"In many ways. Strange as it may appear to you, he can read poetry really charmingly. Byron, Tennyson, even Shakespeare, he has read to me until," says Cecil, with enthusiasm, "he has actually brought the tears into my eyes."

"I can fancy it," says Sir Penthony, with much disgust, adjusting his eyeglass with great care in his right eye, the better to contemplate the approach of this modern hero. "I can readily believe it. He seems to me the very personification of a 'lady's man,'—a thorough-paced carpet knight. When," says Sir Penthony, with careful criticism, "I take into consideration the elegant slimness of his lower limbs and the cadaverous leanness of his under-jaw, I can almost see him writing sonnets to his mistress's eyebrow."

"If"—severely—"there is one thing that absolutely repels me, it is sarcasm. Don't you be sarcastic. It doesn't suit you. I merely said Mr. Lowry probably feels at a loss, now his mornings are unoccupied, as he generally spent them with me in town."

"Happy he. Were those mornings equally agreeable to you?"

"They were indeed. But, as you evidently don't admire Talbot, you can hardly be expected to sympathize with my enjoyment."

"I merely hinted I thought him a conceited coxcomb; and so I do. Ah, Lowry, how d'ye do? Charmed to see you. Warm evening, is it not?"

"You are come at last, Mr. Lowry," Cecil says, with sweet meaning in her tone, smiling up at him as he stands beside her, with no eyes but for her. "What a glorious day we have had! It makes one sad to think it cannot continue. I do so hate winter."

"Poor winter!" says Lowry, rather insipidly. "It has my most sincere sympathy. As for the day, I hardly noticed its beauties: I found it long."

"The sign of an idler. Did you find it very long?"

"Very," says Lowry, with a look that implies his absence from her side was the sole cause of its tedium, and such an amount of emphasis as awakens in Sir Penthony a mad desire to horsewhip him. Though how, in these degenerate days, can one man horsewhip another because he makes use of that mild word "very"?

It certainly is a delicious evening. Five o'clock has crept on them almost insensibly, and tea has been brought out to the veranda. Within, from the drawing-room, a roaring fire throws upon the group outside white arms of flame, as though petitioning them to enter and accept its warm invitation.

Marcia, bending over the tea-tray, is looking tall and handsome, and perhaps a degree less gloomy than usual. Philip, too, is present, also tall and handsome; only he, by way of contrast, is looking rather more moody than usual. Molly is absent; so is Luttrell.

Mr. Potts, hovering round the tea-table, like an over-grown clumsy bee, is doing all that mortal man can do in the way of carrying cups and upsetting spoons. There are few things more irritating than the clatter of falling spoons, but Mr. Potts is above irritation, whatever his friends may be, and meets each fresh mishap with laudable equanimity. He is evidently enjoying himself, and is also taking very kindly to such good things in the shape of cake as the morbid footman has been pleased to bring.

Sir Penthony, who has sturdily declined to quit the battle-field, stands holding his wife's cup on one side, while Mr. Lowry is supplying her with cake on the other. There is a good deal of obstinacy mingled with their devotion.

"I wonder where Molly can be?" Lady Stafford says, at length. "I always know by instinct when tea is going on in a house. She will be sorry if she misses hers. Why don't somebody go and fetch her? You, for instance," she says, turning her face to Sir Penthony.

"I would fly to her," replies he, unmoved, "but I unfortunately don't know where she is. Besides, I dare say if I knew and went I would find myself unwelcome. I hate looking people up."

"I haven't seen her all day," says Mr. Potts, in an aggrieved tone, having finished the last piece of plum-cake, and being much exercised in his mind as to whether it is the seed or the sponge he will attack next. "She has been out walking, or writing letters, or something, since breakfast. I hope nothing has happened to her. Perhaps if we instituted a search——"

At this moment, Molly, smiling, gracieuse, appears at the open window and steps on the veranda. She is dressed in a soft blue clinging gown, and has a flower, fresh-gathered, in her hair, another at her throat, another held loosely in her slender fingers.

"Talk of an angel!" says Philip, softly, but audibly.

"Were you talking of me?" asks modest Molly, turning toward him.

"Well, if ever I heard such a disgracefully conceited speech!" says Lady Stafford, laughing. But Philip says, "We were," still with his eyes on Molly.

"Evidently you have all been pining for me," says Molly, gayly. "It is useless your denying it. Mr. Potts,"—sweetly,—"leave me a little cake, will you? Don't eat it all up. Knowing as you do my weakness for seed-cake, I consider it mean of you to behave as you are now doing."

"You shall have it all," says Mr. Potts, magnanimously. "I devoted myself to the plum-cake so as to leave this for you; so you see I don't deserve your sneer."

Philip straightens himself, and his moodiness flies from him. Marcia, on the contrary, grows distrait and anxious. Molly, with the air of a little gourmand, makes her white teeth meet in her sweet cake, and, with a sigh of deep content, seats herself on the window-sill.

Mr. Potts essays to do likewise. In fact, so great is his haste to secure the coveted position that he trips, loses balance, and crash goes tea, cup, and all—with which he meant to regale his idol—on to the stone at his feet.

"You seem determined to outdo yourself this evening, Potts," Sir Penthony says, mildly, turning his eyeglass upon the delinquent. "First you did all you knew in the way of battering the silver, and now you have turned your kind attention on the china. I really think, too, that it is the very best china,—Wedgwood, is it not? Only yesterday I heard Mr. Amherst explaining to Lady Elizabeth Eyre, who is rather a connoisseur in china, how blessed he was in possessing an entire set of Wedgwood unbroken. I heard him asking her to name a day to come and see it."

"I don't think you need pile up the agony any higher," Philip interposes, laughing, coming to the rescue in his grandfather's absence. "He will never find it out."

"I'm so awfully sorry!" Mr. Potts says, addressing Marcia, his skin having by this time borrowed largely of his hair in coloring. "It was unpardonably awkward. I don't know how it happened. But I'll mend it again for you, Miss Amherst; I've the best cement you ever knew up-stairs; I always carry it about with me."

"You do right," says Molly, laughing.

"The hot tea won't affect it afterward," goes on Potts triumphantly.

"He is evidently in the habit of going about breaking people's pet china and mending it again,—knows all about it," murmurs Sir Penthony, sotto voce, with much interest. "It isn't a concoction of your own, Potts, is it?"

"No; a fellow gave it to me. The least little touch mends, and it never gives way again."

"That's what's-meant to do," Captain Mottie has the audacity to say, very unwisely. Of course no one takes the faintest notice. They all with one consent refuse indignantly to see it; and Longshank's inevitable "Ha, ha!" falls horribly flat. Only Molly, after a wild struggle with her better feelings, gives way, and bursts into an irrepressible fit of laughter, for which the poor captain is intensely grateful.

Mrs. Darley, who is doing a little mild running with this would-be Joe Miller, encouraged by Molly, laughs too, and gives the captain to understand that she thinks it a joke, which is even more than could be expected of her.

A sound of footsteps upon the gravel beneath redeems any further awkwardness. They all simultaneously crane their necks over the iron railings, and all at a glance see Mr. Amherst slowly, but surely, advancing on them.

He is not alone. Beside him, affording him the support of one arm, walks a short, stout, pudgy little man, dressed with elaborate care, and bearing all the distinguishing marks of the lowest breeding in his face and figure.

It is Mr. Buscarlet, the attorney, without whose advice Mr. Amherst rarely takes a step in business matters, and for whom—could he be guilty of such a thing—he has a decided weakness. Mr. Amherst is frigid and cutting. Mr. Buscarlet is vulgar and gushing. They say extremes meet. In this case they certainly do, for perhaps he is the only person in the wide world with whom old Amherst gets on.

With Marcia he is a bugbear,—a bête noire. She does not even trouble herself to tolerate him, which is the one unwise step the wise Marcia took on her entrance into Herst.

Now, as he comes puffing and panting up the steps to the veranda, she deliberately turns her back on him.

"Pick up the ghastly remains, Potts," Sir Penthony says, hurriedly, alluding to the shattered china. Mr. Amherst is still on the lowest step, having discarded Mr. Buscarlet's arm. "If there is one thing mine host abhors more than another, it is broken china. If he catches you red-handed, I shudder for the consequences."

"What an ogre you make him out!" says Molly. "Has he, then, a private Bastile, or a poisoned dagger, this terrible old man?"

"Neither. He clings to the traditions of the 'good old times.' Skinning alive, which was a favorite pastime in the dark ages, is the sort of thing he affects. Dear old gentleman, he cannot bear to see ancient usages sink into oblivion. Here he is."

Mr. Potts, having carefully removed all traces of his handiness, gazes with recovered courage on the coming foe.

"Have some tea, grandpapa," says Marcia, attentively, ignoring Mr. Buscarlet.

"No, thank you. Mr. Buscarlet will probably have some, if he is asked," says grandpapa, severely.

"Ah, thank you; thank you. I will take a little tea from Miss Amherst's fair hands," says the man of law, rubbing his own ecstatically as he speaks.

"Mr. Longshanks, give this to Mr. Buscarlet," says Marcia, turning to Longshanks with a cup of tea, although Mr. Buscarlet is at her other elbow, ready to receive it from her "fair hands."

Mr. Longshanks does as he is bidden; and the attorney, having received it, walks away discomfited, a fresh score against this haughty hostess printed on his heart. He has the good luck to come face to face with pretty Molly, who is never unkind to any one but the man who loves her. They have met before, so he has no difficulty about addressing her, though, after his rebuff from Marcia, he feels some faint pangs of diffidence.

"Is it not a glorious evening?" he says, with hesitation, hardly knowing how he will be received; "what should we all do but for the weather?"

"Is it not?" says Molly, with the utmost cheerfulness, smiling on him. She is so sorry for his defeat, which she witnessed, that her smile is one of her kindest. "If this weather might only continue, how happy we should be. Even the flowers would remain with us." She holds up the white rose in her hand for his admiration.

"A lovely flower, but not so lovely as its possessor," says this insufferable old lawyer, with a smirk.

"Oh, Mr. Buscarlet! I doubt you are a sad flirt," says Miss Molly, with an amused glance. "What would Mrs. Buscarlet say if she knew you were going about paying compliments all round?"

"Not all round, Miss Massereene, pardon me. There is a power about beauty stronger than any other,—a charm that draws one out of one's self." With a fat obeisance he says this, and a smile he means to be fascinating.

Molly laughs. In her place Marcia would have shown disgust; but Molly only laughs—a delicious laugh, rich with the very sweetest, merriest music. She admits even to herself she is excessively amused.

"Thank you," she says. "Positively you deserve anything for so pretty a speech. I am sorry I have nothing better to offer, but—you shall have my rose."

Still smiling, she goes close to him, and with her own white fingers places the rose in the old gentleman's coat; while he stands as infatuated by her grace and beauty as though he still could call himself twenty-four with a clear conscience, and had no buxom partner at home ready to devour him at a moment's notice.

Oh, lucky, sweetly-perfumed, pale white rose! Oh, fortunate, kindly, tender manner! You little guess your influence over the future.

Old Mr. Amherst, who has been watching Molly from afar, now comes grumbling toward her and leads Mr. Buscarlet away.

"Grandpa is in a bad temper," says Marcia, generally, when they have quite gone.

"No, you don't say so? What a remarkable occurrence!" exclaims Cecil. "Now, what can have happened to ruffle so serene a nature as his?"

"I didn't notice it; I was making a fresh and more lengthened examination of his features. Yet, I still adhere to my original conviction: his nose is his strong point." Mr. Potts says this as one would who had given to the subject years of mature study.

"It is thin," says Lady Stafford.

"It is. Considering his antiquity, his features are really quite handsome. But his nose—his nose," says Mr. Potts, "is especially fine. That's a joke: do you see it? Fine! Why, it is sharper than an awl. 'Score two on the shovel for that, Mary Ann.'"

For want of something better to do, they all laugh at Mr. Potts's rather lame sally. Even Mr. Longshanks so far forgets himself and his allegiance to his friend as to say "Ha-ha-ha!" out loud—a proceeding so totally unexpected on the part of Longshanks that they all laugh again, this time the more heartily that they cannot well explain the cause of their merriment.

Captain Mottie is justly vexed. The friend of his soul has turned traitor, and actually expended a valuable laugh upon an outsider.

Mrs. Darley, seeing his vexation, says, quietly, "I do not think it is good form, or even kind, to speak so of poor Mr. Amherst behind his back. I cannot bear to hear him abused."

"It is only his nose, dear," says Cecil; "and even you cannot call it fat without belying your conscience."

Mrs. Darley accepts the apology, and goes back to her mild flirtation.

"How silly that woman is!" Cecil says, somewhat indignantly. She and Molly and one or two of the men are rather apart. "To hear her going in for simple sentiments is quite too much for me. When one looks at her, one cannot help——" She pauses, and taps her foot upon the ground, impatiently.

"She is rather pretty," says Lowry, glancing carelessly at the powdered doll's face, with its wealth of dyed hair.

"There was a young lady named Maud,"

says Sir Penthony, addressing his toes,

"Who had recently come from abroad,

Her bloom and her curls,
Which astonished the girls,

Were both an ingenious fraud.

"Ah! here is Tedcastle coming across to us."

Tedcastle, with the boy Darley mounted high on his shoulder, comes leisurely over the lawn and up the steps.

"There, my little man, now you may run to your mother," he says to the child, who shows a morbid dislike to leave his side (all children adore Luttrell). "What! not tired of me yet? Well, stay, then."

"Tea, Tedcastle?"

"No, thank you."

"Let me get you some more, Miss Massereene," says Plantagenet. "You came late, and have been neglected."

"I think I will take a very little more. But," says Molly, who is in a tender mood, "you have been going about on duty all the evening. I will ask Mr. Luttrell to get me some this time, if he will be so kind." She accompanies this with a glance that sets Luttrell's fond heart beating.

"Ah, Molly, why did you not come with Teddy and me this day, as usual?" says little Lucien Darley, patting her hand. "It was so nice. Only there was no regular sun this evening, like yesterday. It was hot, but I could see no dear little dancing sunbeams; and I asked Teddy why, and he said there could be no sun where Molly was not. What did he mean by that?"

"Yes, what could he have meant by that?" asks Sir Penthony, in a perplexed tone, while Molly blushes one of her rare, sweet blushes, and lowers her eyes. "It was a wild remark. I can see no sense in it. But perhaps he will kindly explain. I say, Luttrell, you shouldn't spend your time telling this child fairy tales; you will make him a visionary. He says you declared Miss Massereene had entire control over the sun, moon, and stars, and that they were never known to shine except where she was."

"I have heard of the 'enfant terrible,'" says Luttrell, laughing, to cover some confusion; "I rejoice to say I have at last met with one. Lucien, I shall tell you no more fantastic stories."

CHAPTER XVIII.

"These violet delights have violet ends,

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder."

—Romeo and Juliet.

"That is the way with you men; you don't understand us,—you cannot."

—Courtship of Miles Standish.

Whether it is because of Marcia's demeanor toward Mr. Buscarlet, or the unusual excellence of the weather, no one can tell, but to-night Mr. Amherst is in one of his choicest moods.

Each of his remarks outdoes the last in brilliancy of conception, whilst all tend in one direction, and show a laudable desire to touch on open wounds. Even the presence of his chosen intimate, the lawyer, who remains to dinner and an uncomfortable evening afterward, has not the power to stop him, though Mr. Buscarlet does all in his knowledge to conciliate him, and fags on wearily through his gossiping conversations with an ardor and such an amount of staying power as raises admiration even in the breast of Marcia.

All in vain. The little black dog has settled down on the old gentleman's shoulders with a vengeance and a determination to see it out with the guests not to be shaken.

Poor Mr. Potts is the victim of the hour. Though why, because he is enraged with Marcia, Mr. Amherst should expend his violence upon the wretched Plantagenet is a matter for speculation. He leaves no stone unturned to bring down condemnation on the head of this poor youth and destroy his peace of mind; but fortunately, Plantagenet has learned the happy knack of "ducking" mentally and so letting all hostile missiles fly harmless over his rosy head.

After dinner Mr. Darley good-naturedly suggests a game of besique with his host, but is snubbed, to the great grief of those assembled in the drawing-room. Thereupon Darley, with an air of relief, takes up a book and retires within himself, leaving Mr. Buscarlet to come once more to the front.

"You have heard, of course, about the Wyburns?" he says, addressing Mr. Amherst. "They are very much cut up about that second boy. He has turned out such a failure! He missed his examination again last week."

"I see no cause for wonder. What does Wyburn expect? At sixty-five he weds a silly chit of nineteen without an earthly idea in her head, and then dreams of giving a genius to the world! When," says Mr. Amherst, turning his gaze freely upon the devoted Potts, "men marry late in life they always beget fools."

"That's me," says Mr. Potts, addressing Molly in an undertone, utterly unabashed. "My father married at sixty and my mother at twenty-five. In me you behold the fatal result."

"Well, well," goes on Mr. Buscarlet, hastily, with a view to checking the storm, "I think in this case it was more idleness than want of brain."

"My dear Buscarlet, did you ever yet hear of a dunce whose mother did not go about impressing upon people how idle the dear boy was? Idle? Pooh! lack of intellect!"

"At all events, the Wyburns are to be pitied. The eldest son's marriage with one so much beneath him was also a sad blow."

"Was it? Others endure like blows and make no complaint. It is quite the common and regular thing for the child you have nurtured, to grow up and embitter your life in every possible way by marrying against your wishes, or otherwise bringing down disgrace upon your head. I have been especially blessed in my children and grandchildren."

"Just so, no doubt,—no doubt," says Mr. Buscarlet, nervously. There is a meaning sneer about the old man's lips.

"Specially blessed," he repeats. "I had reason to be proud of them. Each child as he or she married gave me fresh cause for joy. Marcia's mother was an Italian dancer."

"She was an actress," Marcia interposes, calmly, not a line of displeasure, not the faintest trace of anger, discernible in her pale face. "I do not recollect having ever heard she danced."

"Probably she suppressed that fact. It hardly adds to one's respectability. Philip's father was a spendthrift. His son develops day by day a very dutiful desire to follow in his footsteps."

"Perhaps I might do worse," Shadwell replies, with a little aggravating laugh. "At all events, he was beloved."

"So he was,—while his money lasted. Eleanor's father——"

With a sudden, irrepressible start Molly rises to her feet and, with a rather white face, turns to her grandfather.

"I will thank you, grandpapa, to say nothing against my father," she says, in tones so low, yet so full of dignity and indignation, that the old man actually pauses.

"High tragedy," says he, with a sneer. "Why, you are all wrongly assorted. The actress should have been your mother, Eleanor."

Yet it is noticeable that he makes no further attempt to slight the memory of the dead Massereene.

"I shan't be able to stand much more of this," says Mr. Potts, presently, coming behind the lounge on which sit Lady Stafford and Molly. "I shall infallibly blow out at that obnoxious old person, or else do something equally reprehensible."

"He is a perfect bear," says Cecil angrily.

"He is a wicked old man," says Molly, still trembling with indignation.

"He is a jolly old snook," says Mr. Potts. But as neither of his listeners know what he means, they do not respond.

"Let us do something," says Plantagenet, briskly.

"But what? Will you sing for us, Molly? 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast.'"

"It would take a good deal of music to soothe our bête noire," says Potts. "Besides—I confess it,—music is not what Artemus Ward would call my 'forte.' I don't understand it. I am like the man who said he only knew two tunes in the world: one was 'God save the Queen,' and the other wasn't. No, let us do something active,—something unusual, something wicked."

"If you can suggest anything likely to answer to your description, you will make me your friend for life," says Cecil, with solemnity. "I feel bad."

"Did you ever see a devil?" asks Mr. Potts, in a sepulchral tone.

"A what?" exclaim Cecil and Molly, in a breath.

"A devil," repeats he, unmoved. "I don't mean our own particular old gentleman, who has been behaving so sweetly to-night, but a regular bona fide one."

"Are you a spiritualist?" Cecil asks with awe.

"Nothing half so paltry. There is no deception about my performance. It is simplicity itself. There is no rapping, but a great deal of powder. Have you ever seen one?"

"A devil? Never."

"Should you like to?"

"Shouldn't I!" says Cecil, with enthusiasm.

"Then you shall. It won't be much, you know, but it has a pretty effect, and anything will be less deadly than sitting here listening to the honeyed speeches of our host. I will go and prepare my work, and call you when it is ready."

In twenty minutes he returns and beckons them to come; and, rising, both girls quit the drawing-room.

With much glee Mr. Potts conducts them across the hall into the library, where they find all the chairs and the centre table pushed into a corner, as though to make room for one soup-plate which occupies the middle of the floor.

On this plate stands a miniature hill, broad at the base and tapering at the summit, composed of blended powder and water, which Mr. Potts has been carefully heating in an oven during his absence until, according to his lights, it has reached a proper dryness.

"Good gracious! what is it?" asks Molly.

"Powder," says Potts.

"I hope it won't go off and blow us all to bits," says Cecil, anxiously.

"It will go off, certainly, but it won't do any damage," replies their showman, with confidence; "and really it is very pretty while burning. I used to make 'em by hundreds when I was a boy, and nothing ever happened except once, when I blew the ear off my father's coachman."

This is not reassuring. Molly gets a little closer to Cecil, and Cecil gets a little nearer to Molly. They both sensibly increase the distance between them and the "devil."

"Now I am going to put out the lamp," says Plantagenet, suiting the action to the word and suddenly placing them in darkness. "It don't look anything if there is light to overpower its own brilliancy."

Striking a match, he applies it to the little black mountain, and in a second it turns into a burning one. The sparks fly rapidly upward. It seems to be pouring its fire in little liquid streams all down its sides.

Cecil and Molly are in raptures.

"It is Vesuvius," says the former.

"It is Mount Etna," says the latter, "except much better, because they don't seem to have any volcanoes nowadays. Mr. Potts, you deserve a prize medal for giving us such a treat."

"Plantagenet, my dear, I didn't believe it was in you," says Cecil. "Permit me to compliment you on your unprecedented success."

Presently, however, they slightly alter their sentiments. Every school-boy knows how overpowering is the smell of burnt powder.

"What an intolerable smell!" says Molly, when the little mound is half burned down, putting her dainty handkerchief up to her nose. "Oh! what is it? Gunpowder? Brimstone? Sulphur?"

"And extremely appropriate, too, dear," says Cecil, who has also got her nose buried in her cambric; "entirely carries out the character of the entertainment. You surely don't expect to be regaled with incense or attar of roses. By the bye, Plantagenet, is there going to be much more of it,—the smell, I mean?"

"Not much," replies he. "And, after all, what is it? If you went out shooting every day you would think nothing of it. For my part I almost like the smell. It is wholesome, and—er—— Oh, by Jove!"

There is a loud report,—a crash,—two terrified screams,—and then utter darkness. The base of the hill, being too dry, has treacherously gone off without warning: hence the explosion.

"You aren't hurt, are you?" asks Mr. Potts, a minute later, in a terrified whisper, being unable to see whether his companions are dead or alive.

"Not much," replies Cecil, in a trembling tone; "but, oh! what has happened? Molly, speak."

"I am quite safe," says Molly, "but horribly frightened. Mr. Potts, are you all right?"

"I am." He is ignorant of the fact that one of his cheeks is black as any nigger's, and that both his hands resemble it. "I really thought it was all up when I heard you scream. It was that wretched powder that got too dry at the end. However, it doesn't matter."

"Have you both your ears, Molly?" asks Cecil, with a laugh; but a sudden commotion in the hall outside, and the rapid advance of footsteps in their direction, check her merriment.

"I hear Mr. Amherst's voice," says Mr. Potts, tragically. "If he finds us here we are ruined."

"Let us get behind the curtains at the other end of the room," whispers Cecil, hurriedly; "they may not find us there,—and—throw the plate out of the window."

No sooner said than done: Plantagenet with a quick movement precipitates the soup-plate—or rather what remains of it—into the court-yard beneath, where it falls with a horrible clatter, and hastily follows his two companions into their uncertain hiding-place.

It stands in a remote corner, rather hidden by a bookcase, and consists of a broad wooden pedestal, hung round with curtains, that once supported a choice statue. The statue having been promoted some time since, the three conspirators now take its place, and find themselves completely concealed by its falling draperies.

This recess, having been originally intended for one, can with difficulty conceal two, so I leave it to your imagination to consider how badly three fare for room inside it.

Mr. Potts, finding himself in the middle, begins to wish he had been born without arms, as he now knows not how to dispose of them. He stirs the right one, and Cecil instantly declares in an agonized whisper that she is falling off the pedestal. He moves the left, and Molly murmurs frantically in another instant she will be through the curtains at her side. Driven to distraction, poor Potts, with many apologies, solves the difficulty by placing an arm round each complainant, and so supports them on their treacherous footing.

They have scarcely brought themselves into a retainable position when the door opens and Mr. Amherst enters the room, followed by Sir Penthony Stafford and Luttrell.

With one candlestick only are they armed, which Sir Penthony holds, having naturally expected to find the library lighted.

"What is the meaning of this smell?" exclaims Mr. Amherst, in an awful voice, that makes our three friends shiver in their shoes. "Has any one been trying to blow up the house? I insist on learning the meaning of this disgraceful affair."

"There doesn't seem to be anything," says Tedcastle, "except gunpowder, or rather the unpleasant remains of it. The burglar has evidently flown."

"If you intend turning the matter into a joke," retorts Mr. Amherst, "you had better leave the room."

"Nothing shall induce me to quit the post of danger," replies Luttrell, unruffled.

Meantime, Sir Penthony, who is of a more suspicious nature, is making a more elaborate search. Slowly, methodically he commences a tour round the room, until presently he comes to a stand-still before the curtains that conceal the trembling trio.

Mr. Amherst, in the middle of the floor, is busily engaged examining the chips of china that remain after their fiasco,—and that ought to tell the tale of a soup-plate.

Tedcastle comes to Sir Penthony's side.

Together they withdraw the curtains; together they view what rests behind them.

Grand tableau!

Mr. Potts, with half his face blackened beyond recognition, glares out at them with the courage of despair. On one side of him is Lady Stafford, on the other Miss Massereene; from behind each of their waists protrudes a huge and sooty hand. That hand belongs to Potts.

Three pairs of eyes gleam at the discoverers, silently, entreatingly, yet with what different expressions! Molly is frightened, but evidently braced for action; Mr. Potts is defiant; Lady Stafford is absolutely convulsed with laughter. Already filled with a keen sense of the comicality of the situation, it only wanted her husband's face of indignant surprise to utterly unsettle her. Therefore it is that the one embarrassment she suffers from is a difficulty in refraining from an outburst of merriment.

There is a dead silence. Only the grating of Mr. Amherst's bits of china mars the stillness. Plantagenet, staring at his judges, defies them, without a word, to betray their retreat. The judges—although angry—stare back at him, and acknowledge their inability to play the sneak. Sir Penthony drops the curtain,—and the candle. Instantly darkness covers them. Luttrell scrapes a heavy chair along the waxed borders of the floor; there is some faint confusion, a rustle of petticoats, a few more footsteps than ought to be in the room, an uncivil remark from old Amherst about some people's fingers being all thumbs, and then once more silence.

When, after a pause, Sir Penthony relights his candle, the search is at an end.

Now that they are well out of the library, though still in the gloomy little anteroom that leads to it, Molly and Cecil pause to recover breath. For a few moments they keep an unbroken quiet. Lady Stafford is the first to speak,—as might be expected.

"I am bitterly disappointed," she says, in a tone of intense disgust. "It is a downright swindle. In spite of a belief that has lasted for years, that nose of his is a failure. I think nothing of it. With all its length and all its sharpness, it never found us out!"

"Let us be thankful for that same," returns Molly, devoutly.

By this time they have reached the outer hall, where the lamps are shining vigorously. They now shine down with unkind brilliancy on Mr. Potts's disfigured countenance. A heavy veil of black spreads from his nose to his left ear, rather spoiling the effect of his unique ugliness.

It is impossible to resist; Lady Stafford instantly breaks down, and gives way to the laughter that has been oppressing her for the last half-hour, Molly chimes in, and together they laugh with such hearty delight that Mr. Potts burns to know the cause of their mirth, that he may join in.

He grins, however, in sympathy, whilst waiting impatiently an explanation. His utter ignorance of the real reason only enhances the absurdity of his appearance and prolongs the delight of his companions.

When two minutes have elapsed, and still neither of them offers any information, he grows grave, and whispers rather to himself than them, the one word, "Hysterics?"

"You are right," cries Cecil: "I was never nearer hysterics in my life. Oh, Plantagenet! your face is as black as—as——"

"Your hat!" supplies Molly, as well as she can speak. "And your hands,—you look demoniacal. Do run away and wash yourself and—— I hear somebody coming."

Whereupon Potts scampers up-stairs, while the other two gain the drawing-room, just as Mr. Amherst appears in the hall.

Seeing them, half an hour later, seated in all quietude and sobriety, discussing the war and the last new marvel in bonnets, who would have supposed them guilty of their impromptu game of "hide and seek"?

Tedcastle and Sir Penthony, indeed, look much more like the real culprits, being justly annoyed, and consequently rather cloudy about the brows. Yet, with a sense of dignified pride, the two gentlemen abstain from giving voice to their disapprobation, and make no comment on the event of the evening.

Mr. Potts is serenity itself, and is apparently ignorant of having given offense to any one. His face has regained its pristine fairness, and is scrupulously clean; so is his conscience. He looks incapable of harm.

Bed-hour arrives, and Tedcastle retires to his pipe without betraying his inmost feelings. Sir Penthony is determined to follow his lead; Cecil is equally determined he shall not. To have it out with him without further loss of time is her fixed intention, and with that design she says, a little imperiously:

"Sir Penthony, get me my candle."

She has lingered, before saying this, until almost all the others have disappeared. The last of the men is vanishing round the corner that leads to the smoking-room; the last of the women has gone beyond sight of the staircase in search of her bedroom fire. Cecil and her husband stand alone in the vast hall.

"I fear you are annoyed about something," she says, in a maddening tone of commiseration, regarding him keenly, while he gravely lights her candle.

"Why should you suppose so?"

"Because of your gravity and unusual silence."

"I was never a great talker, and I do not think I am in the habit of laughing more than other people."

"But you have not laughed at all,—all this evening, at least,"—with a smile,—"not since you discovered us in durance vile."

"Did you find the situation so unpleasant? I fancied it rather amused you,—so much so that you even appeared to forget the dignity that, as a married woman, ought to belong to you."

"Well, but!"—provokingly—"you forget how very little married I am."

"At all events you are my wife,"—rather angrily; "I must beg you to remember that. And for the future I shall ask you to refrain from such amusements as call for concealment and necessitate the support of a young man's arm."

"I really do not see by what right you interfere with either me or my amusements," says Cecil, hotly, after a decided pause. Never has he addressed her with so much sternness. She raises her eyes to his and colors richly all through her creamy skin. "Recollect our bargain."

"I do. I recollect also that you have my name."

"And you have my money. That makes us quits."

"I do not see how you intend carrying out that argument. The money was quite as much mine as yours."

"But you could not have had it without me."

"Nor you without me."

"Which is to be regretted. At least I should have had a clear half, which I haven't; so you have the best of it. And—I will not be followed about, and pried after, and made generally uncomfortable by any one."

"Who is prying after you?"

"You are."

"What do you mean, Cecil?" Haughtily.

"Just what I say. And, as I never so far forget myself as to call you by your Christian name without its prefix, I think you might have the courtesy to address me as Lady Stafford."

"Certainly, if you wish it."

"I do. Have you anything more to say?"

"Yes, more than——"

"Then pray defer it until to-morrow, as"—with a bare-faced attempt at a yawn—"I really cannot sit up any longer. Good-night, Sir Penthony."

Sir Penthony puts the end of his long moustache into his mouth,—a sure sign of irritation,—and declines to answer.

"Good-night," repeats her ladyship, blandly, going up the staircase, with a suspicion of a smile at the corners of her lips, and feeling no surprise that her polite little adieu receives no reply.

When she has reached the centre of the broad staircase she pauses, and, leaning her white arms upon the banisters, looks down upon her husband, standing irresolute and angry in the hall beneath.

"Sir Penthony," murmurs she; "Sir——" Here she hesitates for so long a time that when at last the "Penthony" does come it sounds more familiar and almost unconnected with the preceding word.

Stafford turns, and glances quickly up at her. She is dressed in some soft-flowing gown of black, caught here and there with heavy bows and bands of cream-color, that contrast admirably with her hair, soft skin, her laughing eyes, and her pouting, rosy lips. In her hair, which she wears low on her neck, is a black comb studded with pearls; there are a few pearls round her neck, a few more in her small ears; she wears no bracelets, only two narrow bands of black velvet caught with pearls, that make her arms seem even rounder and whiter than they are.

"Good-night," she says, for the third time, nodding at him in a slow, sweet fashion that has some grace or charm about it all its own, and makes her at the instant ten times lovelier than she was before.

Stafford, coming forward until he stands right under her, gazes up at her entranced like some modern Romeo. Indeed, there is something almost theatrical about them as they linger, each waiting for the other to speak,—he fond and impassioned, yet half angry too, she calm and smiling, yet mutinous.

For a full minute they thus hesitate, looking into each other's eyes; then the anger fades from Stafford's face, and he whispers, eagerly, tenderly:

"Good-night, my——"

"Friend," murmurs back her ladyship, decisively, leaning yet a little farther over the banisters.

Then she kisses her hand to him and drops at his feet the rose that has lain on her bosom all the evening, and, with a last backward glance and smile, flits away from him up the darkened staircase and vanishes.

"I shall positively lose my heart to her if I don't take care," thinks the young man, ruefully, and very foolishly, considering how long ago it is since that misfortune has befallen him. But we are ever slow to acknowledge our own defeats. His eyes are fixed upon the flower at his feet.

"No, I do not want her flowers," he says, with a slight frown, pushing it away from him disdainfully. "It was a mere chance my getting it. Any other fellow in my place at the moment would have been quite as favored,—nay, beyond doubt more so. I will not stoop for it."

With his dignity thus forced to the front, he walks the entire length of the hall, his arms folded determinedly behind him, until he reaches a door at the upper end.

Here he pauses and glances back almost guiltily. Yes, it is still there, the poor, pretty yellow blossom that has been so close to her, now sending forth its neglected perfume to an ungrateful world.

It is cruel to leave it there alone all night, to be trodden on, perhaps, in the morning by an unappreciative John or Thomas, or, worse still, to be worn by an appreciative James. Desecration!

"'Who hesitates is lost,'" quotes Stafford, aloud, with an angry laugh at his own folly, and, walking deliberately back again, picks up the flower and presses it to his lips.

"I thought that little speech applied only to us poor women," says a soft voice above him, as, to his everlasting chagrin, Cecil's mischievous, lovable face peers down at him from the gallery overhead. "Have another flower, Sir Penthony? You seem fond of them."

She throws a twin-blossom to the one he holds on to his shoulder as she speaks with very accurate aim.

"It was yours," stammers Sir Penthony, utterly taken aback.

"So it was,"—with an accent of affected surprise,—"which makes your behavior all the more astonishing. Well, do not stand there kissing it all night, or you will catch cold, and then—what should I do?"

"What?"

"Die of grief, most probably." With a little mocking laugh.

"Very probably. Yet you should pity me too, in that I have fallen so low as to have nothing better given me to kiss. I am wasting my sweetness on——"

"Is it sweetness?" asks she, wickedly.

At this they both laugh,—a low, a soft laugh, born of the hour and a fear of interruption, and perhaps a dread of being so discovered, that adds a certain zest to their meeting. Then he says, still laughing, in answer to her words, "Try."

"No, thank you." With a little moue. "Curiosity is not my besetting sin, although I could not resist seeing how you would treat my parting gift a moment ago. Ah!"—with a little suppressed laugh of the very fullest enjoyment,—"you cannot think what an interesting picture you made,—almost tragic. First you stalked away from my unoffending rose with all the dignity of a thousand Spaniards; and then, when you had gone sufficiently far to make your return effective, you relented, and, seizing upon the flower as though it were—let us say, for convenience sake—myself, devoured it with kisses. I assure you it was better than a play. Well,"—with a sigh,—"I won't detain you any longer. I'm off to my slumbers."

"Don't go yet, Cecil. Wait one moment. I—have something to say to you."

"No doubt. A short time since you said the same thing. Were I to stay now you might, perhaps, finish that scolding; instinct told me it was hanging over me; and—I hate being taken to task."

"I will not, I swear I will never again attempt to scold you about anything, experience having taught me the futility of such a course. Cecil, stay."

"Lady Stafford, if you please, Sir Penthony." With a tormenting smile.

"Lady Stafford then,—anything, if you will only stay."

"I can't, then. Where should I be without my beauty sleep? The bare idea fills me with horror. Why, I should lose my empire. Sweet as parting is, I protest I, for one, would not lengthen it until to-morrow. Till then—farewell. And—Sir Penthony—be sure you dream of me. I like being dreamed of by my——"

"By whom?"

"My slaves," returns this coquette of all coquettes, with a last lingering glance and smile. After which she finally disappears.

"There is no use disguising the fact any longer,—I have lost my heart," groans Sir Penthony, in despair, as he straightway carries off both himself and his cherished flowers to the shelter of his own room.

CHAPTER XIX.

"I'll tell thee a part,

Of the thoughts that start

To being when thou art nigh."

—Shelley.

The next day is Sunday, and a very muggy, disagreeable one it proves. There is an indecision about it truly irritating. A few drops of rain here and there, a threatening of storm, but nothing positive. Finally, at eleven o'clock, just as they have given up all hope of seeing any improvement, it clears up in a degree,—against its will,—and allows two or three depressed and tearful sunbeams to struggle forth, rather with a view to dishearten the world than to brighten it.

Sunday at Herst is much the same as any other day. There are no rules, no restrictions. In the library may be found volumes of sermons waiting for those who may wish for them. The covers of those sermons are as clean and fresh to-day as when they were placed on their shelves, now many years ago, showing how amiably they have waited. You may play billiards if you like; you need not go to church if you don't like. Yet, somehow, when at Herst, people always do go,—perhaps because they needn't, or perhaps because there is such a dearth of amusements.

Molly, who as yet has escaped all explanation with Tedcastle, coming down-stairs, dressed for church, and looking unusually lovely, finds almost all the others assembled before her in the hall, ready to start.

Laying her prayer-books upon a table, while with one hand she gathers up the tail of her long gown, she turns to say a word or two to Lady Stafford.

At this moment both Luttrell and Shadwell move toward the books. Shadwell, reaching them first, lays his hand upon them.

"You will carry them for me?" says Molly, with a bright smile to him; and Luttrell, with a slight contraction of the brow, falls back again, and takes his place beside Lady Stafford.

As the church lies at the end of a pleasant pathway through the woods, they elect to walk it; and so in twos and threes they make their way under the still beautiful trees.

"It is cold, is it not?" Molly says to Mrs. Darley once, when they come to an open part of the wood, where they can travel in a body; "wonderfully so for September."

"Is it? I never mind the cold, or—or anything," rejoins Mrs. Darley, affectedly, talking for the benefit of the devoted Mottie, who walks beside her, "laden with golden grain," in the shape of prayer-books and hymnals of all sorts and sizes, "if I have any one with me that suits me; that is, a sympathetic person."

"A lover you mean?" asks uncompromising Molly. "Well, I don't know; I think that is about the time, of all others, when I should object to feeling cold. One's nose has such an unpleasant habit of getting beyond one's control in the way of redness; and to feel that one's cheeks are pinched and one's lips blue is maddening. At such times I like my own society best."

"And at other times, too," said Philip, disagreeably; "this morning, for instance." He and Molly have been having a passage of arms, and he has come off second best.

"I won't contradict you," says Molly, calmly; "it would be rude, and, considering how near we are to church, unchristian."

"A pity you cannot recollect your Christianity on other occasions," says he, sneeringly.

"You speak with feeling. How have I failed toward you in Christian charity?"

"Is it charitable, is it kind to scorn a fellow-creature as you do, only because he loves you?" Philip says, in a low tone.

Miss Massereene is first honestly surprised, then angry. That Philip has made love to her now and again when opportunity occurred is a fact she does not seek to deny, but it has been hitherto in the careless, half-earnest manner young men of the present day affect when in the society of a pretty woman, and has caused her no annoyance.

That he should now, without a word of warning (beyond the slight sparring-match during their walk, and which is one of a series), break forth with so much vehemence and apparent sense of injury, not only alarms but displeases her; whilst some faint idea of treachery on her own part toward her betrothed, in listening to such words, fills her with distress.

There is a depth, an earnestness, about Philip not to be mistaken. His sombre face has paled, his eyes do not meet hers, his thin nostrils are dilated, as though breathing were a matter of difficulty; all prove him genuinely disturbed.

To a man of his jealous, passionate nature, to love is a calamity. No return, however perfect, can quite compensate him for all the pains and fears his passion must afford. Already Philip's torture has begun; already the pangs of unrequited love have seized upon him.

"I wish you would not speak to me like—as—in such a tone," Molly says, pettishly and uneasily. "Latterly, I hate going anywhere with you, you are so ill-tempered; and now to-day—— Why cannot you be pleasant and friendly, as you used to be when I first came to Herst?"

"Ah, why indeed?" returns he, bitterly.

At this inauspicious moment a small rough terrier of Luttrell's rushes across their path, almost under their feet, bent on some mad chase after a mocking squirrel; and Philip, maddened just then by doubts and the coldness of her he loves, with the stick he carries strikes him a quick and sudden blow; not heavy, perhaps, but so unexpected as to draw from the pretty brute a sharp cry of pain.

Hearing a sound of distress from his favorite, Luttrell turns, and, seeing him shrinking away from Molly's side, casts upon her a glance full of the liveliest reproach, that reduces her very nearly to the verge of tears. To be so misunderstood, and all through this tiresome Philip, it is too bad! As, under the circumstances, she cannot well indulge her grief, she does the next best thing, and gives way to temper.

"Don't do that again," she says, with eyes that flash a little through their forbidden tears.

"Why?" surprised in his turn at her vehemence; "it isn't your dog; it's Luttrell's."

"No matter whose dog it is; don't do it again. I detest seeing a poor brute hurt, and for no cause, but merely as a means to try and rid yourself of some of your ill-temper."

"There is more ill-temper going than mine. I beg your pardon, however. I had no idea you were a member of the Humane Society. You should study the bearing-rein question, and vivisection, and—that," with a sullen laugh.

"Nothing annoys me so much as wanton cruelty to dumb animals."

"There are other—perhaps mistakenly termed—superior animals on whom even you can inflict torture," he says, with a sneer. "All your tenderness must be reserved for the lower creation. You talk of brutality: what is there in all the earth so cruel as a woman? A lover's pain is her joy."

"You are getting out of your depth,—I cannot follow you," says Molly, coldly. "Why should you and I discuss such a subject as lovers? What have we in common with them? And it is a pity, Philip, you should allow your anger to get so much the better of you. When you look savage, as you do now, you remind me of no one so much as grandpapa. And do recollect what an odious old man he makes."

This finishes the conversation. He vouchsafes her no reply. To be considered like Mr. Amherst, no matter in how far-off a degree, is a bitter insult. In silence they continue their walk; in silence reach the church and enter it.

It is a gloomy, antiquated building, primitive in size, and form, and service. The rector is well-meaning, but decidedly Low. The curate is unmeaning, and abominably slow. The clerk does a great part of the duty.

He is an old man, and regarded rather in the light of an institution in this part of the county. Being stone deaf, he puts in the responses anyhow, always in the wrong place, and never finds out his mistake until he sees the clergyman's lips set firm, and on his face a look of patient expectation, when he coughs apologetically, and says them all over again.

There is an "Amen" in the middle of every prayer, and then one at the end. This gives him double trouble, and makes him draw his salary with a clear conscience. It also creates a lively time for the school-children, who once at least on every Sunday give way to a loud burst of merriment, and are only restored to a sense of duty by a severe blow administered by the sandy-haired teacher.

It is a good old-fashioned church too, where the sides of the pews are so high that one can with difficulty look over them, and where the affluent man can have a real fire-place all to himself, with a real poker and tongs and shovel to incite it to a blaze every now and again.

Here, too, without rebuke the neighbors can seize the opportunity of conversing with each other across the pews, by standing on tiptoe, when occasion offers during the service, as, for instance, when the poor-box is going round. And it is a poor-box, and no mistake,—flat, broad, and undeniable pewter, at which the dainty bags of a city chapel would have blushed with shame.

When the clergyman goes into the pulpit every one instantly blows his or her nose, and coughs his or her loudest before the text is given out, under a mistaken impression that they can get it all over at once, and not have to do it at intervals further on. This is a compliment to the clergyman, expressing their intention of hearing him undisturbed to the end, and, I suppose, is received as such.

It is an attentive congregation,—dangerously so, for what man but blunders in his sermon now and then? And who likes being twitted on week-days for opinions expressed on Sundays, more especially if he has not altogether acted up to them! It is a suspicious congregation too (though perhaps not singularly so, for I have perceived others do the same), because whenever their priest names a chapter and verse for any text he may choose to insert in his discourse, instantly and with avidity each and all turn over the leaves of their Bibles, to see if it be really in the identical spot mentioned, or whether their pastor has been lying. This action may not be altogether suspicion; it may be also thought of as a safety-valve for their ennui, the rector never letting them off until they have had sixty good minutes of his valuable doctrine.

All the Herst party conduct themselves with due discretion save Mr. Potts, who, being overcome by the novelty of the situation and the length of the sermon, falls fast asleep, and presently, at some denunciatory passage, pronounced in a rather distinct tone by the rector, rousing himself with a precipitate jerk, sends all the fire-irons with a fine clatter to the ground, he having been most unhappily placed nearest the grate.

"The ruling passion strong in death," says Luttrell, with a despairing glance at the culprit; whereupon Molly nearly laughs outright, while the school-children do so quite.

Beyond this small contre-temps, however, nothing of note occurs; and, service being over, they all file decorously out of the church into the picturesque porch outside, where they stand for a few minutes interchanging greetings with such of the county families as come within their knowledge.

With a few others too, who scarcely come within that aristocratic pale, notably Mrs. Buscarlet. She is a tremendously stout, distressingly healthy woman, quite capable of putting her husband in a corner of her capacious pocket, which, by the bye, she insists on wearing outside her gown, in a fashion beloved of our great-grandmothers, and which, in a modified form, last year was much affected by our own generation.

This alarming personage greets Marcia with the utmost bonhommie, being apparently blind to the coldness of her reception. She greets Lady Stafford also, who is likewise at freezing-point, and then gets introduced to Molly. Mrs. Darley, who even to the uninitiated Mrs. Buscarlet appears a person unworthy of notice, she lets go free, for which favor Mrs. Darley is devoutly grateful.

Little Buscarlet himself, who has a weakness for birth, in that he lacks it, comes rambling up to them at this juncture, and tells them, with many a smirk, he hopes to have the pleasure of lunching with them at Herst, Mr. Amherst having sent him a special invitation, as he has something particular to say to him; whereupon Molly, who is nearest to him, laughs, and tells him she had no idea such luck was in store for her.

"You are the greatest hypocrite I ever met in my life," Sir Penthony says in her ear, when Buscarlet, smiling, bowing, radiant, has moved on.

"I am not indeed; you altogether mistake me," Molly answers. "If you only knew how his anxiety to please, and Marcia's determination not to be pleased, amuse me, you would understand how thoroughly I enjoy his visits."

"I ask your pardon. I had no idea we had a student of human nature among us. Don't study me, Miss Massereene, or it will unfit you for further exertions; I am a living mass of errors."

"Alas that I cannot contradict you!" says Cecil, with a woful sigh, who is standing near them.

Mr. Amherst, who never by any chance darkens the doors of a church, receives them in the drawing-room on their return. He is in an amiable mood and pleased to be gracious. Seizing upon Mr. Buscarlet, he carries him off with him to his private den, so that for the time being there is an end of them.

"For all small mercies," begins Mr. Potts, solemnly, when the door has closed on them; but he is interrupted by Lady Stafford.

"'Small,' indeed," grumbles she. "What do you mean? I shan't be able to eat my lunch if that odious little man remains, with his 'Yes, Lady Stafford;' 'No, Lady Stafford;' 'I quite agree with your ladyship,' and so on. Oh, that I could drop my title!"—this with a glance at Sir Penthony;—"at all events while he is present." This with another and more gracious glance at Stafford. "Positively I feel my appetite going already, and that is a pity, as it was an uncommonly good one."

"Cheer up, dear," says Molly; "and remember there will be dinner later on. Poor Mr. Buscarlet! There must be something wrong with me, because I cannot bring myself to think so disparagingly of him as you all do."

"I am sorry for you. Not to know Mr. Buscarlet's little peculiarities of behavior argues yourself unknown," Marcia says, with a good deal of intention. "And I presume they cannot have struck you, or you would scarcely be so tolerant."

"He certainly sneezes very incessantly and very objectionably," Molly says, thoughtfully. "I hate a man who sneezes publicly; and his sneeze is so unpleasant,—so exactly like that of a cat. A little wriggle of the entire body, and then a little soft—splash!"

"My dear Molly!" expostulates Lady Stafford.

"But is it not?" protests she; "is it not an accurate description?"

"Yes, its accuracy is its fault. I almost thought the man was in the room."

"And then there is Mrs. Buscarlet: I never saw any one like Mrs. Buscarlet," Maud Darley says, plaintively; "did you? There is so much of her, and it is all so nasty. And, oh! her voice! it is like wind whistling through a key-hole."

"Poor woman," says Luttrell, regretfully, "I think I could have forgiven her had she not worn that very verdant gown."

"My dear fellow, I thought the contrast between it and her cheeks the most perfect thing I ever saw. It is evident you have not got the eye of an artist," Sir Penthony says, rather unfeelingly.

"I never saw any one so distressingly healthy," says Maud, still plaintively. "Fat people are my aversion. I don't mind a comfortable-looking body, but she is much too stout."

"Let us alter that last remark and say she has had too much stout, and perhaps we shall define her," remarks Tedcastle. "I hate a woman who shows her food."

"The way she traduced those Sedleys rather amused me," Molly says, laughing. "I certainly thought her opinion of her neighbors very pronounced."

"She shouldn't have any opinion," says Lady Stafford, with decision. "You, my dear Molly, take an entirely wrong view of it. Such people as the Buscarlets, sprung from nobody knows where, or cares to know, should be kept in their proper place, and be sat upon the very instant they develop a desire to progress."

"How can you be so illiberal?" exclaims Molly, aghast at so much misplaced vehemence. "Why should they not rise with the rest of the world?"

"Eleanor has quite a penchant for the Buscarlets," says Marcia, with a sneer; "she has quite adopted them, and either will not, or perhaps does not, see their enormities."

Nobody cares to notice this impertinence, and Mr. Potts says, gravely:

"Lady Stafford has never forgiven Mrs. Buscarlet because once, at a ball here, she told her she was looking very 'distangy.' Is that not true?"

Cecil laughs.

"Why should not every one have an opinion?" Molly persists. "I agree with the old song that 'Britons never shall be slaves:' therefore, why should they not assert themselves? In a hundred years hence they will have all the manners and airs of we others."

"Then they should be locked up during the intermediate stage," says Cecil, with an uncompromising nod of her blonde head. "I call them insufferable; and if Mr. Buscarlet when he comes in again makes himself agreeable to me—me!—I shall insult him,—that's all! No use arguing with me, Molly,—I shall indeed." She softens this awful threat by a merry sweet-tempered little laugh.

"Let us forget the little lawyer and talk of something we all enjoy,—to-day's sermon, for instance. You admired it, Potts, didn't you? I never saw any one so attentive in my life," says Sir Penthony.

Potts tries to look as if he had never succumbed during service to "Nature's sweet restorer;" and Molly says, apologetically:

"How could he help it? The sermon was so long."

"Yes, wasn't it?" agrees Plantagenet, eagerly. "The longest I ever heard. That man deserves to be suppressed or excommunicated; and the parishioners ought to send him a round robin to that effect. Odd, too, how much at sea one feels with a strange prayer-book. One looks for one's prayer at the top of the page, where it always used to be in one's own particular edition, and, lo! one finds it at the bottom. Whatever you may do for the future, Lady Stafford, don't lend me your prayer-book. But for the incessant trouble it caused me, between losing my place and finding it again, I don't believe I should have dropped into that gentle doze."

"Had you ever a prayer-book of your own?" asks Cecil, unkindly. "Because if so it is a pity you don't air it now and again. I have known you a great many years,—more than I care to count,—and never, never have I seen you with the vestige of one. I shall send you a pocket edition as a Christmas-box."

"Thanks awfully. I shall value it for the giver's sake. And I promise you that when next we meet—such care shall it receive—even you will be unable to discover a scratch on it."

"Plantagenet, you are a bad boy," says Cecil.

"I thought the choir rather good," Molly is saying; "but why must a man read the service in a long, slow, tearful tone? Surely there is no good to be gained by it; and to find one's self at 'Amen' when he is only in the middle of the prayer has something intolerably irritating about it. I could have shaken that curate."

"Why didn't you?" says Sir Penthony. "I would have backed you up with the greatest pleasure. The person I liked best was the old gentleman with the lint-white locks who said 'Yamen' so persistently in the wrong place all through; I grew quite interested at last, and knew the exact spot where it was likely to come in. I must say I admire consistency."

"How hard it is to keep one's attention fixed," Molly says, meditatively, "and to preserve a properly dismal expression of countenance! To look solemn always means to look severe, as far as I can judge. And did you ever notice when a rather lively and secular set of bars occur in the voluntary, how people cheer up and rouse themselves, and give way to a little sigh or two? I hope it isn't a sigh of relief. We feel it's wicked, but we always do it."

"Still studying poor human nature," exclaims Sir Penthony. "Miss Massereene, I begin to think you a terrible person, and to tremble when I meet your gaze."

"Well, at all events no one can accuse them of being High Church," says Mrs. Darley, alluding to her pastors and masters for the time being. "The service was wretchedly conducted; hardly any music, and not a flower to speak of."

"My dear! High Church! How could you expect it? Only fancy that curate intoning!" says Cecil, with a laugh.

"I couldn't," declares Sir Penthony; "so much exertion would kill me."

"That's why he isn't High Church," says Mr. Potts of the curate, speaking with a rather sweeping air of criticism. "He ain't musical; he can't intone. Take my word for it, half the clergy are Anglicans merely because they think they have voices, and feel what a loss the world will sustain if it don't hear them."

"Oh, what a malicious remark!" says Molly, much disgusted.

Here the scene is further enlivened by the reappearance of Mr. Amherst and the lawyer, which effectually ends the conversation and turns their thoughts toward the dining-room.

CHAPTER XX.

"Trifles light as air."

—Othello.

When luncheon is over, Sir Penthony Stafford retires to write a letter or two, and half an hour afterward, returning to the drawing-room, finds himself in the presence of Mr. Buscarlet, unsupported.

The little lawyer smiles benignly; Sir Penthony responds, and, throwing himself into a lounging-chair, makes up his mind to be agreeable.

"Well, Mr. Buscarlet, and what did you think of the sermon?" he says, briskly, being rather at a loss for a congenial topic. "Tedious, eh? I saw you talking to Lady Elizabeth after service was over. She is a fine woman, all things considered."

"She is indeed,—remarkably so: a very fine presence for her time of life."

"Well, there certainly is not much to choose between her and the hills in point of age," allows Sir Penthony, absently—he is inwardly wondering where Cecil can have gone to,—"still she is a nice old lady."

"Quite so,—quite so; very elegant in manner, and in appearance decidedly high-bred."

"Hybrid!" exclaims Sir Penthony, purposely misunderstanding the word. "Oh, by Jove, I didn't think you so severe. You allude, of course, to her ladyship's mother, who, if report speaks truly, was a good cook spoiled by matrimony. 'Hybrid!' Give you my word, Buscarlet, I didn't believe you capable of anything half so clever. I must remember to tell it at dinner to the others. It is just the sort of thing to delight Mr. Amherst."

Now, this lawyer has a passion for the aristocracy. To be noticed by a lord,—to press "her ladyship's" hand,—to hold sweet converse with the smallest scion of a noble house,—is as honey to his lips; therefore to be thought guilty of an impertinence to one of this sacred community, to have uttered a word that, if repeated, would effectually close to him the doors of Lady Elizabeth's house, fills him with horror.

"My dear Sir Penthony, pardon me," he says, hastily, divided between the fear of offending the baronet and a desire to set himself straight in his own eyes, "you quite mistake me. 'Hybrid!'—such a word, such a thought, never occurred to me in connection with Lady Elizabeth Eyre, whom I hold in much reverence. Highly bred I meant. I assure you you altogether misunderstand. I—I never made a joke in my life."

"Then let me congratulate you on your maiden effort; you have every reason to be proud of it," laughs Sir Penthony, who is highly delighted at the success of his own manœuvre. "Don't be modest. You have made a decided hit: it is as good a thing as ever I heard. But how about Lady Elizabeth, eh? should she hear it? Really, you will have to suppress your wit, or it will lead you into trouble."

"But—but—if you will only allow me to explain—I protest I——"

"Ah! here come Lady Stafford and Miss Massereene. Positively you must allow me to tell them——" And, refusing to listen to Mr. Buscarlet's vehement protestations, he relates to the new-comers his version of the lawyer's harmless remark, accompanying the story with an expressive glance—that closely resembles a wink—at Lady Stafford. "I must go," he says, when he has finished, moving toward the door, "though I hardly think I do wisely, leaving, you alone with so dangerous a companion."

"I assure you, my dear Lady Stafford," declares Mr. Buscarlet, with tears in his eyes and dew on his brow, "it is all a horrible, an unaccountable mistake, a mere connection of ideas by your husband,—no more, no more, I give you my most sacred honor."

"Oh, sly Mr. Buscarlet!" cries her ladyship, lightly, "cruel Mr. Buscarlet! Who would have thought it of you? And we all imagined you such an ally of poor dear Lady Elizabeth. To make a joke about her parentage, and such a good one too! And Sir Penthony found you out? Clever Sir Penthony."

"I swear, my dear lady, I——"

"Ah, ha! wait till she hears of it. How she will enjoy it! With all her faults, she is good-tempered. It will amuse her. Molly, my dear, is not Mr. Buscarlet terribly severe?"

"Naughty Mr. Buscarlet!" says Molly, shaking a reproachful dainty-white finger at him. "And I believed you so harmless."

At this they both laugh so immoderately that presently the lawyer loses all patience, and, taking up his hat, rushes from the room in a greater rage than he could have thought possible, considering that one of his provocators bears a title.

They are still laughing when the others enter the room, and insist on learning the secret of their mirth. Tedcastle alone fails to enjoy it. He is distrait, and evidently oppressed with care. Seeing this, Molly takes heart of grace, and, crossing to his side, says, sweetly:

"Do you see how the day has cleared? That lovely sun is tempting me to go out. Will you take me for a walk?"

"Certainly,—if you want to go." Very coldly.

"But of course I do; and nobody has asked me to accompany them; so I am obliged to thrust myself on you. If"—with a bewitching smile—"you won't mind the trouble just this once, I will promise not to torment you again."

Through the gardens, and out into the shrubberies beyond, they go in silence, until they reach the open; then Molly says, laughing: "I know you are going to scold me about Mr. Potts. Begin at once, and let us get it over."

Her manner is so sweet, and she looks so gay, so fresh, so harmless, that his anger melts as dew beneath the sun.

"You need not have let him place his arm around you," he says, jealously.

"If I hadn't I should have slipped off the pedestal; and what did his arm signify in comparison with that? Think of my grandfather's face; think of mine; think of all the horrible consequences. I should have been sent home in disgrace, perhaps—who knows?—put in prison, and you might 'never, never, see your darling any more.'"

She laughs.

"What a jealous fellow you are, Ted!"

"Am I?"—ruefully. "I don't think I used to be. I never remember being jealous before."

"No? I am glad to hear it."

"Why?"

"Because"—with an adorable glance and a faint pressure of his arm—"it proves to me you have never loved before."

This tender insinuation blots out all remaining vapors, leaving the atmosphere clear and free of clouds for the rest of their walk, which lasts till almost evening. Just before they reach the house, Luttrell says, with hesitation:

"I have something to say to you, but I am afraid if I do say it you will be angry."

"Then don't say it," says Miss Massereene, equably. "That is about the most foolish thing one can do. To make a person angry unintentionally is bad enough, but to know you are going to do it, and to say so, has something about it rash, not to say impertinent. If you are fortunate enough to know the point in the conversation that is sure to rouse me to wrath, why not carefully skirt round it?"

"Because I lose a chance if I leave it unsaid; and you differ so widely from most girls—it may not provoke you."

"Now you compel me to it," says Molly, laughing. "What! do you think I could suffer myself to be considered a thing apart? Impossible. No one likes to be thought odd or eccentric except rich old men, and Bohemians, and poets; therefore I insist on following closely in my sisters' footsteps, and warn you I shall be in a furious passion the moment you speak, whether or not I am really annoyed. Now go on if you dare?"

"Well, look here," begins Luttrell, in a conciliating tone.

"There is not the slightest use in your beating about the bush, Teddy," says Miss Massereene, calmly. "I am going to be angry, so do not waste time in diplomacy."

"Molly, how provoking you are!"

"No! Am I? Because I wish to be like other women?"

"A hopeless wish, and a very unwise one."

"'Hopeless!' And why, pray?" With a little uplifting of the straight brows and a little gleam from under the long curled lashes.

"Because," says her lover, with fond conviction, "you are so infinitely superior to them, that they would have to be born all over again before you could bring yourself to fall into their ways."

"What! every woman in the known world?"

"Every one of them, I am eternally convinced."

"Teddy," says Molly, rubbing her cheek in her old caressing fashion against his sleeve, and slipping her fingers into his, "you may go on. Say anything you like,—call me any name you choose,—and I promise not to be one bit angry. There!"

When Luttrell has allowed himself time to let his own strong brown fingers close upon hers, and has solaced himself still further by pressing his lips to them, he takes courage and goes on, with a slightly accelerated color:

"Well, you see, Molly, you have made the subject a forbidden one, and—er—it is about our engagement I want to speak. Now, remember your promise, darling, and don't be vexed with me if I ask you to shorten it. Many people marry and are quite comfortable on five hundred pounds a year; why should not we? I know a lot of fellows who are doing uncommonly well on less."

"Poor fellows!" says Molly, full of sympathy.

"I know I am asking you a great deal,"—rather nervously,—"but won't you think of it, Molly?"

"I am afraid I won't, just yet," replies that lady, suavely. "Be sensible, Teddy; remember all we said to John, and think how foolish we should look going back of it all. Why should things not go on safely and secretly, as at present, and let us put marriage out of our heads until something turns up? I am like Mr. Micawber; I have an almost religious belief in the power things have of turning up."

"I haven't," says Luttrell, with terse melancholy.

"So much the worse for you. And besides, Teddy, instinct tells me you are much nicer as a lover than you will be as a husband. Once you attain to that position, I doubt I shall be able to order you about as I do at present."

"Try me."

"Not for a while. There, don't look so dismal, Ted; are we not perfectly happy as we are?"

"You may be, perhaps."

"Don't say, 'perhaps;' you may be certain of it," says she, gayly. "I haven't a doubt on the subject. Come, do look cheerful again. Men as fair as you should cultivate a perpetual smile."

"I wish I was a nigger," says Luttrell, impatiently. "You have such an admiration for blackamoors, that then, perhaps, you might learn to care for me a degree more than you do just now. Shadwell is dark enough for you."

"Yes; isn't he handsome?" With much innocent enthusiasm. "I thought last night at dinner, when——"

"I don't in the least want to know what you thought last night of Shadwell's personal appearance," Luttrell interrupts her, angrily.

"And I don't in the least want you to hold my hand a moment longer," replies Miss Massereene, with saucy retaliation, drawing her fingers from his with a sudden movement, and running away from him up the stone steps of the balcony into the house.

All through the night, both when waking and in dreams, the remembrance of the slight cast upon her absent mother by Mr. Amherst, and her own silent acceptance of it, has disturbed the mind of Marcia. "A dancer!" The word enrages her.

Molly's little passionate movement and outspoken determination to hear no ill spoken of her dead father showed Marcia even more forcibly her own cowardice and mean policy of action. And be sure she likes Molly none the more in that she was the one to show it. Yet Molly cannot possibly entertain the same affection for a mere memory that she feels for the mother on whom she has expended all the really pure and true love of which she is capable.

It is not, therefore, toward her grandfather, whose evil tongue has ever been his own undoing, she cherishes the greatest bitterness, but toward herself, together with a certain scorn that, through moneyed motives, she has tutored herself to sit by and hear the one she loves lightly mentioned.

Now, looking back upon it, it appears to her grossest treachery to the mother whose every thought she knows is hers, and who, in her foreign home, lives waiting, hoping, for the word that shall restore her to her arms.

A kind of anxiety to communicate with the injured one, and to pour out on paper the love she bears her, but dares not breathe at Herst, fills Marcia. So that when the house is silent on this Sunday afternoon,—when all the others have wandered into the open air,—she makes her way to the library, and, sitting down, commences one of the lengthy, secret, forbidden missives that always find their way to Italy, in spite of prying eyes and all the untold evils that so surely wait upon discovery.

To any one acquainted with Marcia, her manner of commencing her letter would be a revelation. To one so cold, so self-contained, the weaker symptoms of affection are disallowed; yet this is how she begins:

"My own Beloved,—As yet I have no good news to send you, and little that I can say,—though ever as I write to you my heart is full. The old man grows daily more wearisome, more detestable, more inhuman, yet shows no sign of death. He is even, as it seems to me, stronger and more full of life than when last I wrote to you, now three weeks ago. At times I feel dispirited, almost despairing, and wonder if the day will ever come when we two shall be reunited,—when I shall be able to welcome you to my English home, where, in spite of prejudices, you will be happy, because you will be with me."

Here, unluckily, because of the trembling of her fingers, a large spot of ink falls heavily from her pen upon the half-written page beneath, destroying it.

With an exclamation expressive of impatience, Marcia pushes the sheet to one side and hastily commences again upon another. This time she is more successful, and has reached almost the last word in her final tender message, when a footstep approaching disturbs her. Gathering up her papers, she quits the library by its second door, and, gaining her own room, finishes and seals her packet.

Not until then does she perceive that the blotted sheet is no longer in her possession,—that by some untoward accident she must have forgotten it behind her in her flight.

Consternation seizes her. Whose were the footsteps that broke in upon her quietude? Why had she not stood her ground? With a beating heart she runs down-stairs, enters the library once more with cautious steps, only to find it empty. But, search as she may, the missing paper is not to be found.

What if it has fallen into her grandfather's keeping! A cold horror falls upon her. After all these weary years of hated servitude to be undone! It is impossible even fickle fortune should play her such a deadly trick!

Yet the horror continues until she finds herself again face to face with her grandfather. He is more than usually gracious,—indeed, almost marked in his attentions to her,—and once more Marcia breathes freely. No; probably the paper was destroyed; even she herself in a fit of abstraction may have torn it up before leaving the library.

The evening, being Sunday, proves even duller than usual. Mr. Amherst, with an amount of consideration not to be expected, retires to rest early. The others fall insensibly into the silent, dozy state. Mr. Darley gives way to a gentle snore. It is the gentlest thing imaginable, but effectual. Tedcastle starts to his feet and gives the fire a vigorous poke. He also trips very successfully over the footstool, that goes far to make poor Darley's slumbers blest, and brings that gentleman into a sitting posture.

"This will never do," Luttrell says, when he has apologized profusely to his awakened friend. "We are all growing sleepy. Potts, exert your energies and tell us a story."

"Yes, do, Plantagenet," says Lady Stafford, rousing herself resolutely, and shutting up her fan with a lively snap.

"I will," says Potts, obligingly, without a moment's hesitation.

"Potts is always equal to the occasion," Sir Penthony remarks, admiringly. "As a penny showman he would have been invaluable and died worth any money. Such energy, such unflagging zeal is rare. That pretty gunpowder plot he showed his friends the other night would fetch a large audience."

"Don't ask me to be the audience a second time," Lady Stafford says, unkindly. "To be blown to bits once in a lifetime is, I consider, quite sufficient."

"'Well, if ever I do a ky-ind action again,'" says Mr. Potts,—who is brimful of odd quotations, chiefly derived from low comedies,—posing after Toole. "It is the most mistaken thing in the world to do anything for anybody. You never know where it will end. I once knew a fellow who saved another fellow from drowning, and hanged if the other fellow didn't cling on him ever after and make him support him for life."

"I'm sure that's an edifying tale" says Sir Penthony, with a deep show of interest. "But—stop one moment, Potts. I confess I can't get any further for a minute or two. How many fellows were there? There was your fellow, and the other fellow, and the other fellow's fellow; was that three fellows or four? I can't make it out. I apologize all round for my stupidity, but would you say it all over again, Potts, and very slowly this time, please, to see if I can grasp it?"

"Give you my honor I thought it was a conundrum," says Henry Darley.

Plantagenet laughs as heartily as any one, and evidently thinks it a capital joke.

"You remind me of no one so much as Sothern," goes on Sir Penthony, warming to his theme. "If you went on the stage you would make your fortune. But don't dream of acting, you know; go in for being yourself, pure and simple,—plain, unvarnished Plantagenet Potts,—and I venture to say you will take London by storm. The British public would go down before you like corn before the reaper."

"Well, but your story,—your story, Plantagenet," Lady Stafford cries, impatiently.

"Did you hear the story about my mother and——"

"Potts," interrupts Stafford, mildly but firmly, "if you are going to tell the story about your mother and the auctioneer I shall leave the room. It will be the twenty-fifth time I have heard it already, and human patience has a limit. One must draw the line somewhere."

"What auctioneer?" demands Potts, indignant. "I am going to tell them about my mother and the auction; I never said a word about an auctioneer; there mightn't have been one, for all I know."

"There generally is at an auction," ventures Luttrell, mildly. "Go on, Potts; I like your stories immensely, they are so full of wit and spirit. I know this one, about your mother's bonnet, well; it is an old favorite,—quite an heirloom—the story, I mean, not the bonnet. I remember so distinctly the first time you told it to us at mess: how we did laugh, to be sure! Don't forget any of the details. The last time but four you made the bonnet pink, and it must have been so awfully unbecoming to your mother! Make it blue to-night."

"Now do go on, Mr. Potts; I am dying to hear all about it," declares Molly.

"Well, when my uncle died," begins Potts, "all his furniture was sold by auction. And there was a mirror in the drawing-room my mother had always had a tremendous fancy for——"

"'And my mother was always in the habit of wearing a black bonnet,'" quotes Sir Penthony, gravely. "I know it by heart."

"If you do you may as well tell it yourself," says Potts, much offended.

"Never mind him, Plantagenet; do go on," exclaims Cecil, impatiently.

"Well, she was in the habit of wearing a black bonnet, as it happens," says Mr. Potts, with suppressed ire; "but just before the auction she bought a new one, and it was pink."

"Oh, why on earth don't you say blue?" expostulates Luttrell, with a groan.

"Because it was pink. I suppose I know my mother's bonnet better than you?"

"But, my dear fellow, think of her complexion! And at first, I assure you, you always used to make it blue."

"I differ with you," puts in Sir Penthony, politely. "I always understood it was a sea-green."

"It was pink," reiterates Plantagenet, firmly. "Well, we had a cook who was very fond of my mother——"

"I thought it was a footman. And it really was a footman, you know," says Luttrell, reproachfully.

"The butler, you mean, Luttrell," exclaims Sir Penthony, with exaggerated astonishment at his friend's want of memory.

"And she, having most unluckily heard my mother say she feared she could not attend the auction, made up her mind to go herself and at all hazards secure the coveted mirror for her——"

"And she didn't know my mother had on the new sea-green bonnet,'" Sir Penthony breaks in, with growing excitement.

"No, she didn't," says Mr. Potts, growing excited too. "So she started for my uncle's,—the cook, I mean,—and as soon as the mirror was put up began bidding away for it like a steam-engine. And presently some one in a pink bonnet began bidding too, and there they were bidding away against each other, the cook not knowing the bonnet, and my mother not being able to see the cook, she was so hemmed in by the crowd, until presently it was knocked down to my mother,—who is a sort of person who would die rather than give in,—and, would you believe it?" winds up Mr. Potts, nearly choking with delight over the misfortunes of his maternal relative, "she had given exactly five pounds more for that mirror than she need have done!"

They all laugh, Sir Penthony and Luttrell with a very suspicious mirth.

"Poor Mrs. Potts!" says Molly.

"Oh, she didn't mind. When she had relieved herself by blowing up the cook she laughed more than any of us. But it was a long time before the 'governor' could be brought to see the joke. You know he paid for it," says Plantagenet, naively.

"Moral: never buy a new bonnet," says Sir Penthony.

"Or keep an affectionate cook," says Luttrell.

"Or go to an auction," says Philip. "It is a very instructive tale: it is all moral."

"The reason I so much admire it. I know no one such an adept at pointing a moral and adorning a tale as our Plantagenet."

Mr. Potts smiles superior.

"I think the adornment rested with you and Luttrell," he says, with cutting sarcasm, answering Sir Penthony.

"Potts, you aren't half a one. Tell us another. Your splendid resources can't be yet exhausted," says Philip.

"Yes, do, Potts, and wake me when you come to the point," seconds Sir Penthony, warmly, sinking into an arm-chair and gracefully disposing an antimacassar over his head.

"A capital idea," murmurs Luttrell. "It will give us all a hint when we are expected to laugh."

"Oh, you can chaff as you like," exclaims Mr. Potts, much aggrieved; "but I wonder, if I went to sleep in an arm-chair, which of you would carry on the conversation?"

"Not one of them," declares Cecil, with conviction: "we should all die of mere inanition were it not for you."

"I really think they're all jealous of me," goes on Plantagenet, greatly fortified. "I consider myself by far the most interesting of them all, and the most—er——"

"Say it, Potts; don't be shy," says Sir Penthony, raising a corner of the antimacassar, so as to give his friends the full encouragement of one whole eye. "'Fascinating,' I feel sure, will be the right word in the right place here."

"It would indeed. I know nobody so really entertaining as Plantagenet," says Cecil, warmly.

"Your ladyship's judgment is always sound. I submit to it," returns Sir Penthony, rising to make her a profound bow.

CHAPTER XXI.

"'Why come you drest like a village maid

That are the flower of the earth?'

'If I come drest like a village maid

I am but as my fortunes are.'"

—Lady Clare.

It is close on October. Already the grass has assumed its sober garb of brown; a general earthiness is everywhere. The leaves are falling,—not now in careful couples or one by one, but in whole showers,—slowly, sorrowfully, as though loath to quit the sighing branches, their last faint rustling making their death-song.

Molly's visit has drawn to an end. Her joyous month is over. To-day a letter from her brother reminding her of her promise to return is within her hand, recalling all the tender sweets of home life, all the calm pleasure she will gain, yet bringing with it a little sting, as she remembers all the gay and laughing hours that she must lose. For indeed her time at Herst has proved a good time.

"I have had a letter from my brother, grandpapa: he thinks it is time I should return," she says, accosting the old man as he takes his solitary walk up and down one of the shaded paths.

"Do you find it so dull here?" asks he, sharply, turning to read her face.

"Dull? No, indeed. How should I? I shall always remember my visit to you as one of the happy events of my life."

"Then remain a little longer," he growls, ungraciously. "The others have consented to prolong their stay; why should not you? Write to your—to Mr. Massereene to that effect. I cannot breathe in an empty house. It is my wish, my desire that you shall stay," he finishes, irritably, this being one of his painful days.

So it is settled. She will obey this crabbed veteran's behest and enjoy a little more of the good the gods have provided for her before returning to her quiet home.

"You will not desert us in our increased calamities, Molly, will you?" asks Cecil, half an hour later, as Molly enters the common boudoir where Lady Stafford and Marcia sit alone, the men being absent with their guns, and Mrs. Darley consequently in the blues. "Where have you been? We quite fancied you had taken a lesson out of poor dear Maudie's book and retired to your couch. Do you stay on at Herst?" She glances up anxiously from her painting as she speaks.

"Yes. Grandpapa has asked me to put off my departure for a while. So I shall. I have just written to John to say so, and to ask him if I may accept this second invitation."

"Do you think it likely he will refuse?" Marcia asks, unpleasantly.

"He may. But when I represent to him how terribly his obduracy will distress you all, should he insist on my return, I feel sure he will relent," retorts Molly, nonchalantly.

"Now that Mr. Amherst has induced us all to stay, don't you think he might do something to vary the entertainment?" says Cecil, in a faintly injured tone. "Shooting is all very well, of course, for those who like it; and so is tennis; and so are early hours; but toujours perdrix. I confess I hate my bed until the small hours are upon me. Now, if he would only give a ball, for instance! Do you think he would, Marcia, if he was asked?"

"How can I say?"

"Would you ask him, dear?"

"Well, I don't think I would," replies Marcia, with a rather forced laugh; "for this reason, that it would not be of the slightest use. I might as well ask him for the moon. If there is one thing he distinctly abhors, it is a ball."

"But he might go to bed early, if he wished," persists Cecil; "none of us would interfere or find fault with that arrangement. We would try and spare him, dear old thing. I don't see why our enjoyment should put him out in the least, if he would only be reasonable. I declare I have a great mind to ask him myself."

"Do," says Molly, eagerly, who is struck with admiration at the entire idea, having never yet been to a really large ball.

"I would rather somebody else tried it first," confesses Cecil, with a frank laugh. "A hundred times I have made up my mind to ask a favor of him, but when I found myself face to face with him, and he fixed me with his eagle eye, I quailed. Molly, you are a new importation; try your luck."

"Well, I don't mind if I do," says Molly, valiantly. "He can't say worse than 'No.' And here he is, coming slowly along under the balcony. Shall I seize the present opportunity and storm the citadel out of hand? I am sure if I wait I shall be like Bob Acres and find my courage oozing out through my fingers."

"Then don't," says Cecil. "If he molests you badly, I promise to interfere."

Molly steps on to the balcony, and, looking down, awaits the slow and languid approach of her grandfather. Just as he arrives beneath her she bends over until he, attracted by her presence, looks up.

She is laughing down upon him, bent on conquest, and has a blood-red rose in one hand. She waves it slightly to and fro, as though uncertain, as though dallying about giving utterance to some thought that pines for freedom.

The old man, pausing, looks up at her, and, looking, sighs,—perhaps for his dead youth, perhaps because she so much resembles her mother, disowned and forgotten.

"Have a rose, grandpapa?" says Molly, stooping still farther over the iron railings, her voice sweet and fresh as the dead and gone Eleanor's. As she speaks she drops the flower, and he dexterously, by some fortuitous chance, catches it.

"Well done!" cries she, with a gay laugh, clapping her hands, feeling half surprised, wholly amused, at his nimbleness. "Yet stay, grandpapa, do not go so soon. I—have a favor to ask of you."

"Well?"

"We have been discussing something delightful for the past five minutes,—something downright delicious; but we can do nothing without you. Will you help us, grandpapa? will you?" She asks all this with the prettiest grace, gazing down undaunted into the sour old face raised to hers.

"Why are you spokeswoman?" demands he, in a tone that makes the deeply attentive Cecil within groan aloud.

"Well—because—I really don't believe I know why, except that I chose to be so. But grant me this, my first request. Ah! do, now, grandpapa."

The sweet coaxing of the Irish "Ah!" penetrates even this withered old heart.

"What is this wonderful thing you would have me do?" asks he, some of the accumulated verjuice of years disappearing from his face; while Lady Stafford, from behind the curtain, looks on trembling with fear for the success of her scheme, and Marcia listens and watches with envious rage.

"We want you to—give a ball," says Molly, boldly, with a little gasp, keeping her large eyes fixed in eager anxiety upon his face, while her pretty parted lips seem still to entreat. "Say 'yes' to me, grandpapa."

How to refuse so tender a pleading? How bring the blank that a "No" must cause upon her riante, lovely face?

"Suppose I say I cannot?" asks he; but his tone has altered wonderfully, and there is an expression that is almost amiable upon his face. The utter absence of constraint, of fear, she displays in his presence has charmed him, being so unlike the studied manner of all those with whom he comes in contact.

"Then I shall cry my eyes out," says Molly, still lightly, though secretly her heart is sinking.

There is a perceptible pause. Then Mr. Amherst says, slowly, regretfully:

"Crying will come too soon, child. None escape. Keep your eyes dry as long as your heart will let you. No, you shall not fret because of me. You shall have your ball, I promise you, and as soon as ever you please."

So saying, and with a quick movement of the hand that declines all thanks, he moves away, leaving Molly to return to the boudoir triumphant, though somewhat struck and saddened by his words and manner.

"Let me embrace you," cries Cecil, tragically, flinging herself into her arms. "Molly, Molly, you are a siren!"

Without a word or a look, Marcia rises slowly and quits the room.

The invitations are issued, and unanimously accepted. A ball at Herst is such a novelty, that the county to a man declare their intention of being present at it. It therefore promises to be a great success.

As for the house itself, it is in a state of delicious unrest. There is a good deal of noise, but very little performance, and every one gives voice now and then to the most startling opinions. One might, indeed, imagine that all these people—who, when in town during the season, yawn systematically through their two or three balls of a night—had never seen one, so eager and anxious are they for the success of this solitary bit of dissipation.

Lady Stafford is in great form, and becomes even more debonnaire and saucy than is her wont. Even Marcia seems to take some interest in it, and lets a little vein of excitement crop up here and there through all the frozen placidity of her manner; while Molly, who has never yet been at a really large affair of the kind, loses her head and finds herself unable to think or converse on any other subject.

Yet in all this beautiful but unhappy world where is the pleasure that contains no sting of pain? Molly's is a sharp little sting that pricks her constantly and brings an uneasy sigh to her lips. Perhaps in a man's eyes the cause would be considered small, but surely in a woman's overwhelming. It is a question of dress, and poor Molly's mind is much exercised thereon.

When all the others sit and talk complacently of their silks and satins, floating tulles and laces, she, with a pang, remembers that all she has to wear is a plain white muslin. It is hard. No doubt she will look pretty—perhaps prettier and fairer than most—in the despised muslin; but as surely she will look poorly attired, and the thought is not inspiring.

No one but a woman can know what a woman thinks on such a subject; and although she faces the situation philosophically enough, and by no means despises herself for the pangs of envy she endures when listening to Maud Darley's account of the triumph in robes to be sent by Worth for the Herst ball, she still shrinks from the cross-examination she will surely have to undergo at the hands of Cecil Stafford as to her costume for the coming event.

One day, a fortnight before the ball, Cecil does seize on her, and, carrying her off to her own room and placing her in her favorite chair, says, abruptly:

"What about your dress, Molly?"

"I don't know that there is anything to say about it," says Molly, who is in low spirits. "The only thing I have is a new white muslin, and that will scarcely astonish the natives."

"Muslin! Oh, Molly! Not but that it is pretty always,—I know nothing more so,—but for a ball-dress—terribly rococo. I have set my heart on seeing you resplendent; and if you are not more gorgeous than Marcia I shall break down. Muslin won't do at all."

"But I'm afraid it must."

"What a pity it is I am so much shorter than you!" says Cecil, regretfully. "Now, if I was taller we might make one of my dresses suit you."

"Yes, it is a pity,—a dreadful pity," says Molly, mournfully. "I should like to be really well dressed. Marcia, I suppose, will be in satin, or something else equally desirable."

"No doubt she will deck herself out in Oriental splendor, if she discovers you can't," says Cecil, angrily.

There is a pause,—a decided one. Cecil sits frowning and staring at Molly, who has sunk into an attitude expressive of the deepest dejection. The little ormolu clock, regardless of emotion, ticks on undisturbed until three full minutes vanish into the past. Then Cecil, as though suddenly inspired, says, eagerly:

"Molly, why not ask your grandfather to give you a dress?"

"Not for all the world! Nothing would induce me. If I never was to see a ball I would not ask him for sixpence. How could you think it of me, Cecil?"

"Why didn't I think of it long ago, you mean? I only wish he was my grandfather, and I would never cease persecuting him, morning, noon, and night. What is the use of a grandfather if it isn't to tip one every now and then?"

"You forget the circumstances of my case."

"I do not indeed. Of course, beyond all doubt, he behaved badly; still——I really think," says Cecil, in a highly moralizing tone, "there is nothing on earth so mistaken as pride. I am free from it. I don't know the meaning of it, and I know I am all the happier in consequence."

"Perhaps I am more angry than proud."

"It is the same thing, and I wish you weren't. Oh, Molly! do ask him. What can it signify what he thinks?"

"Nothing; but a great deal what John thinks. It would be casting a slight upon him, as though he stinted me in clothes or money, and I will not do it."

"It would be such a simple way," says Cecil, with a melancholy sigh,—dear Molly is so obstinate and old-fashioned; then follows another pause, longer and more decided than the last. Molly, with her back turned to her friend, commences such a dismal tattoo upon the window-pane as would be sufficient to depress any one without further cause. Her friend is pondering deeply.

"Molly," she says, presently, with a fine amount of indifference in her tone,—rather suspicious, to say the least of it,—"I feel sure you are right,—quite right. I like you all the better for—your pride, or whatever you may wish to call it. But what a pity it is your grandfather would not offer you a dress or a check to buy it! I suppose"—quietly—-"if he did, you would take it?"

"What a chance there is of that!" says Molly, still gloomy. "Yes, if he offered it I do not think I could bring myself to refuse it. I am not adamant. You see"—with a faint laugh—"my pride would not carry me very far."

"Far enough. Let us go down to the others," says Cecil, rising and yawning slightly. "They will think we are planning high treason if we absent ourselves any longer."

Together they go down-stairs and into the drawing-room, which they find empty.

As they reach the centre of it, Cecil stops abruptly, and, saying carelessly, "I will be back in one moment," turns and leaves the room.

The apartment is deserted. No sound penetrates to it. Even the very fire, in a fit of pique, has degenerated into a dull glow.

Molly, with a shiver, rouses it, throws on a fresh log, and amuses herself trying to induce the tardy flames to climb and lick it until Lady Stafford returns. So busy has she been, it seems to her as though only a minute has elapsed since her departure.

"This does look cozy," Cecil says, easily sinking into a lounging-chair. "Now, if those tiresome men had not gone shooting we should not be able to cuddle into our fire as we are doing at present. After all, it is a positive relief to get them out of the way,—sometimes."

"You don't seem very hearty about that sentiment."

"I am, for all that. With a good novel I would now be utterly content for an hour or two. By the bye, I left my book on the library table. If you were good-natured, Molly, I know what you would do."

"So do I: I would get it for you. Well, taking into consideration all things, your age and growing infirmities among them, I will accept your hint." And, rising, she goes in search of the missing volume.

Opening the library door with a little bang and a good deal of reckless unconsciousness, she finds herself in Mr. Amherst's presence.

"Oh!" cries she, with a surprised start. "I beg your pardon, grandpapa. If"—pausing on the threshold—"I had known you were here, I would not have disturbed you."

"You don't disturb me," replies he, without looking up; and, picking up the required book, Molly commences a hasty retreat.

But just as she gains the door her grandfather's voice once more arrests her.

"Wait," he says; "I want to ask you a question that—that has been on my mind for a considerable time."

To the commonest observer it would occur that from the break to the finish of this little sentence is one clumsy invention.

"Yes?" says Molly.

"Have you a dress for this ball,—this senseless rout that is coming off?" says Mr. Amherst, without looking at her.

"Yes, grandpapa." In a tone a degree harder.

"You are my granddaughter. I desire to see you dressed as such. Is"—with an effort—"your gown a handsome one?"

"Well, that greatly depends upon taste," returns Molly, who, though angry, finds a grim amusement in watching the flounderings of this tactless old person. "If we are to believe that beauty unadorned is adorned the most, I may certainly flatter myself I shall be the best dressed woman in the room. But there may be some who will not call white muslin 'handsome.'"

"White muslin up to sixteen is very charming," Mr. Amherst says, in a slow tone of a connoisseur in such matters, "but not beyond. And you are, I think——"

"Nineteen."

"Quite so. Then in your case I should condemn the muslin. You will permit me to give you a dress, Eleanor, more in accordance with your age and position."

"Thank you very much, grandpapa," says Molly, with a little ominous gleam in her blue eyes. "You are too good. I am deeply sensible of all your kindness, but I really cannot see how my position has altered of late. As you have just discovered, I am now nineteen, and for so many years I have managed to look extremely well in white muslin."

As she finishes her modest speech she feels she has gone too far. She has been almost impertinent, considering his age and relationship to her; nay, more, she has been ungenerous.

Her small taunt has gone home. Mr. Amherst rises from his chair; the dull red of old age comes painfully into his withered cheeks as he stands gazing at her, slight, erect, with her proud little head upheld so haughtily.

For a moment anger masters him; then it fades, and something as near remorse as his heart can hold replaces it.

Molly, returning his glance with interest, knows he is annoyed. But she does not know that, standing as she now does, with uplifted chin and gleaming eyes, and just a slight in-drawing of her lips, she is the very image of the dead-and-gone Eleanor, that, in spite of her Irish father, her Irish name, she is a living, breathing, defiant Amherst.

In silence that troubles her she waits for the next word. It comes slowly, almost entreatingly.

"Molly," says her grandfather, in a tone that trembles ever so little,—it is the first time he has ever called her by her pet name,—"Molly, I shall take it as a great favor if you will accede to my request and accept—this."

As he finishes he holds out to her a check, regarding her earnestly the while.

The "Molly" has done it. Too generous even to hesitate, she takes the paper, and, going closer to him, lays her hand upon his shoulder.

"I have been rude, grandpapa,—I beg your pardon,—and I am very much obliged to you for this money."

So saying, she bends and presses her soft sweet lips to his cheek. He makes no effort to return the caress, but long after she leaves the room sits staring vaguely before him out of the dreary window on to the still more dreary landscape outside, thinking of vanished days and haunting actions that will not be laid, but carry with them their sure and keen revenge, in the knowledge that to the dead no ill can be undone.

Molly, going back to the drawing-room, finds Cecil there, serene as usual.

"Well, and where is my book?" asks that innocent. "I thought you were never coming."

"Cecil, why did you tell grandpapa to offer me a dress?" demands Molly, abruptly.

"My dearest girl!——" exclaims Cecil, and then has the grace to stop and blush, a little.

"You did. There is no use your denying it."

"You didn't refuse it? Oh, Molly, after all my trouble!"

"No,"—laughing, and unfolding her palm, where the paper lies crushed,—"but I was very near it. But that his manner was so kind, so marvelously gentle, for him, I should have done so. Cecil, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps long ago, before the world hardened him, grandpapa was a nice young man."

"Perhaps he was, my dear,—there is no knowing what any of us may come to,—though you must excuse me if I say I rather doubt it. Well, and what did he say?"

"Very little, indeed; and that little a failure. When going about it you might have given him a few lessons in his rôle. So bungling a performance as the leading up to it I never witnessed; and when he wound up by handing me a check ready prepared beside him on the desk I very nearly laughed."

"Old goose! Never mind; 'they laugh who win.' I have won."

"So you have."

"Well, but look, Molly, look. I want to see how far his unwonted 'gentleness' has carried him. I am dying of curiosity. I do hope he has not been shabby."

Unfolding the paper, they find the check has been drawn for a hundred pounds.

"Very good," says Cecil, with a relieved sigh. "He is not such a bad old thing, when all is told."

"It is too much," says Molly, aghast. "I can't take it, indeed. I would have thought twenty pounds a great deal, but a hundred pounds! I must take it back to him."

"Are you mad," exclaims Cecil, "to insult him? He thinks nothing of a hundred pounds. And to give back money,—that scarce commodity,—how could you bring yourself to do it?" In tones of the liveliest reproach. "Be reasonable, dear, and let us see how we can spend it fast enough."

Thus adjured, Molly succumbs, and, sinking into a chair, is soon deep in the unfathomable mysteries of silks and satins, tulle and flowers.

"And, Cecil, I should like to buy Letitia a silk dress like that one of yours up-stairs I admire so much."

"The navy blue?"

"No, the olive-green; it would just suit her. She has a lovely complexion, clear and tinted, like your own."

"Thank you, dear. It is to be regretted you are of the weaker sex. So delicately veiled a compliment would not have disgraced a Chesterfield."

"Was it too glaring? Well, I will do away with it. I was thinking entirely of Letty. I was comparing her skin very favorably with yours. That reminds me I must write home to-day. I hope John won't be offended with me about this money. Though, after all, there can't be much harm in accepting a present from one's grandfather."

"I should think not, indeed. I only wish I had a grandfather, and wouldn't I utilize him! But I am an unfortunate,—alone in the world."

Even as she speaks, the door in the next drawing-room opens, and through the folding-doors, which stand apart, she sees her husband enter, and make his way to a davenport.

"That destroys your argument," says Molly, with a low laugh, as she runs away to her own room to write her letters.

For a few minutes Cecil sits silently enjoying a distant view of her husband's back. But she is far too much of a coquette to let him long remain in ignorance of her near proximity. Going softly up to him, and leaning lightly over his shoulder, she says, in a half-whisper, "What are you doing?"

He starts a little, not having expected to see so fair an apparition, and lays one of his hands over hers as it rests upon his shoulder.

"Is it you?" he says. "I did not hear you coming."

"No? That was because I was farthest from your thoughts. You are writing? To whom?"

"My tailor, for one. It is a sad but certain fact that, sooner or later, one's tailor must be paid."

"So must one's modiste." With a sigh. "It is that sort of person who spoils one's life."

"Is your life spoiled?"

"Oh, yes, in many ways."

"Poor little soul!" says he, with a half laugh, tightening his fingers over hers. "Is your dressmaker hardhearted?"

"Don't get me to begin on that subject, or I shall never leave off. The wrongs I have suffered at that woman's hands! But then why talk of what cannot be helped?"

"Perhaps it may. Can I do nothing for you?"

"I am afraid not." Moving a little away from him. "And yet, perhaps, if you choose, you might. You are writing; I wish"—throwing down her eyes, as though confused (which she isn't), and assuming her most guileless air—"you would write something for me."

"What a simple request! Of course I will—anything."

"Really? You promise?"

"Faithfully."

"It is not, perhaps, quite so simple a request as it appears. I want you, in fact, to—write me—a check!"

Sir Penthony laughs, and covers the white and heavily-jeweled little hand that glitters before him on the table once more with his own.

"For how much?" he asks.

"Not much,—only fifty pounds. I want to buy something particular for this ball: and"—glancing at him—"being a lone woman, without a protector, I dread going too heavily into debt."

"Good child," says Sir Penthony. "You shall have your check." Drawing the book toward him as it lies before him on the davenport, he fills up a check and hands it to her.

"Now, what will you give me for it?" asks he, holding the edge near him as her fingers close upon the other end.

"What have I to give? Have I not just acknowledged myself insolvent? I am as poor as a church mouse."

"You disparage yourself. I think you as rich as Crœsus. Will you—give me a kiss?" whispers her husband, softly.

There is a decided pause. Dropping the check and coloring deeply, Cecil moves back a step or two. She betrays a little indignation in her glance,—a very little, but quite perceptible. Stafford sees it.

"I beg your pardon," he says, hastily, an expression of mingled pain and shame crossing his face. "I was wrong, of course. I will not buy your kisses. Here, take this bit of paper, and—forgive me."

He closes her somewhat reluctant fingers over the check. She is still blushing, and has her eyes fixed on the ground, but her faint anger has disappeared. Then some thought—evidently a merry one—occurs to her; the corners of her mouth widen, and finally she breaks into a musical laugh.

"Thank you—very much," she says. "You are very good. It is something to have a husband, after all. And—if you would really care for it—I—don't mind letting you have one——Oh! here is somebody coming."

"There always is somebody coming when least wanted," exclaims Sir Penthony, wrathfully, pushing back his chair with much suppressed ire, as the door opens to admit Mr. Potts.

"'I hope I don't intrude,'" says Potts, putting his comfortable face and rosy head round the door; "but I've got an idea, and I must divulge it or burst. You wouldn't like me to burst, would you?" This to Lady Stafford, pathetically.

"I would not,—here," replies she, with decision.

"For fear you might, I shall take my departure," says Sir Penthony, who has not yet quite recovered either his disappointment or his temper, walking through the conservatory into the grounds beyond.

"I really wish, Plantagenet," says Lady Stafford, turning upon the bewildered Potts with most unaccountable severity, "you could manage to employ your time in some useful way. The dreadful manner in which you spend your days, wandering round the house without aim or reason, causes me absolute regret. Do give yourself the habit of reading or—or doing something to improve your mind, whenever you have a spare moment."

So saying, she sweeps past him out of the room, without even making an inquiry about that priceless idea, leaving poor Potts rooted to the ground, striving wildly, but vainly, to convict himself of some unpardonable offense.

CHAPTER XXII.

"Love, thou art bitter."

—Blaine.

Mr. Amherst, having in a weak moment given his consent to the ball, repays himself by being as unamiable afterward as he can well manage.

"You can have your music and the supper from London, if you wish it," he says to Marcia, one day, when he has inveighed against the whole proceeding in language that borders on the abusive; "but if you think I am going to have an army of decorators down here, turning the house into a fancy bazar, and making one feel a stranger in one's own rooms, you are very much mistaken."

"I think you are right, dear," Marcia answers, with her customary meekness: "people of that kind are always more trouble than anything else. And no doubt we shall be able to do all that is necessary quite as well ourselves."

"As to that you can, of course, please yourself. Though why you cannot dance without filling the rooms with earwigs and dying flowers I can't conceive."

Mr. Amherst's word being like the law of the Medes and Persians, that altereth not, no one disputes it. They couple a few opprobrious epithets with his name just at first, but finally, putting on an air of resolution, declare themselves determined and ready to outdo any decorators in the kingdom.

"We shall wake up in the morning after the ball to find ourselves famous," says Lady Stafford. "The county will ring with our praises. But we must have help: we cannot depend upon broken reeds." With a reproachful glance at Sir Penthony, who is looking the picture of laziness. "Talbot Lowry, of course, will assist us; he goes without saying."

"I hope he will come without saying," puts in Sir Penthony; "it would be much more to the purpose. Any smart young tradesmen among your fellows, Mottie?"

"Unless Grainger. You know Grainger, Lady Stafford?"

"Indeed I do. What! is he stationed with you now? He must have re-joined very lately."

"Only the other day. Would he be of any use to you?"

"The very greatest."

"What! Spooney?" says Tedcastle, laughing. "I don't believe he could climb a ladder to save his life. Think of his pretty hands and his sweet little feet."

"And his lisp,—and his new eyeglass," says Stafford.

"Never mind; I will have him here," declares Cecil, gayly. "In spite of all you say, I positively adore that Grainger boy."

"You seem to have a passion for fools," says Sir Penthony, a little bitterly, feeling some anger toward her.

"And you seem to have a talent for incivility," retorts she, rather nettled. This ends the conversation.

Nevertheless Mr. Grainger is asked to come and give what assistance he can toward adorning Herst, which, when they take into consideration the ladylike whiteness of his hands and the general imbecility of his countenance, is not set at a very high value.

He is a tall, lanky youth, with more than the usual allowance of bone, but rather less of intellect; he is, however, full of ambition and smiles, and is amiability itself all round. He is also desperately addicted to Lady Stafford. He has a dear little moustache, that undergoes much encouragement from his thumb and first finger, and he has a captivating way of saying "How charming!" or, "Very sweet," to anything that pleases him. And, as most things seem to meet his approbation, he makes these two brilliant remarks with startling frequency.

To Cecil he is a joy. In him she evidently finds a fund of amusement, as, during the three days it takes them to convert the ball-room, tea-room, etc., into perfumed bowers, she devotes herself exclusively to his society.

Perhaps the undisguised chagrin of Sir Penthony and Talbot Lowry as they witness her civility to Grainger goes far to add a zest to her enjoyment of that young man's exceedingly small talk.

After dinner on the third day all is nearly completed. A few more leaves, a few more flowers, a wreath or two to be distributed here and there, is all that remains to be done.

"I hate decorating in October," Cecil says. "There is such a dearth of flowers, and the gardeners get so greedy about the house plants. Every blossom looks as if it had been made the most of."

"Well, I don't know," replies Mr. Grainger, squeezing his glass into his eye with much difficulty, it being a new importation and hard to manage. When he has altered all his face into an appalling grin, and completely blocked the sight of one eye, he goes on affably: "I think all this—er—very charming."

"No? Do you? I'm so glad. Do you know I believe you have wonderful taste? The way in which you tied that last bunch of trailing ivy had something about it absolutely artistic."

"If it hadn't fallen to pieces directly afterward, which rather spoiled the effect," says Sir Penthony, with an unkind smile.

"Did it? How sad! But then the idea remains, and that is everything. Now, Mr. Grainger, please stand here—(will you move a little bit, Sir Penthony? Thanks)—just here—while I go up this ladder to satisfy myself about these flowers. By the bye,"—pausing on one of the rungs to look back,—"suppose I were to fall? Do you think you could catch me?"

"I only wish you would give me the opportunity of trying," replies he, weakly.

"Beastly puppy!" mutters Sir Penthony, under his breath.

"Perhaps I shall, if you are good. Now look. Are they straight? Do they look well?" asks Cecil.

"Very sweet," replies Mr. Grainger.

"Potts, hand me up some nails," exclaims Lowry, impatiently, who is on another ladder close by, and has been an attentive and disgusted listener; addressing Potts, who stands lost in contemplation of Grainger. "Look sharp, can't you? And tell me what you think of this." Pointing to his design on the wall. "Is it 'all your fancy painted it?' Is it 'lovely' and 'divine?' Answer."

"Very sour, I think," returns Mr. Potts, hitting off Grainger's voice to a nicety, while maintaining a countenance sufficiently innocent to border on the imbecile.

Both Sir Penthony and Lowry laugh immoderately, while Cecil turns away to hide the smile that may betray her. Grainger himself is the only one wholly unconscious of any joke. He smiles, indeed, genially, because they smile, and happily refrains from inquiry of any sort.

Meantime in the tea-room—that opens off the supper-room, where the others are engaged—Molly and Philip are busy arranging bouquets chosen from among a basketful of flowers that has just been brought in by one of the under-gardeners.

Philip is on his knees,—almost at Molly's feet,—while she bends over him searching for the choicest buds.

"What a lovely ring!" says Philip, presently, staying in his task to take her hand and examine the diamond that glitters on it. "Was it a present?"

"Of course. Where could such a 'beggar-maid' as I am get money enough to buy such a ring?"

"Will you think me rude if I ask you the every-day name of your King Cophetua?"

"I have no King Cophetua."

"Then tell me where you got it?"

"What a question!" Lightly. "Perhaps from my own true love. Perhaps it is the little fetter that seals my engagement to him. Perhaps it isn't."

"Yet you said just now——"

"About that eccentric king? Well, I spoke truly. Royalty has not yet thrown itself at my feet. Still,"—coquettishly,—"that is no reason why I should look coldly upon all commoners."

"Be serious, Molly, for one moment," he entreats, the look of passionate earnestness she so much dislikes coming over his face, darkening instead of brightening it. "Sometimes I am half mad with doubt. Tell me the truth,—now,—here. Are you engaged? Is there anything between you and—Luttrell?"

The spirit of mischief has laid hold of Molly. She cares nothing at all for Shadwell. Of all the men she has met at Herst he attracts her least. She scarcely understands the wild love with which she has inspired him; she cannot sympathize with his emotion.

"Well, if you compel me to confess it," she says, lowering her eyes, 'there is."

"It is true, then!" cries he, rising to his feet and turning deadly pale. "My fears did not deceive me."

"Quite true. There is a whole long room 'between me' and Mr. Luttrell and"—dropping her voice—"you." Here she laughs merrily and with all her heart. To her it is a jest,—no more.

"How a woman—the very best woman—loves to torture!" exclaims he, anger and relief struggling in his tone. "Oh, that I dared believe that latter part of your sentence,—that I could stand between you and all the world!"

"'Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,'" quotes Molly, jestingly. "You know the answer? 'If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.'"

"Is that a challenge?" demands he, eagerly, going nearer to her.

"I don't know." Waving him back. "Hear the oracle again. I feel strong in appropriate rhyme to-night:

"'He either fears his fate too much,

Or his deserts are small,

Who fears to put it to the touch

To win or lose it all.'"

They are quite alone. Some one has given the door leading to the adjoining apartment a push that has entirely closed it. Molly, in her white evening gown and pale-blue ribbons, with a bunch of her favorite roses at her breast, is looking up at him, a little mocking smile upon her lips. She is cold,—perhaps a shade amused,—without one particle of sentiment.

"I fear nothing," cries Philip, in a low impassioned tone, made unwisely bold by her words, seizing her hands and pressing warm, unwelcome kisses on them; "whether I win or lose, I will speak now. Yet what shall I tell you that you do not already know? I love you,—my idol,—my darling! Oh, Molly! do not look so coldly on me."

"Don't be earnest, Philip," interrupts she, with a frown, and a sudden change of tone, raising her head, and regarding him with distasteful hauteur; "there is nothing I detest so much; and your earnestness especially wearies me. When I spoke I was merely jesting, as you must have known. I do not want your love. I have told you so before. Let my hands go, Philip; your touch is hateful to me."

He drops her hands as though they burned him; and she, with flushed cheeks and a still frowning brow, turns abruptly away, leaving him alone,—angered, hurt, but still adoring.

Ten minutes later, her heart—a tender one—misgives her. She has been unjust to him,—unkind. She will return and make such reparation as lies in her power.

With a light step she returns to the tea-room, where she left him, and, looking gently in, finds he has neither stirred nor raised his head since her cruel words cut him to the heart. Ten minutes,—a long time,—and all consumed in thoughts of her! Feeling still more contrite, she approaches him.

"Why, Philip," she says, with an attempt at playfulness, "still enduring 'grinding torments?' What have I said to you? You have taken my foolish words too much to heart. That is not wise. Sometimes I hardly know myself what it is I have been saying."

She has come very near to him,—so near that gazing up at him appealingly, she brings her face in dangerously close proximity to his. A mad desire to kiss the lips that sue so sweetly for a pardon fills him, yet he dares not do it. Although a man not given to self-restraint where desire is at elbow urging him on, he now stands subdued, unnerved, in Molly's presence.

"Have I really distressed you?" asks she, softly, his strange silence rendering her still more remorseful. "Come,"—laying her hand upon his arm,—"tell me what I have done."

"'Sweet, you have trod on a heart,'" quotes Philip, in so low a tone as to be almost unheard. He crosses his hand tightly over hers for an instant; a moment later, and it is she who—this time—finds herself alone.

In the next room success is crowning their efforts. When Molly re-enters, she finds the work almost completed. Just a finishing touch here and there, and all is ended.

"I suppose I should consider myself in luck: I have still a little skin left," says Sir Penthony, examining his hand with tender solicitude. "I don't think I fancy decorating: I shan't take to the trade."

"You—should have put on gloves, you know, and that," says Grainger, who is regarding his dainty fingers with undisguised sadness,—something that is almost an expression on his face.

"But isn't it awfully pretty?" says Lady Stafford, gazing round her with an air of pride.

"Awfully nice," replies Molly.

"Quite too awfully awful," exclaims Mr. Potts, with exaggerated enthusiasm, and is instantly suppressed.

"If you cannot exhibit greater decorum, Potts, we shall be obliged to put your head in a bag," says Sir Penthony, severely. "I consider 'awfully' quite the correct word. What with the ivy and the gigantic size of those paper roses, the room presents quite a startling appearance."

"Well, I'm sure they are far prettier than Lady Harriet Nitemair's; and she made such a fuss about hers last spring," says Cecil, rather injured.

"Not to be named in the same day," declares Luttrell, who had not been at Lady Harriet Nitemair's.

"Why, Tedcastle, you were not there; you were on your way home from India at that time."

"Was I? By Jove! so I was. Never mind, I take your word for it, and stick to my opinion," replies Luttrell, unabashed.

"I really think we ought to christen our work." Mr. Potts puts in dreamily, being in a thirsty mood; and christened it is in champagne.

Potts himself, having drunk his own and every one else's health many times, grows gradually gayer and gayer. To wind up this momentous evening without making it remarkable in any way strikes him as being a tame proceeding. "To do or die" suddenly occurs to him, and he instantly acts upon it.

Seeing his two former allies standing rather apart from the others, he makes for them and thus addresses them:

"Tell you what," he says, with much geniality, "it feels like Christmas, and crackers, and small games, don't it? I feel up to anything. And I have a capital idea in my head. Wouldn't it be rather a joke to frighten the others?"

"It would," says Cecil, decidedly.

"Would it?" says Molly, diffidently.

"I have a first-rate plan; I can make you both look so like ghosts that you would frighten the unsuspecting into fits."

"First, Plantagenet, before we go any further into your ghostly schemes, answer me this: is there any gunpowder about it?"

"None." Laughing. "You just dress yourselves in white sheets, or that, and hold a plate in your hands filled with whiskey and salt, and—there you are. You have no idea of the tremendous effect. You will be more like a corpse than anything you can imagine."

"How cheerful!" murmurs Cecil. "You make me long for the 'sheets and that.'"

"Do the whiskey and the salt ever blow up?" asks Molly, cautiously. "Because if so——"

"No, they don't; of course not. Say nothing about it to the others, and we shall astonish them by and by. It is an awfully becoming thing, too," says Potts, with a view to encouragement; "you will look like marble statues."

"We are trusting you again," says Cecil, regarding him fixedly. "Plantagenet, if you should again be our undoing——"

"Not the slightest fear of a fiasco this time," says Potts, comfortably.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"Here's such a coil! Come, what says Romeo?"

—Shakespeare.

As eleven o'clock strikes, any one going up the stairs at Herst would have stopped with a mingled feeling of terror and admiration at one particular spot, where, in a niche, upon a pedestal, a very goddess stands.

It is Molly, clad in white, from head to heel, with a lace scarf twisted round her head and shoulders, and with one bare arm uplifted, while with the other she holds an urn-shaped vase beneath her face, from which a pale-blue flame arises.

Her eyes, larger, deeper, bluer than usual, are fixed with sad and solemn meaning upon space. She scarcely seems to breathe; no quiver disturbs her frame, so intensely does she listen for a coming footstep. In her heart she hopes it may be Luttrell's.

The minutes pass. Her arm is growing tired, her eyes begin to blink against her will; she is on the point of throwing up the game, descending from her pedestal, and regaining her own room, when a footfall recalls her to herself and puts her on her mettle.

Nearer it comes,—still nearer, until it stops altogether. Molly does not dare turn to see who it is. A moment later, a wild cry, a smothered groan, falls upon her ear, and, turning her head, terrified, she sees her grandfather rush past her, tottering, trembling, until he reaches his own room, where he disappears.

Almost at the same instant the others who have been in the drawing-room, drawn to the spot by the delicate machinations of Mr. Potts, come on the scene; while Marcia, who has heard that scared cry, emerges quickly from among them and passes up the stairs into her grandfather's room.

There follows an awkward silence. Cecil, who has been adorning a corner farther on, comes creeping toward them, pale and nervous, having also been a witness to Mr. Amherst's hurried flight; and she and Molly, in their masquerading costumes, feel, to say the least of it, rather small.

They cast a withering glance at Potts, who has grown a lively purple; but he only shakes his head, having no explanation to offer, and knowing himself for once in his life to be unequal to the occasion.

Mrs. Darley is the first to break silence.

"What is it? What has happened? Why are you both here in your night-dresses?" she asks, unguardedly, losing her head in the excitement of the moment.

"What do you mean?" says Cecil, angrily. "'Nightdresses'! If you don't know dressing-gowns when you see them, I am sorry for you. Plantagenet, what has happened?"

"It was grandpapa," says Molly, in a frightened tone. "He came by, and I think was upset by my—appearance. Oh, I hope I have not done him any harm! Mr. Potts, why did you make me do it?"

"How could I tell?" replies Potts, who is as white as their costumes. "What an awful shriek he gave! I thought such a stern old card as he is would have had more pluck!"

"I was positive he was in bed," says Cecil, "or I should never have ventured."

"He is never where he ought to be," mutters Potts gloomily.

Here conversation fails them. For once they are honestly dismayed, and keep their eyes fixed in anxious expectation on the bedchamber of their host. Will Marcia never come?

At length the door opens and she appears, looking pale and distraite. Her eyes light angrily as they fall on Molly.

"Grandpapa is very much upset. He is ill. It was heartless,—a cruel trick," she says, rather incoherently. "He wishes to see you, Eleanor, instantly. You had better go to him."

"Must I?" asks Molly, who is quite colorless, and much inclined to cry.

"Unless you wish to add disobedience to your other unfeeling conduct," replies Marcia, coldly.

"No, no; of course not. I will go," says Molly, nervously.

With faltering footsteps she approaches the fatal door, whilst the others disperse and return once more to the drawing-room,—all, that is, except Lady Stafford, who seeks her own chamber, and Mr. Potts, who, in an agony of doubt and fear, lingers about the corridor, awaiting Molly's return.

As she enters her grandfather's room she finds him lying on a couch, half upright, an angry, disappointed expression on his face, distrust in his searching eyes.

"Come here," he says, harshly, motioning her with one finger to his side, "and tell me why you, of all others, should have chosen to play this trick upon me. Was it revenge?"

"Upon you, grandpapa! Oh, not upon you," says Molly, shocked. "It was all a mistake,—a mere foolish piece of fun; but I never thought you would have been the one to see me."

"Are you lying? Let me look at you. If so, you do it cleverly. Your face is honest. Yet I hear it was for me alone this travesty was enacted."

"Whoever told you so spoke falsely," Molly says, pale but firm, a great indignation toward Marcia rising in her breast. She has her hands on the back of a chair, and is gazing anxiously but openly at the old man. "Why should I seek to offend you, who have been so kind to me,—whose bread I have eaten? You do not understand: you wrong me."

"I thought it was your mother," whispers he, with a quick shiver, "from her grave, returned to reproach me,—to remind me of all the miserable past. It was a senseless thought. But the likeness was awful,—appalling. She was my favorite daughter, yet she of all creatures was the one to thwart me most; and I did not forgive. I left her to pine for the luxuries to which she was accustomed from her birth, and could not then procure. She was delicate. I let her wear her heart out waiting for a worthless pardon. And what a heart it was! Then I would not forgive; now—now I crave forgiveness. Oh, that the dead could speak!"

He covers his face with his withered hands, that shake and tremble like October leaves, and a troubled sigh escapes him. For the moment the stern old man has disappeared; only the penitent remains.

"Dear grandpapa, be comforted," says Molly, much affected, sinking on her knees beside him. Never before, by either brother or grandfather, has her dead mother been so openly alluded to. "She did forgive. So sweet as she was, how could she retain a bitter feeling? Listen to me. Am I not her only child? Who so meet to offer you her pardon? Let me comfort you."

Mr. Amherst makes no reply, but he gently presses the fingers that have found their way around his neck.

"I, too, would ask pardon," Molly goes on, in her sweet, low, trainante voice, that has a sob in it here and there. "How shall I gain it after all that I have done—to distress you so, although unintentionally?—And you think hardly of me, grandpapa? You think I did it to annoy you?"

"No, no; not now."

"I have made you ill," continues Molly, still crying; "I have caused you pain. Oh, grandpapa! do say you are not angry with me."

"I am not. You are a good child, and Marcia wronged you. Go now, and forget all I may have said. I am weak at times, and—and—— Go, child; I am better alone."

In the corridor outside stands Mr. Potts, with pale cheeks and very pale eyes. Even his hair seems to have lost a shade, and looks subdued.

"Well, what did he say to you?" he asks, in what he fondly imagines to be a whisper, but which would be distinctly audible in the hall beneath. "Was he awfully mad? Did he cut up very rough? I wouldn't have been in your shoes for a million. Did he—did he—say anything about—me?"

"I don't believe he remembered your existence," says Molly, with a laugh, although her eyelids are still of a shade too decided to be becoming. "He knew nothing of your share in the transaction."

Whereupon Mr. Potts declares himself thankful for so much mercy in a devout manner, and betakes himself to the smoking-room.

Here he is received with much applause and more congratulations.

"Another of Mr. Potts's charming entertainments," says Sir Penthony, with a wave of the hand. "Extraordinary and enthusiastic reception! Such success has seldom before been witnessed! Last time he blew up two young women; to-night he has slain an offensive old gentleman! Really, Potts, you must allow me to shake hands with you."

"Was there ever anything more unfortunate?" says Potts, in a lachrymose tone. He has not been inattentive to the requirements of the inner man since his entrance, and already, slowly but surely, the brandy is doing its work. "It was all so well arranged, and I made sure the old boy was gone to bed."

"He is upset," murmurs Sir Penthony, with touching concern, "and no wonder. Such tremendous exertion requires the aid of stimulants to keep it up. My dear Potts, do have a little more brandy-and-soda. You don't take half care of yourself."

"Not a drop,—not a drop," says Mr. Potts, drawing the decanter toward him. "It don't agree with me. Oh, Stafford! you should have seen Miss Massereene in her Greek costume. I think she is the loveliest creature I ever saw. She is," goes on Mr. Potts, with unwise zeal, "by far the loveliest, 'and the same I would rise to maintain.'"

"I wouldn't, if I were you," says Philip, who is indignant. "There is no knowing what tricks your legs may play with you."

"She was just like Venus, or—or some of those other goddesses," says Mr. Potts, vaguely.

"I can well believe it," returns Stafford; "but don't let emotion master you. 'There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.' Try a little of the former."

"There's nothing in life I wouldn't do for that girl,—nothing, I declare to you, Stafford," goes on Potts, who is quite in tears by this time; "but she wouldn't look at me."

Luttrell and Philip are enraged; Stafford and the others are in roars.

"Wouldn't she, Potts?" says Stafford, with a fine show of sympathy. "Who knows? Cheer up, old boy, and remember women never know their own minds at first. She may yet become alive to your many perfections, and know her heart to be all yours. Think of that. And why should she not?" says Sir Penthony, with free encouragement. "Where could she get a better fellow? 'Faint heart,' you know, Potts. Take my advice and pluck up spirit, and go in for her boldly. Throw yourself at her feet."

"I will," says Mr. Potts, ardently.

"To-morrow," advises Sir Penthony, with growing excitement.

"Now," declares Potts, with wild enthusiasm, making a rush for the door.

"Not to-night; wait until to-morrow," Sir Penthony says, who has not anticipated so ready an acceptance of his advice, getting between him and the door. "In my opinion she has retired to her room by this; and it really would be rather sketchy, you know,—eh?"

"What do you say, Luttrell?" asks Potts, uncertainly. "What would you advise?"

"Bed," returns Luttrell, curtly, turning on his heel.

And finally the gallant Potts is conveyed to his room, without being allowed to lay his hand and fortune at Miss Massereene's feet.

About four o'clock the next day,—being that of the ball,—Sir Penthony, strolling along the west corridor, comes to a standstill before Cecil's door, which happens to lie wide open.

Cecil herself is inside, and is standing so as to be seen, clad in the memorable white dressing-gown of the evening before, making a careful choice between two bracelets she holds in her hands.

"Is that the garment in which you so much distinguished yourself last night?" Sir Penthony cannot help asking; and, with a little start and blush, she raises her eyes.

"Is it you?" she says, smiling. "Yes, this is the identical robe. Won't you come in, Sir Penthony? You are quite welcome. If you have nothing better to do you can stay with and talk to me for a little."

"I have plenty to do,"—coming in and closing the door,—"but nothing I would not gladly throw over to accept an invitation from you."

"Dear me! What a charming speech! What a courtier you would have made! Consider yourself doubly welcome. I adore pretty speeches, when addressed to myself. Now, sit there, while I decide on what jewelry I shall wear to-night."

"So this is her sanctum," thinks her husband, glancing around. What a dainty nest it is, with its innumerable feminine fineries, its piano, its easel, its pretty pink-and-blue crêtonnne, its wealth of flowers, although the season is of the coldest and bleakest.

A cozy fire burns brightly. In the wall opposite is an open door, through which one catches a glimpse of the bedroom beyond, decked out in all its pink-and-white glory. There is a very sociable little clock, a table strewn with wools and colored silks, and mirrors everywhere.

As for Cecil herself, with honest admiration her husband carefully regards her. What a pretty woman she is! full of all the tender graces, the lovable caprices, that wake the heart to fondness.

How charming a person to come to in grief or trouble, or even in one's gladness! How full of gayety, yet immeasurable tenderness, is her speaking face! Verily, there is a depth of sympathy to be found in a pretty woman that a plain one surely lacks.

Her white gown becomes her à merveille, and fits her to perfection. She cannot be called fat, but as certainly she cannot be called thin. When people speak of her with praise, they never fail to mention the "pretty roundness" of her figure.

Her hair has partly come undone, and hangs in a fair, loose coil, rather lower than usual, upon her neck. This suits her, making still softer her soft though piquante face.

Her white and jeweled fingers are busy in the case before her as, with puckered brows, she sighs over the difficulty of making a wise and becoming choice in precious stones for the evening's triumphs.

At last—a set of sapphires having gained the day—she lays the casket aside and turns to her husband, while wondering with demure amusement on the subject of his thoughts during these past few minutes.

He has been thinking of her, no doubt. Her snowy wrapper, with all its dainty frills and bows, is eminently becoming. Yes, beyond all question he has been indulging in sentimental regrets.

Sir Penthony's first remark rather dispels the illusion.

"The old boy puts you up very comfortably down here, don't he?" he says, in a terribly prosaic tone.

Is this all? Has he been admiring the furniture during all these eloquent moments of silence, instead of her and her innumerable charms? Insufferable!

"He do," responds she, dryly, with a careful adaptation of his English.

Sir Penthony raises his eyebrows in affected astonishment, and then they both laugh.

"I do hope you are not going to say rude things to me about last night," she says, still smiling.

"No. You may remember once before on a very similar occasion I told you I should never again scold you, for the simple reason that I considered it language thrown away. I was right, as the sequel proved. Besides, the extreme becomingness of your toilet altogether disarmed me. By the bye, when do you return to town?"

"Next week. And you?"

"I shall go—when you go. May I call on you there?"

"Indeed you may. I like you quite well enough," says her ladyship, with unsentimental and therefore most objectionable frankness, "to wish you for my friend."

"Why should we not be more than friends, Cecil?" says Stafford, going up to her and taking both her hands in a warm, affectionate clasp. "Just consider how we two are situated: you are bound to me forever, until death shall kindly step in to relieve you of me, and I am bound to you as closely. Why, then, should we not accept our position, and make our lives one?"

"You should have thought of all this before."

"How could I? Think what a deception you practiced on me when sending that miserable picture. I confess I abhor ugliness. And then, your own conditions,—what could I do but abide by them?"

"There are certain times when a woman does not altogether care about being taken so completely at her word."

"But that was not one of them." Hastily. "I do not believe you would have wished to live with a man you neither knew nor cared for."

"Perhaps not." Laughing. "Sometimes I hardly know myself what it is I do want. But are we not very well as we are? I dare say, had we been living together for the past three years, we should now dislike each other as cordially as—as do Maud Darley and her husband."

"Impossible! Maud Darley is one person, you are quite another; while I—well"—with a smile—"I honestly confess I fancy myself rather more than poor Henry Darley."

"He certainly is plain," says Cecil, pensively, "and—he snores,—two great points against him, Yes, on consideration, you are an improvement on Henry Darley." Then, with a sudden change of tone, she says, "Does all this mean that you love me?"

"Yes I confess it, Cecil," answers he, gravely, earnestly. "I love you as I never believed it possible I should love a woman. I am twenty-nine, and—think me cold if you will—but up to this I never yet saw the woman I wanted for my wife except you."

"Then you ought to consider yourself the happiest man alive, because you have the thing you crave. As you reminded me just now, I am yours until death us do part."

"Not all I crave, not the best part of you, your heart," replies he, tenderly. "No man loving as I do, could be contented with a part."

"Oh, it is too absurd," says Cecil, with a little aggravating shake of the head. "In love with your own wife in this prosaic nineteenth century! It savors of the ridiculous. Such mistaken feeling has been tabooed long ago. Conquer it; conquer it."

"Too late. Besides, I have no desire to conquer it. On the contrary, I encourage it, in hope of some return. No, do not dishearten me. I know what you are going to say; but at least you like me, Cecil?"

"Well, yes; but what of that? I like so many people."

"Then go a little further, and say you—love me."

"That would be going a great deal further, because I love so few."

"Never mind. Say 'Penthony, I love you.'"

He has placed his hands upon her shoulders, and is regarding her with anxious fondness.

"Would you have me tell you an untruth?"

"I would have you say you love me."

"But supposing I cannot in honesty?"

"Try."

"Of course I can try. Words without meaning are easy things to say. But then—a lie; that is a serious matter.

"It may cease to be a lie, once uttered."

"Well,—just to please you, then, and as an experiment—and—— You are sure you will not despise me for saying it?"

"No."

"Nor accuse me afterward of deceit?"

"Of course not."

"Nor think me weak-minded?"

"No, no. How could I?"

"Well, then—Penthony—I—don't love you the least bit in the world!" declares Cecil, with a provoking, irresistible laugh, stepping backward out of his reach.

Sir Penthony does not speak for a moment or two; then "'Sweet is revenge, especially to women,'" he says, quietly, although at heart he is bitterly chagrined. To be unloved is one thing—to be laughed at is another. "After all, you are right. There is nothing in this world so rare or so admirable as honesty. I am glad you told me no untruth, even in jest."

Just at this instant the door opens, and Molly enters. She looks surprised at such an unexpected spectacle as Cecil's husband sitting in his wife's boudoir, tête-à-tête with her.

"Don't be shy, dear," says Cecil, mischievously, with a little wicked laugh; "you may come in; it is only my husband."

The easy nonchalance of this speech, the only half-suppressed amusement in her tone, angers Sir Penthony more than all that has gone before. With a hasty word or two to Molly, he suddenly remembers a pressing engagement, and, with a slight bow to his wife, takes his departure.

CHAPTER XXIV.

"Take, oh! take those lips away,

That so sweetly were foresworn;

And those eyes, the break of day,

Lights that do mislead the morn:

But my kisses bring again,

Seals of love, but seal'd in vain."

—Shakespeare.

The longed-for night has arrived at last; so has Molly's dress, a very marvel of art, fresh and pure as newly-fallen snow. It is white silk with tulle, on which white water-lilies lie here and there, as though carelessly thrown, all their broad and trailing leaves gleaming from among the shining folds.

Miss Massereene is in her own room, dressing, her faithful Sarah on her knees beside her. She has almost finished her toilet, and is looking more than usually lovely in her London ball-dress.

"Our visit is nearly at an end, Sarah; how have you enjoyed it?" she asks, in an interval, during which Sarah is at her feet, sewing on more securely one of her white lilies.

"Very much, indeed, miss. They've all been excessive polite, though they do ask a lot of questions. Only this evening they wanted to know if we was estated, and I said, 'Yes,' Miss Molly, because after all, you know, miss, it is a property, however small; and I wasn't going to let myself down. And then that young man of Captain Shadwell's ast me if we was 'county people,' which I thought uncommon imperent. Not but what he's a nice young man, miss, and very affable."

"Still constant, Sarah?" says Molly, who is deep in the waves of doubt, not being able to decide some important final point about her dress.

"Oh, law! yes, miss, he is indeed. It was last night he was saying as my accent was very sweet. Now there isn't one of them country bumpkins, miss, as would know whether you had an accent or not. It's odd how traveling do improve the mind."

"Sarah, you should pay no attention to those London young men,—(pin it more to this side),—because they never mean anything."

"Law, Miss Molly, do you say so?" says her handmaid, suddenly depressed. "Well, of course, miss, you—who are so much with London gentlemen—ought to know. And don't they mean what they say to you, Miss Molly?"

"I, eh?" says Molly, rather taken aback; and then she bursts out laughing. "Sarah, only I know you to be trustworthy, I should certainly think you sarcastic."

"What's that, miss?"

"Never mind,—something thoroughly odious. You abash me, Sarah. By all means believe what each one tells you. It may be as honestly said to you as to me. And now, how do I look, Sarah? Speak," says Molly, sailing away from her up the room like a "white, white swan," and then turning to confront her and give her a fair opportunity of judging of her charms.

"Just lovely," says Sarah, with the most flattering sincerity of tone. "There is no doubt, Miss Molly, but you look quite the lady."

"Do I really? Thank you, Sarah," says Molly, humbly.

"I agree with Sarah," says Cecil, who has entered unnoticed. She affects blue, as a rule, and is now attired in palest azure, with a faint-pink blossom in her hair, and another at her breast. "Sarah is a person of much discrimination; you do look 'quite the lady.' You should be grateful to me, Molly, when you remember I ordered your dress; it is almost the prettiest I have ever seen, and with you in it the effect is maddening."

"Let me get down-stairs, at all events, without having my head turned," says Molly, laughing. "Oh, Cecil, I feel so happy! To have a really irreproachable ball-dress, and to go to a really large ball, has been for years the dream of my life."

"I wonder, when the evening is over, how you will look on your dream?" Cecil cannot help saying. "Come, we are late enough as it is. But first turn round and let me see the train. So; that woman is a perfect artist where dresses are concerned. You look charming."

"And her neck and arms, my lady!" puts in Sarah, who is almost tearful in her admiration. "Surely Miss Massereene's cannot be equaled. They are that white, Miss Molly, that no one could be found fault with for comparing them to the dribbling snow."

"A truly delightful simile," exclaims Molly, merrily, and forthwith follows Cecil to conquest.

They find the drawing-rooms still rather empty. Marcia is before them, and Philip and Mr. Potts; also Sir Penthony. Two or three determined ball-goers have arrived, and are dotted about, looking over albums, asking each other how they do, and thinking how utterly low it is of all the rest of the county to be so late. "Such beastly affectation, you know, and such a putting on of side, and general straining after effect."

"I hope, Miss Amherst, you have asked a lot of pretty girls," says Plantagenet, "and only young ones. Old maids make awful havoc of my temper."

"I don't think there are 'lots' of pretty girls anywhere; but I have asked as many as I know. And there are among them at least two acknowledged belles."

"You don't say so!" exclaims Sir Penthony. "Miss Amherst, if you wish to make me eternally grateful you will point them out to me. There is nothing so distressing as not to know. And once I was introduced to a beauty, and didn't discover my luck until it was too late. I never even asked her to dance! Could you fancy anything more humiliating? Give you my honor I spoke to her for ten minutes and never so much as paid her a compliment. It was too cruel,—and she the queen of the evening, as I was told afterward."

"You didn't admire her?" asks Cecil, interested. "Never saw her beauty?"

"No. She was tall and had arched brows,—two things I detest."

The ball is at its height. Marcia, dressed in pale maize silk,—which suits her dark and glowing beauty,—is still receiving a few late guests in her usual stately but rather impassive manner. Old Mr. Amherst, standing beside her, gives her an air of importance. Beyond all doubt she will be heavily dowered,—a wealthy heiress, if not exactly the heir.

Philip, as the supposed successor to the house and lands of Herst, receives even more attention; while Molly, except for her beauty, which outshines all that the room contains, is in no way noticeable. Though, when one holds the ace of trumps, one feels almost independent of the other honors.

The chief guest—a marquis, with an aristocratic limp and only one eye—has begged of her a square dance. Two lords—one very young, the other distressingly old—have also solicited her hand in the "mazy dance." She is the reigning belle; and she knows it.

Beautiful, sparkling, brilliant, she moves through the rooms. A great delight, a joyous excitement, born of her youth, the music, her own success, fills her. She has a smile, a kindly look, for every one. Even Mr. Buscarlet, in the blackest of black clothes and rather indifferent linen, venturing to address her as she goes by him, receives a gracious answer in return. So does Mrs. Buscarlet, who is radiant in pink satin and a bird-of-paradise as a crown.

"Ain't she beautiful?" says that substantial matron, with a beaming air of approbation, as though Molly was her bosom friend, addressing the partner of her joys. "Such a lovely-turned jaw! She has quite a look of my sister Mary Anne when a girl. I wish, my dear, she was to be heiress of Herst, instead of that stuck-up girl in yellow."

"So do I; so do I," replies Buscarlet, following the movements of Beauty as she glides away, smiling, dimpling on my lord's arm. "And—ahem!"—with a meaning and consequential cough—"perhaps she may. Who knows? There is a certain person who has often a hold of her grandfather's ear! Ahem!"

Meantime the band is playing its newest, sweetest strains; the air is heavy with the scent of flowers. The low ripple of conversation and merry laughter rises above everything. The hours are flying all too swiftly.

"May I have the pleasure of this waltz with you?" Sir Penthony is saying, bending over Lady Stafford, as she sits in one of the numberless small, dimly-lit apartments that branch off the hall.

"Dear Sir Penthony, do you think I will test your good-nature so far? You are kind to a fault, and I will not repay you so poorly as to avail myself of your offer. Fancy condemning you to waste a whole dance on your—wife!"

The first of the small hours has long since sounded, and she is a little piqued that not until now has he asked her to dance. Nevertheless, she addresses him with her most charming smile.

"I, for my part, should not consider it a dance wasted," replies he, stiffly.

"Is he not self-denying?" she says, turning languidly toward Lowry, who, as usual, stands beside her.

"You cannot expect me to see it in that light," replies he, politely.

"May I hope for this waltz?" Sir Penthony asks again, this time very coldly.

"Not this one; perhaps a little later on."

"As you please, of course," returns he, as, with a frown and an inward determination never to ask her again, he walks away.

In the ball-room he meets Luttrell, evidently on the lookout for a missing partner.

"Have you seen Miss Massereene?" he asks instantly. "I am engaged to her, and can see her nowhere."

"Try one of those nests for flirtation," replies Stafford, bitterly, turning abruptly away, and pointing toward the room he has just quitted.

But Luttrell goes in a contrary direction. Through one conservatory after another, through ball-room, supper-room, tea-room, he searches without success. There is no Molly to be seen anywhere.

"She has forgotten our engagement," he thinks, and feels a certain pang of disappointment that it should be so. As he walks, rather dejectedly, into a last conservatory, he is startled to find Marcia there alone, gazing with silent intentness out of the window into the garden beneath.

As he approaches she turns to meet his gaze. She is as pale as death, and her dark eyes are full of fire. The fingers of her hand twitch convulsively.

"You are looking for Eleanor?" she says, intuitively, her voice low, but vibrating with some hidden emotion. "See, you will find her there."

She points down toward the garden through the window where she has been standing, and moves away. Impelled by the strangeness of her manner, Luttrell follows her direction, and, going over to the window, gazes out into the night.

It is a brilliant moonlight night; the very stars shine with redoubled glory; the chaste Diana, riding high in the heavens, casts over "tower and stream" and spreading parks "a flood of silver sheen;" the whole earth seems bright as gaudy day.

Beneath, in the shrubberies, pacing to and fro, are Molly and Philip Shadwell, evidently in earnest conversation. Philip at least seems painfully intent and eager. They have stopped, as if by one impulse, and now he has taken her hand. She hardly rebukes him; her hand lies passive within his; and now,—now, with a sudden movement, he has placed his arm around her waist.

"Honor or no honor," says Luttrell, fiercely, "I will see it out with her now."

Drawing a deep breath, he folds his arms and leans against the window, full of an agonized determination to know the worst.

Molly has put up her hand and laid it on Philip's chest, as though expostulating, but makes no vehement effort to escape from his embrace. Philip, his face lit up with passionate admiration, is gazing down into the lovely one so near him, that scarcely seems to shrink from his open homage. The merciless, cruel moon, betrays them all too surely.

Luttrell's pulses are throbbing wildly, while his heart has almost ceased to beat. Half a minute—that is a long hour—passes thus; a few more words from Philip, an answer from Molly. Oh, that he could hear! And then Shadwell stoops until, from where Luttrell stands, his face seems to grow to hers.

Tedcastle's teeth meet in his lip as he gazes spell-bound. A cold shiver runs through him, as when one learns that all one's dearest, most cherished hopes are trampled in the dust. A faint moisture stands on his brow. It is the bitterness of death!

Presently a drop of blood trickling slowly down—the sickly flavor of it in his mouth—rouses him. Instinctively he closes his eyes, as though too late to strive to shut out the torturing sight, and, with a deep curse, he presses his handkerchief to his lips and moves away as one suddenly awakened from a ghastly dream.

In the doorway he meets Marcia; she, too, has been a witness of the garden scene, and as he passes her she glances up at him with a curious smile.

"If you wish to keep her you should look after her," she whispers, with white lips.

"If she needs looking after, I do not wish for her," he answers, bitterly, and the next moment could kill himself, in that he has been so far wanting in loyalty to his most disloyal love.

With his mind quite made up, he waits through two dances silently, almost motionless, with his back against a friendly wall, hardly taking note of anything that is going on around him, until such time as he can claim another dance from Molly.

It comes at last: and, making his way through the throng of dancers, he reaches the spot where, breathless, smiling, she sits fanning herself, an adoring partner dropping little honeyed phrases into her willing ear.

"This is our dance," Luttrell says, in a hard tone, standing before her, with compressed lips and a pale face.

"Is it?" with a glance at her card.

"Never mind your card. I know it is ours," he says, and, offering her his arm, leads her, not to the ball-room, but on to a balcony, from which the garden can be reached by means of steps.

Before descending he says,—always in the same uncompromising tone:

"Are you cold? Shall I fetch you a shawl?"

And she answers:

"No, thank you. I think the night warm," being, for the moment, carried away by the strangeness and determination of his manner.

When they are in the garden, and still he has not spoken, she breaks the silence.

"What is it, Teddy?" she asks, lightly. "I am all curiosity. I never before saw you look so angry."

"'Angry'?—no,—I hardly think there is room for anger. I have brought you here to tell you—I will not keep to my engagement with you—an hour longer."

Silence follows this declaration,—a dead silence, broken only by the voices of the night and the faint, sweet, dreamy sound of one of Gungl's waltzes as it steals through the air to where they stand.

They have ceased to move, and are facing each other in the narrow pathway. A few beams from the illumined house fall across their feet; one, more adventurous than the rest, has lit on Molly's face, and lingers there, regardless of the envious moonbeams.

How changed it is! All the soft sweetness, the gladness of it, that characterized it a moment since, is gone. All the girlish happiness and excitement of a first ball have vanished. She is cold, rigid, as one turned to stone. Indignation lies within her lovely eyes.

"I admit you have taken me by surprise," she says, slowly. "It is customary—is it not?—for the one who breaks an engagement to assign some reason for so doing?"

"It is. You shall have my reason. Half an hour ago I stood at that window,"—pointing to it,—"and saw you in the shrubberies—with—Shadwell!"

"Yes? And then?"

"Then—then!" With a movement full of passion he lays his hands upon her shoulders and turns her slightly, so that the ray which has wandered once more rests upon her face. "Let me look at you," he says; "let me see how bravely you can carry out your deception to its end. Its end, mark you; for you shall never again deceive me. I have had enough of it. It is over. My love for you has died."

"Beyond all doubt it had an easy death," replies she, calmly. "There could never have been much life in it. But all this is beside the question. I have yet to learn my crime. I have yet to learn what awful iniquity lies in the fact of my being with Philip Shadwell."

"You are wonderfully innocent," with a sneer. "Do you think then that my sight failed me?"

"Still I do not understand," she says, drawing herself up, with a little proud gesture. "What is it to me whether you or all the world saw me with Philip? Explain yourself."

"I will." In a low voice, almost choked with passion and despair. "You will understand when I tell you I saw him with his arms around you—you submitting—you—— And then—I saw him—kiss you. That I should live to say it of you!"

"Did you see him kiss me?" still calmly. "Your eyesight is invaluable."

"Ah! you no longer deny it? In your inmost heart no doubt you are laughing at me, poor fool that I have been. How many other times have you kissed him, I wonder, when I was not by to see?"

"Whatever faults you may have had, I acquitted you of brutality," says she, in a low, carefully suppressed tone.

"You never loved me. In that one matter at least you were honest; you never professed affection. And yet I was mad enough to think that after a time I should gain the love of a flirt,—a coquette."

"You were mad to care for the love of 'a flirt,—a coquette.'"

"I have been blind all these past weeks," goes on he, unheeding, "determined not to see (what all the rest of the world, no doubt, too plainly saw) what there was between you and Shadwell. But I am blind no longer. I am glad,—yes, thankful," cries the young man, throwing out one hand, as though desirous of proving by action the truth of his sad falsehood,—"thankful I have found you out at last,—before it was too late."

"I am thankful too; but for another reason. I feel grateful that your suspicions have caused you to break off our engagement. And now that it is broken,—irremediably so,—let me tell you that for once your priceless sight has played you false. I admit that Philip placed his arm around me (but not unrebuked, as you would have it); I admit he stooped to kiss me; but," cries Molly, with sudden passion that leaves her pale as an early snow-drop, "I do not admit he kissed me. Deceitful, worthless, flirt, coquette, as you think me, I have not yet fallen so low as to let one man kiss me while professing to keep faith with another."

"You say this—after——"

"I do. And who is there shall dare give me the lie? Beware, Tedcastle; you have gone far enough already. Do not go too far. You have chosen to insult me. Be it so. I forgive you. But, for the future, let me see, and hear, and know as little of you as may be possible."

"Molly, if what you now——"

"Stand back, sir," cries she, with an air of majesty and with an imperious gesture, raising one white arm, that gleams like snow in the dark night, to wave him to one side.

"From henceforth remember, I am deaf when you address me!"

She sweeps past him into the house, without further glance or word, leaving him, half mad with doubt and self-reproach, to pace the gardens until far into the morning.

When he does re-enter the ball-room he finds it almost deserted. Nearly all the guests have taken their departure. Dancing is growing half-hearted; conversation is having greater sway with those that still remain.

The first person he sees—with Philip beside her—is Molly, radiant, sparkling, even more than usually gay. Two crimson spots burn upon either cheek, making her large eyes seem larger, and bright as gleaming stars.

Even as Luttrell, with concentrated bitterness, stands transfixed at some little distance from her, realizing how small a thing to her is this rupture between them, that is threatening to break his heart, she, looking up, sees him.

Turning to her companion, she whispers something to him in a low tone, and then she laughs,—a soft, rippling laugh, full of mirth and music.

"There go the chimes again," says Mr. Potts, who has just come up, alluding to Molly's little cruel outburst of merriment. "I never saw Miss Massereene in such good form as she is in to-night. Oh!"—with a suppressed yawn—"'what a day we're 'aving!' I wish it were all to come over again."

"Plantagenet, you grow daily more dissipated," says Cecil Stafford, severely. "A little boy like you should be in your bed hours ago; instead of which you have been allowed to sit up until half-past four, and——"

"And still I am not 'appy?' How could I be when you did me out of that solitary dance you promised me? I really believed, when I asked you with such pathos in the early part of the evening to keep that one green spot in your memory for me, you would have done so."

"Did I forget you?" remorsefully. "Well, don't blame me. Mr. Lowry would keep my card for me, and, as a natural consequence, it was lost. After that, how was it possible for me to keep to my engagements?"

"I think it was a delightful ball," Molly says, with perhaps a shade too much empressement. "I never in all my life enjoyed myself so well."

"Lucky you," says Cecil. "Had I been allowed I should perhaps have been happy too; but"—with a glance at Stafford, who is looking the very personification of languid indifference—"when people allow their tempers to get the better of them——" Here she pauses with an eloquent sigh.

"I hope you are not alluding to me," says Lowry, who is at her elbow, with a smile that awakes in Stafford a mild longing to strangle him.

"Oh, no!"—sweetly. "How could you think it? I am not ungrateful; and I know how carefully you tried to make my evening a pleasant one."

"If I succeeded it is more than I dare hope for," returns he, in a low tone, intended for her ears alone.

She smiles at him, and holds out her arm, that he may refasten the eighth button of her glove that has mysteriously come undone. He rather lingers over the doing of it. He is, indeed, strangely awkward, and finds an unaccountable difficulty in inducing the refractory button to go into its proper place.

"Shall we bivouac here for the remainder of the night, or seek our beds?" asks Sir Penthony, impatiently. "I honestly confess the charms of that eldest Miss Millbanks have completely used me up. Too much of a good thing is good for nothing; and she is tall. Do none of the rest of you feel fatigue? I know women's passion for conquest is not easily satiated,"—with a slight sneer—"but at five o'clock in the morning one might surely call a truce."

They agree with him, and separate, even the tardiest guest having disappeared by this time, with a last assurance of how intensely they have enjoyed their evening; though when they reach their chambers a few of them give way to such despair and disappointment as rather gives the lie to their expressions of pleasure.

Poor Molly, in spite of her false gayety,—put on to mask the wounded pride, the new sensation of blankness that fills her with dismay,—flings herself upon her bed and cries away all the remaining hours that rest between her and her maid's morning visit.

"Alas! how easily things go wrong:

A sigh too much or a kiss too long."

For how much less—for the mere suspicion of a kiss—have things gone wrong with her? How meagre is the harvest she has gathered in from all her anticipated pleasure, how poor a fruition has been hers!

Now that she and her lover are irrevocably separated, she remembers, with many pangs of self-reproach, how tender and true and honest he has proved himself in all his dealings with her; and, though she cannot accuse herself of actual active disloyalty toward him, a hidden voice reminds her how lightly and with what persistent carelessness she accepted all his love, and how indifferently she made return.

With the desire to ease the heartache she is enduring, she tries—in vain—to encourage a wrathful feeling toward him, calling to mind how ready he was to believe her false, how easily he flung her off, for what, after all, was but a fancied offense. But the very agony of his face as he did so disarms her, recollecting as she does every change and all the passionate disappointment of it.

Oh that she had repulsed Philip on the instant when first he took her hand, as it had been in her heart to do!—but for the misery he showed that for the moment softened her. Mercy on such occasions is only cruel kindness, so she now thinks,—and has been her own undoing. And besides, what is his misery to hers?

An intense bitterness, a positive hatred toward Shadwell, who has brought all this discord into her hitherto happy life, grows within her, filling her with a most unjust longing to see him as wretched as he has unwittingly made her; while yet she shrinks with ever-increasing reluctance from the thought that soon she must bring herself to look again upon his dark but handsome face.

Luttrell, too,—she must meet him; and, with such swollen eyes and pallid cheeks, the bare idea brings a little color into her white face.

As eight o'clock strikes, she rises languidly from her bed, dressed as she is, disrobing hurriedly, lest even her woman should guess how wakeful she had been, throws open her window, and lets the pure cold air beat upon her features.

But when Sarah comes she is not deceived. So distressed is she at her young mistress's appearance that she almost weeps aloud, and gives it as her opinion that balls and all such nocturnal entertainments are the invention of the enemy.

CHAPTER XXV.

"Ah, starry hope, that didst arise

But to be overcast!"

—Edgar A. Poe.

"The ring asunder broke."

—German Song.

At breakfast Molly is very pale, and speaks little. She toys with her toast, but cannot eat. Being questioned, she confesses herself fatigued, not being accustomed to late hours.

She neither looks at Luttrell, nor does he seek to attract her attention in any way.

"A good long walk will refresh you more than anything," says Talbot Lowry, who has been spending the past few days at Herst. He addresses Molly, but his eyes seek Cecil's as he does so, in the fond hope that she will take his hint and come with him for a similar refresher to that he has prescribed for Molly.

Cecil's unfortunate encouragement of the night before—displayed more with a view to chagrining Sir Penthony than from a mere leaning toward coquetry—has fanned his passion to a very dangerous height. He is consumed with a desire to speak, and madly flatters himself that there is undoubted hope for him.

To throw himself at Lady Stafford's feet, declare his love, and ask her to leave, for him, a husband who has never been more to her than an ordinary acquaintance, and to renounce a name that can have no charms for her, being devoid of tender recollections or sacred memories, seems to him, in his present over-strained condition, a very light thing indeed. In return, he argues feverishly, he can give her the entire devotion of a heart, and, what is perhaps a more practical offer, a larger income than she can now command.

Then, in the present day, what so easily, or quietly, or satisfactorily arranged, as a divorce in high life, leaving behind it neither spot nor scar, nor anything unpleasant in the way of social ostracism? And this might—nay, should—follow.

Like Molly, he has lain awake since early dawn arranging plans and rehearsing speeches; and now, after breakfast, as he walks beside the object of his adoration through the shrubberies and outer walks into the gardens beyond, carried away by the innate vanity of him, and his foolish self-esteem, and not dreaming of defeat, he decides that the time has come to give voice to his folly.

They are out of view of the windows, when he stops abruptly, and says rashly,—with a pale face, it is true, but a certain amount of composure that bespeaks confidence,—"Cecil, I can keep silence no longer. Let me speak to you, and tell you all that is in my heart."

"He has fallen in love with Molly," thinks Cecil, wondering vaguely at the manner of his address, he having never attempted to call her by her Christian name before.

"You are in love?" she says, kindly, but rather uncertainly, not being able at the moment to call to mind any tender glances of his cast at Molly or any suspicious situations that might confirm her in her fancy.

"Need you ask?" says Lowry, taking her hand, feeling still further emboldened by the gentleness with which she has received his first advance. "Have not all these months—nay, this year past—taught you so much?"

"'This year past?'" Cecil repeats, honestly at sea, and too much surprised by the heat of his manner to grasp at once the real meaning of his words. Though I think a second later a faint inkling of it comes to her, because she releases her hand quickly from his clasp, and her voice takes a sharper tone. "I do not understand you," she says, "Take care you understand—yourself."

But the warning comes too late. Lowry, bent on his own destruction, goes on vehemently:

"I do—too well. Have I not had time to learn it?" he says, passionately. "Have I not spent every day, every hour, in thoughts of you? Have I not lived in anticipation of our meeting? While you, Cecil, surely you, too, were glad when we were together. The best year I have ever known has been this last, in which I have grown to love you."

"Pray cease," says Cecil, hurriedly, stepping back and raising her hand imperiously. "What can you mean? You must be out of your senses to speak to me like this."

Although angry, she is calm, and, indeed, scarcely cares to give way to indignation before Lowry, whom she has always looked upon with great kindness and rather in the light of a boy. She is a little sorry for him, too, that he should have chosen to make a fool of himself with her, who, she cannot help feeling, is his best friend. For to all the moodiness and oddity of his nature she has been singularly lenient, bearing with him when others would have lost all patience. And this is her reward. For a full minute Lowry seems confounded. Then, "I must indeed be bereft of reason," he says, in a low, intense voice, "if I am to believe that you can receive like this the assurance of my love. It cannot be altogether such a matter of wonder—my infatuation for you—as you would have me think, considering how you"—in a rather choked tone—"led me on."

"'Led you on'! My dear Mr. Lowry, how can you talk so foolishly? I certainly thought I knew you very well, and"—docketing off each item on her fingers—"I let you run my messages now and then; and I danced with you; and you sent me the loveliest flowers in London or out of it; and you were extremely kind to me on all occasions; but then so many other men were kind also, that really beyond the flowers,"—going back to her second finger,—"(which were incomparably finer than those I ever received from any one else), I don't see that you were more to me than the others."

"Will you not listen to me? Will you not even let me plead my cause?"

"Certainly not, considering what a cause it is. You must be mad."

"You are cold as ice," says he, losing his head. "No other woman but yourself would consent to live as you do. A wife, and yet no wife!"

"Mr. Lowry," says Lady Stafford, with much dignity but perfect temper, "you forget yourself. I must really beg you not to discuss my private affairs. The life I lead might not suit you or any single one of your acquaintance, but it suits me, and that is everything. You say I am 'cold,' and you are right: I am. I fancied (wrongly) my acknowledged coldness would have prevented such a scene as I have been forced to listen to, by you, to-day. You are the first who has ever dared to insult me. You are, indeed, the first man who has ever been at my feet, metaphorically speaking or otherwise; and I sincerely trust," says Lady Stafford, with profound earnestness, "you may be the last, for anything more unpleasant I never experienced."

"Have you no pity for me?" cries he, passionately. "Why need you scorn my love? Every word you utter tears my heart, and you,—you care no more than if I were a dog! Have you no feeling? Do you never wish to be as other women are, beloved and loving, instead of being as now——"

"Again, sir, I must ask you to allow my private life to be private," says Cecil, still with admirable temper, although her color has faded a good deal, and the fingers of one hand have closed convulsively upon a fold of her dress. "I may, perhaps, pity you, but I can feel nothing but contempt for the love you offer, that would lower the thing it loves!"

"Not lower it," says he, quickly, grasping eagerly at what he vainly hopes is a last chance. "Under the circumstances a divorce could be easily obtained. If you would trust yourself to me there should be no delay. You might easily break this marriage-tie that can scarcely be considered binding."

"And supposing—I do not wish to break it? How then? But enough of this. I cannot listen any longer. I have heard too much already. I must really ask you to leave me. Go."

"Is this how your friendships end?" asks he, bitterly. "Will you deny I was even so much to you?"

"Certainly not. Though I must add that had I known my friendship with you would have put me in the way of receiving so much insult as I have received to-day, you should never have been placed upon my list. Let me pray you to go away now, to leave Herst entirely for the present, because it would be out of the question my seeing you again,—at least until time has convinced you of your folly. You are an old friend, Talbot, and I would willingly try and forget all that has happened to-day, or at all events to remember it only as a passing madness."

"Am I a boy, a fool, that you speak to me like this?" cries he, catching her hand to detain her as she moves away. "And why do you talk of 'insult'? I only urge you to exchange indifference for love,—the indifference of a husband who cares no more for you than for the gravel at your feet."

"And pray, sir, by what rule do you measure the amount of my regard for Lady Stafford?" exclaims Sir Penthony, walking through an open space in the privet hedge that skirts this corner of the garden, where he has been spell-bound for the last two minutes. A short time, no doubt, though a great deal can be said in it.

He is positively livid, and has his eyes fixed, not on his enemy, but on his wife.

Lowry changes color, but gives way not an inch; he also tightens his grasp on Cecil's unwilling hand, and throws up his head defiantly.

"Let my wife's hand go directly," says Stafford, in a low but furious tone, advancing.

By a quick movement Cecil wrenches herself free and gets between the two men. She does not fling herself, she simply gets there, almost—as it seems—without moving.

"Not another word, Sir Penthony," she says, quietly. "I forbid it. I will have no scene. Mr. Lowry has behaved foolishly, but I desire that nothing more be said about it. Go,"—turning to Lowry, who is frowning ominously, and pointing imperiously to a distant gate,—"and do as I asked you a few moments since,—leave Herst without delay."

So strong is her determination to avoid an esclandre, and so masterly is her manner of carrying out her will, that both men instinctively obey her. Sir Penthony lowers his eyes and shifts his aggressive position; Lowry, with bent head, and without another word, walks away from her down the garden-path out of the gate, and disappears—for years.

When he has quite gone, Sir Penthony turns to her.