The Admiral's Daughter

Produced by Al Haines.

[Illustration: Dust cover art]

[Illustration: SHE HERSELF ... WAS THE CENTRAL FIGURE. _Page_ 118.]

[Illustration: Title page]

*The Admiral'S Daughter*

*Margaret Stuart Lane*

Humphrey Milford Oxford University Press London

Reprinted 1927 in Great Britain by T. and A. CONSTABLE LTD. at the University Press, Edinburgh

*Contents*

Chap.

I. THE 'FAIR RETURN' II. GARTH HOUSE III. A LETTER FROM KENSINGTON IV. ROGER TREVANNION V. 'MY LITTLE NIECE' VI. A LADY IN WAITING VII. SIMONE LEBLANC VIII. HAUNTED COVE IX. A MORNING VISIT X. FOREBODING XI. AUNT AND NIECE XII. CHARITY'S LETTER XIII. THE ESCORT XIV. A HALT ON THE ROAD XV. IN THE HARNESS ROOM XVI. EXETER XVII. AN EAST WINDOW XVIII. THE SIGNAL XIX. THE GAOL YARD XX. ZACCHARY'S QUEST XXI. DAWN XXII. THE ROAD TO THE WEST XXIII. HOME XXIV. ELISE PASSES OUT XXV. A FAMILY PARTY XXVI. 'SUMER IS A-COMEN IN'

*Chapter I*

*The *_*Fair Return*_

Spring had come to the West Country, a joyous spring laden with soft airs and odours of distant flowering lands, and filling the hearts of men with a restless delight. It seemed impossible not to be happy, with a blue sky flecked by little clouds running down to meet a blue sea, the hedgerows gleaming with blackthorn, and the pink tips of the beeches shining in the sun. Children were out in the copses, picking primroses; farmers counted their lambs in the pasture, and down in the harbour sailor boys watched the rising tide and were all impatience to be aboard.

On the highest point of a headland to the west of the village of Garth a youth was sitting, staring out on the Channel. A jutting ledge of rock, with a tall boulder at its back, formed a natural chair of stone, and from it the green sward dipped steeply to the cliff. The boy's long, loosely set limbs, showing thin under the wrinkles of his knee breeches, sprawled restlessly across the rocky seat; the heels of his riding boots tore at the grass. In his fixed, seaward gaze there was nothing of the expectancy and hope that marked the faces of the youths in the harbour below. His eyes, that could be so merry, with gold lights dancing in the brown, were sad and dark under the black lashes, and his mouth, losing its shape of laughter, was set in hard lines. The world might be full of glamour, but 'twas not for him; fortune and the hour were all awry; he was out of tune with the spring. And when from the cobbled streets below rose the sound of sailors singing, mingled with the noises which to a practised ear betokened tide and time, the boy's black head dropped, and with a smothered word he set his knees together and drew his hands across his ears.

Sitting there he was unaware of the approach of light footsteps along a narrow path that wound over the headland, and only when a hand tapped his shoulder did he raise his head.

'Marion!' he said, springing to his feet, a smile banishing his dark looks; 'where have you been all this time?'

The brown eyes, now all alight, met a pair of steady grey ones whose owner dropped him a mock curtsey, then stood looking at him from head to foot and back again.

'You are a most uncomfortable person to know, Roger,' she said. 'I cannot keep the same impression of you two months together. You are inches taller than when I saw you last; your shoulders bid fair to burst your jacket seams; your eyebrows are several degrees blacker. I wish you would determine what length you are going to be, and abide by it.'

The boy looked ruefully down at the long limbs, all unaware (as the girl knew) how generously nature had dealt out her gifts to him, so that his great size was carried with an easy grace.

'You'll have to bear with it, I fear,' he said, with a shyness that always overcame him when considering his length and girth. 'I suppose it comes of having tall forbears. Sit down and talk to me. What is in that basket?'

'Bake-meats for your funeral, I judged, coming along. Ah! This is good.'

The girl settled on the stone seat, folding her hands in her lap, and turned her face to the sea. She did not at once begin to speak, and her companion, knowing her ways, sat silent. He took the occasion to steal one or two sidelong looks at the profile offered him, and in doing so was assailed (not for the first time) by the disquieting thought that his little playmate was altering fast. The chin was still a shade long, the nose rather short, the mouth still drooped at the corners, the freckles still over-ran the colourless skin: all the peculiarities which Roger had not failed to bring to the owner's notice, whenever an opportunity offered itself during the last ten years, were without doubt unchanged. According to Marion, Roger's progress towards manhood was measurable in square feet. Her own advancing womanhood was much less tangible a growth. Stealthily eyeing the averted face, Roger found himself at a loss to define the change, and not being given to habits of analysis, he left the mystery unsolved.

For a while the girl watched the sea-gulls flashing in the sunlight; then turned to her companion.

'This is good,' she repeated. 'For the first time for six weeks I feel free. All this age I have been in attendance on Aunt Keziah. She left us yesterday, you know, and before she went she must needs turn the house topsy-turvy. Curnow has been at her wits' end. My aunt had the guest-chamber hangings down, and discovered a flaw in the gold stitch; and nothing must serve but that Elise and I should sit with our needles--and--in all this lovely weather--and go over the whole pattern. And then, after that--oh la! I won't talk about it. That is where I've been. And you?'

'Lambs,' said the young man shortly. 'Calves, pigs, chickens. Twenty acres ploughed.' The unhappy expression came into his face.

The girl's grey eyes rested on him a moment. 'Still the same?' she asked, her voice soft.

Roger looked at her and looked away again to the sea, making no reply. His companion waited, sitting motionless. Twenty times in his growing manhood he had tried to shut the door on his sorrows, and twenty times it had opened at the sound of those gentle tones.

'I do not know how long I can go on bearing it,' he said, after a time. 'Last night I spoke to my mother again, and she wept and begged me to wait another little while ... gave me once more, as if I should forget--or as if it could make any difference--the story of my father's drowning. For that matter, what sailor would wish to die abed? But women can never understand that.' Roger poked the grass with his holly stick and went on, not seeing the look of mingled pity and amusement that ran across his hearer's face. 'Do you know that down yonder in the harbour is the _Fair Return_, put in from Plymouth, outward bound for--oh--the other end of the world. They are picking up Jack Poole here. _Jack Poole_. And here am I, my father's son, who had sailed to the Indies and back before he was my age; and I am--a prosperous young farmer. Bah! Did you see her, the _Fair Return_?'

'I did.'

'I cannot bear to see her set sail, and I cannot bear not to. That is why I am up here. In another hour the tide will turn and she will go. I cannot bear to look at the sea, even, and I cannot bear not to. All my life slipping away from me. Pigs, calves, lambs. Twenty acres ploughed. And yonder'--the boy's eyes sought the west--'uncharted seas to cross, lands to explore, fortunes to find; the great, great world. No one knows how big the world is. And I shall never know because my mother weeps and bids me wait--wait. Do you know what the sea is like when it calls?'

The girl's face was turned away.

'Really, Roger,' she said lightly, after a moment's pause. 'How old are you? I should know, for there are but twelve months between us. Eighteen and a half, are you? And you say your life is slipping away. You are truly laughable. You might be an old man of thirty. Patience, Roger!' she went on, her voice deepening a little. 'What guarantee have you from fate that what has happened must continue so to happen--that life must needs go on for ever as it is now? Patience for another little while! Who knows what fortune, what great fortune, is awaiting you? What adventure, what discoveries, what honours? And how worth while the little waiting will have been! A ship seven times fairer than the _Fair Return_--nay, seven ships. Seven uncharted seas to cross--nay, seven worlds to sail round!' She laughed a brave little laugh, and the youth turned his eyes from the sea and his discontent.... 'I should like to shake you! Now come along with me to old Mother Poole's. I have a dozen of eggs and one of Curnow's spiced cakes for her in this basket, to comfort her somewhat for the departure of that rascal of a son.'

Roger sprang to his feet and drew a long breath. 'And if I have seven ships, they shall all be called Marion. You always put heart in me, little Mawfy. You are wiser than I.'

The girl made a grimace. 'I feel as old as Aunt Keziah this minute, but don't make me also feel I should wear cassock and bands, sir.'

Turning inland, the two walked slowly across the hill.

'So Mistress Penrock has gone away,' said Roger. 'I'm very glad. I am mortally afraid of your Aunt Keziah, although I only saw her once, when she was walking with the Admiral. Where is she going to stay now?'

'At Bath, where she says she will hear a little of the world, and not be dependent on a news sheet. How we live in this monstrously dull hole she cannot conceive. She said so her last night at supper.'

'And your father?'

'My father laughs at her. He loves to hear her talk. So does Elise, although she and my aunt are sworn enemies'--Marion smiled--'But Aunt Keziah has unsettled Elise a little, I think. Elise has a great hankering after gaiety. Do you know, Roger, my father has written asking my Aunt Constance to visit us from London. I have never seen her, but like you with my Aunt Keziah, I am in terror of her already. Aunt Keziah says (rather scornfully, I think, to hide her envy) that Aunt Constance is one of the greatest ladies at Court.'

'Why did the Admiral ask her then?' innocently inquired Roger. 'Garth is not the place for a Court beauty.'

'My father loves to be entertained. Apart from that, he thinks I am growing up entirely lacking in the airs and graces that do become a young lady,' said Marion demurely. 'And if my aunt will not come here, perhaps I may go to her.'

'What! You go to London--you?'

'I, sir, I. Why not?'

Roger stood still and looked down at the mocking face, the black bars of his eyebrows drawn together.

'I think the Admiral must be going mad! London! Pshaw! The Court!--airs, graces, forsooth! Intrigues and ferments. Discontent with the simple life you are so contented with now. Why cannot the Admiral let well alone?'

Marion gave one of her father's sudden chuckles.

'You won't be here to see the result of my father's folly, you know. You'll be out on the seven seas adventuring. What can the happenings down here count for a sailor? Now, if you cannot hold that basket carefully, give it to me.'

'I say the Admiral is mad,' said the young man again, kicking at the stones in his path. 'What would the world be were one ten times a sailor, without places like Garth and Marions living in them? 'Tis for men to go abroad, and maids to stay at home--or, if one of you must go, let Elise go, who has a craving for society, and to become an elegant lady.'

'Yes, but, Roger, I am my father's daughter, and Elise is but his ward. It is only fair that I should go first and Elise later. But all this is idle talk. It may never happen at all. Look! is not that beautiful?'

The path had wound round the head of a copse that curled like a snake in and out of the folds of the hills. For some time their eyes had been on the trees and bushes of the glades, the primroses starring their path. Suddenly, bearing round the edge of the wood, they were come in view of the village and open harbour again, the cottages at the waterside nestling in the soft haze, and beyond the twin headlands of the water mouth, the sapphire bar of the sea. The young man looked once, but his eyes were caught by the lines of the _Fair Return_, and with a pang he turned his face inland again.

'Yes!' he said constrainedly. 'It is beautiful.' His keen gaze swept the valley. 'Ah--look there--horsemen coming down the Bodmin Road. What can be wanting in Garth?'

'Mother Poole will tell us,' said Marion. 'She knows everything.'

The fisherwife's cottage lay about a mile up the valley, and the two, bearing down to it on narrow paths, lost for a time the sight of the high road.

'See! There are the horsemen still!' exclaimed Marion when the prospect widened again. 'They have turned into the lane. They are making for Mother Poole's cottage. Oh Roger'--Marion gripped his arm--'surely, surely 'tis nothing about Jack and that terrible rising. I thought it was forgotten long ago.'

'The spies of Jeffreys never forget,' replied Roger quietly. 'And Jack broke out of gaol, you remember. He is still in the eyes of the law a prisoner. Brave lad, Jack! But if 'tis he they're after, with luck they'll miss their man. He should be aboard by now, and Jeffreys will need a long arm to catch Poole on the _Fair Return_ once past the mouth. I think I'll just run down and see what they're about.'

'Roger'--Marion's hand tightened--'you cannot, you cannot. There are six horsemen yonder, all armed. A word from you and they'll take you as well.'

'I cannot let Jack be caught like a rat in a trap,' said Roger. 'Let go my arm, Mawfy.'

At that moment the cottage door opened and a man in sailor's garb came down the path. An old woman, her apron at her eyes, stood in the doorway looking after him. Not till he reached the gate--perhaps because the sadness of his mother's farewell dimmed his eyes--did he become aware of the horsemen in the path. He gave one glance round, a step backward, and then stood still. It was too late. In three minutes the sorry little act was played out. A couple of the horsemen swung from their saddles. Another covered the sailor with his carbine. The old woman, running to her son's side, was roughly thrust away.

'No, Roger, no,' came Marion's whisper on the slope above, almost in earshot of the group in the lane. 'No.' Both her hands, white at the knuckles, gripped his sleeve, the boy dragging away from her. At that moment the leader of the soldiers caught sight of the two above. The young man's attitude and desire were clear to his eyes. A few low words passed between the men. One set his horse at the slope and was recalled; some urgency bade the group go on their way: one of the swift decisions that serve to toss a straw into the balance of fate. They turned their horses, the sailor running at the stirrup of his captor.

But the leader looked again, a searching look, at the motionless youth on the slope. And as he cantered off, Marion dropped the arm she held and stared after him, shivering slightly.

'I shall know him if I see him again, anyhow,' said Roger, smiling. 'Come, Mawfy, there's old Mother Poole sorely in need of comfort now.'

*Chapter II*

*Garth House*

The little fishing village of Garth had two chief points of pride: its harbour and the family of Penrock. And it was not the way of the villagers to hide their light under a bushel. They wore their honours with a flourish and imposed them on the public eye. Let a fishing vessel manned by Devon men (the natural and first-hand enemies of the Cornish) be driven before a sudden gale to take shelter in Garth harbour, and her crew by so much as a glance doubt the superiority of that harbour, then those unhappy sailors would find that the rocks without the river mouth had been a kinder refuge. And no one knew better than the fishing folk of Garth how the fortunes of the village had for generations been linked with those of the grey, gabled house nestling in its combe a mile up the valley.

They might rail at the 'Admur'l' as they liked; it was an affectionate raillery. That lean, wooden-legged figure stumping about the terrace at Garth House was their hearts' lord. Like the king, he could do no wrong. Whether his eyes twinkled with merriment or took on that round, unwinking stare which was a sign of anger, it was all one to the villagers. They could as ill have spared sun and wind as the Admiral, were he cross or hearty. In fact, if a week went by without a sight of him 'down along,' they grew uneasy; and when his rosy face, with its overhanging brows and huge nose, looking like that of a benevolent eagle, peered in at their casements, and a deep voice--as of the sea heard through a fog--boomed out a greeting, all would be well again. His clumping tread heard on the cobblestones would bring the children from the farther cottages with their fingers tugging their forelocks, and crying, ''Ere be the Admur'l, Mother. Marnin', Admur'l'; and down on the quay, 'Will 'ee be telling us now, Admur'l, what so be's wrong with they ropes? Un don't knot like as they belong to do.'

Had the Admiral by some miracle been able to change the flagstones of his terrace for the decks of a ship, all Garth would have flocked to his standard. But the Admiral's fighting days were over. He had seen his last shot fired in an engagement with the Dutch, twenty years earlier, and few Garth seamen had cared to enlist in another's service. Fishing was now the villagers' daily employment, fighting roving French Channel pirates their recreation. And if sometimes their little craft ran up the river with cargoes of a more mysterious nature than the harvest of the sea, the wise Admiral was sure to know nothing about it.

For that matter, in these days he had ample for his employment. There were the affairs of the parish over which, with Parson Stowe at his elbow as chancellor, he cast an imperial eye. He was a county magistrate, and since the Restoration that had been no easy office. There were the lands and farming of Garth to supervise. Moreover, since the death of my lady, now ten years ago, he had been father, mother, and tutor to his little daughter Marion.

The Admiral had always been a headstrong, self-willed man, hard to move except (as his wife knew) by love, or (as his servants knew) by laughter. And when my lady died--leaving him harder stricken by the blow than folk knew--he would consider no plans but his own for the upbringing of his little daughter. The two were constantly together; the child, with her solemn white little face which could suddenly break into heartening laughter--a trick inherited from her father--running backwards and forwards from the length of his hand as they walked about the garden or watched the men busy in the fields; the child sitting at a high chair by her father's place at table, struggling with the food he piled on her plate at dinner, or at supper eating her bread and milk from the silver bowl that bore her mother's name. Every night the Admiral stumped upstairs to kiss her face on the pillow and draw the curtains close, his 'good-night' booming on the stairs after he had closed the door with something of the thunder of the tides on the headlands below.

The first few months after my lady's death passed thus. Then the relatives of the Admiral begged to be allowed--as they thought--to come to the rescue. First the Admiral's two sisters, then various cousins, offered to come to Garth and mother the motherless maid for him. The Admiral made short work of it, answering each with a blank refusal. The refusal sufficed for all except one: Mistress Keziah Penrock, a maiden lady living at Exeter in a great rambling house that had been built by an eccentric maternal grandfather in the shadow of old Rougemont Castle. A correspondence lasting for some months ran between the pair, the lady holding up the prospect of 'civilisation' in the Cathedral town in contrast with the savage state of a remote Cornish village. In the end, Mistress Keziah, losing her temper, wrote a letter which the wise Admiral left unanswered, knowing that in no way would the last word be said quite so effectively as in silence. Meantime half a year had run on and little Marion was still untended.

The parson, hearing rumour of this from Mrs. Curnow, the housekeeper, ventured to come up and argue the point with his patron over a game of piquet. But the Admiral listened only to the first few words.

'Let her be brought up well or ill,' he said, laying down his cards and fixing the parson with an unwinking, parrot-like stare, 'she bides here alone with me. The matter is settled. The housekeeper can teach her her needle. There's Mistress Trevannion yonder who, I'll wager, will know when she wants a new petticoat. You and I will see to her books.'

And that, Mr. Stowe found, was the end of the argument; but the Admiral, roused (though he would not have confessed it) to the sense of his child's needs, bestirred himself.

The carrier brought down from a book-stall at the sign of the _Three Bibles_ on London Bridge, a box of school books, French and Latin. On these volumes, which the small pupil turned over in unfeigned dislike, the parson nodded approval. 'Must I learn all these?' asked Marion, her mouth down at the corners. 'I had far rather play with you, Father.'

'And my daughter be brought up as unlearned as a kitchen-wench?' retorted the Admiral.

The child pondered. 'Did my mother know all these books?' she asked.

'She did,' said the Admiral, his great voice breaking. 'She was wiser than your father.'

Here the parson bethought himself. 'But the English reading, sir,' he said. 'There's nothing here but foreign tongues.'

His patron pointed to the two volumes that constituted his own library: Hakluyt's Voyages and Plutarch's Lives. 'And there is the Bible and Master Shakespeare's works in her mother's room above,' he said. 'If she thrives not on these she thrives not at all.'

The lessons began, and brought with them a new and secret joy for the Admiral. He had never been much of a school man, and his knowledge of Latin and French grammar was slight. True, he spoke the French language with ease, and failed not to hector the parson on the subject of accent; but he soon found that in grammar he must needs be a pupil instead of tutor, as he had originally stated to Mr. Stowe. The Admiral and Marion, sitting side by side, conned their declensions together, the seaman's double bass and the child's pipe blended. In this duet the slender clear notes were so often drowned that the parson plucked up courage to remonstrate.

'Sir,' he said, 'if you will not be silent, how can I hear the child construe?'

The Admiral regarding him, his face growing purple with merriment, left the table to splutter at his ease on the terrace. Certainly, whatever the result might be for Marion, schooling was good for her father, seeing that, in the pages of his grammar, and under the parson's solemn eye, he found again the laughter he had lost.

Other matters went apace. With the help of the housekeeper and Mistress Trevannion of the Manor House, the little girl learned not only to hem her sheets, but to make those numerous 'stitches' in embroidery that were her teacher's delight. Concerning this branch of her industry, it being beyond his ken, the Admiral was disposed to be critical. Secretly proud as he was of the little maid's skill, he became nevertheless uneasy about the hours she must needs bend over her silks. To the housekeeper's argument that all young ladies spent their time thus he paid no heed save to 'Pish!' and 'Pshaw.' And one day when Mistress Trevannion, thinking to win his approval, counted on her fingers the stitches Marion had already learned--cross-stitch, tent-stitch, long and short stitch, crewel and feather-stitch, tent-on-the-finger, tent-on-the-frame, gold-stitch, fern-stitch, satin-stitch, and rosemary stitch--the Admiral cried for mercy and vowed his brain was reeling.

'Enough,' he said, striking with his stick on the stone flags of the hall. 'Let be. There are hangings and quilts and cushions in the house to last my grandsons. And the child has already wrought me three night-caps in such a device I dare not sleep in them for fear of dreams. Let be. She may stitch, if stitch she must, at that satin sheet you have just set in her frame. 'Twill last her, on and off, a lifetime. But she shall do it when she pleases.'

Mrs. Trevannion was aghast at this heresy, but the Admiral had his way. The work-stand holding Marion's 'wrought sheet'--a crimson quilt embroidered with a pattern of flowers--was placed by the great chimney in the hall, and the young lady took up her silks and laid them down as she willed. Much more to her taste were her rides with Zacchary the groom and Roger Trevannion, who from childhood days had been her constant playfellow; the long mornings she and Roger spent with their bows and arrows, shooting at targets set by the Admiral; her days in Jack Poole's boat on the river, the fishing expeditions in Bob Tregarthen's cutter; her afternoons spent in the garden on a pretence of reading with her father. Once a week a tutor rode out from Bodmin to teach her dancing and music. Next to the archery practice, in which sport she was becoming unusually skilled, these lessons were Marion's special delight, and were shared by Roger until he went to school at Blundell's in Tiverton.

With Roger and her father, and kind Mistress Trevannion in the background, Marion's life had been a happy one. Roger's going was a sore blow, and would have saddened the autumn for her, had not fate put up a finger to turn her thoughts in another direction.

Coming up from the village one morning, she found the house in a commotion, the great travelling coach with its four horses out in the courtyard, and Zacchary ready, as outrider, with the chestnut mare.

'Here a be!' called one of the stable boys to some one within, 'here be Mistress Marion.'

Forthwith Marion was hastily summoned to her father's room, where Peter, his man, was dressing him in his best clothes. A travelling cloak and a couple of pistols lay on the bed.

'Father!' cried Marion, 'where are you going?'

Then the Admiral put Peter to the door, saying he would do very well now, and took the maid upon his knee, pressing a kiss upon her troubled face.

'It means this, sweetheart,' he said. 'I'm going to London. Yes, to London, to bring some one back. A playmate for you, little one.'

He stroked her waving hair as he spoke, and kissed her again, the child, as was her way, taking it very quietly, but opening her grey eyes wide.

'You remember what I told you about poor de Delauret?'

Marion nodded. More than once her father had related the incident of his friendship for the French gentleman whom he had met on an expedition to the Indies. They had begun as enemies and crossed swords; they had ended by being sworn friends. De Delauret had nursed the Admiral through a vile fever; the Englishman later on had saved his friend from death at the hand of a rascal, who was for having his purse and jewelled rapier. During the years of the Admiral's fighting life the two had kept up a constant intercourse. Once the Admiral had gone to visit de Delauret in his home in Brittany, and found the Frenchman in sore trouble. His wife had just died and left him with an infant daughter, and he himself was ailing.

'What shall I do,' says he, 'about the little one, should I die? My Elise may be a great heiress through her mother's house. She will be sought after, taken to Court. And, saving the King's Majesty, you know what the Court of Louis is.'

The Admiral took the sick man's hand in his great one.

'You're not going to die,' says he. 'But, if you do, s'death, man! I'll take your child, and my wife shall bring her up at Garth.'

So the compact was settled. M. de Delauret did not die. But he was never again strong enough to travel, the Admiral later on was invalided; so the two lost sight of each other, and the great friendship was expressed only in occasional letters.

'And now poor de Delauret's gone,' said the Admiral, 'and wrote me a letter before he died, reminding me of my promise. Three months the letter has been in coming. Elise and her woman are in London. I must hasten and fetch her at once. And I must see my lawyer in London so that he can arrange the poor child's affairs with de Delauret's attorney in Paris. That is the story, little one. Kiss me and let me go.'

Presently with a great bustle the Admiral was gone, Marion watching the coach from the terrace and waving her handkerchief as the horses took the corner by the church. Then she flung herself on the grass and burst into tears.

'I shall hate her,' she said. 'I hate her now.'

But when the Admiral came back, a fortnight later, with the sallow, frightened-looking little girl who was a year younger than Marion, she was so much interested that she forgot all about the hating. Only when there was another girl in the house did Marion realise how lonely it had been before. Elise's gowns and cloaks, too, her boxes full of finery, woke in Marion an instinct that had been sleeping. Nothing would serve but the tailor must be ordered from Plymouth to make Marion some new gowns. Marion's halting French and Elise's lisped English joined to make a commotion in the house, just as Elise's maid, Victoire, conspired with Mrs. Curnow the housekeeper to make the servants' quarters unusually lively. The two children, adaptable as only the very young are, soon learned each other's ways and became great friends.

'One thing is certain,' mused the Admiral, who, in truth, was the one to be pitied, as he dragged his wooden leg in solitude about the garden, 'times are changed. Whether for good or ill we shall see.'

After a while, the Admiral concluded that 'good or ill' was beside the mark. The results of the coming of his ward could not be so easily assessed. The French girl brought a certain quality into the house which was for Marion's improvement: racial touches, the stories of her own land and coast, a new string of interests about which Marion's thoughts began to twine themselves. On the other hand, there were points in Elise's character that made the Admiral uneasy for his daughter's sake. The French girl seemed to be lacking in the sense of honour which, fully developed in Marion, was her father's pride. She was not above petty deceptions; there ran a strain of secrecy through her doings which her guardian, appearing not to notice, thoroughly condemned. 'Any one would think she had something to hide,' he mused.

Had the Admiral been aware of the stories growing in the village and the gossip in the servants' hall when Victoire was absent, he would have been more uneasy still. But nothing came to his ears.

The household, if not greatly liking the French girl, tolerated her. But there was one person in whom she inspired a profound distrust, and that was Roger Trevannion. Roger took the innovation with bad grace when he came home for his first holidays and found the Admiral's ward installed at Garth, and was scarce better minded on the second (when he brought his school friend, Dick Hooper, with him), thereby making himself the object of much raillery from Marion. Dick Hooper, a fair-faced, fair-haired youth, was the son of the Squire of St. Brennion. Marion found the company of the two boys agreeably diverting after the quieter life she had been leading with Elise. Her old headlong rides were resumed in their company, Elise on these occasions absenting herself, to the undisguised relief of two of the party. Bows and arrows came out once more, and Roger forgave Marion for beating him by a yard because Hooper was watching; and Roger's pride in Marion was unbounded.

As time went on, the Admiral could deceive himself no longer. He was disappointed in the daughter of his friend. Many times he considered whether it would not be wise to separate the two girls for a time, sending one or the other on a round of visits among his kinsfolk. Then he saw how untouched Marion was, how proof her nature was against any contact, what a pleasant intercourse seemed to obtain between the two, and he put the matter from him.

So months drifted into years. Marion grew up a tall, supple girl, but without the promise of her mother's perfect beauty. 'Her'll never be so lovely as my lady,' said the village. 'Wait,' said the mistress of the Manor. 'Hair gold to russet. Her mother's poise of head and her mother's neck and throat. A skin like curds. Her father's grey eyes and the Penrock look. Wait.'

Not until the girl was nearly seventeen did the Admiral suddenly wake up to realise that his 'little maid' was dangerously near womanhood. Also, he could not hide from himself the fact that Elise, now the heiress of a considerable estate in France (governed by Delauret's attorney) could not for ever stay hidden in a Cornish village. Hazy ideas of the future began to float about his mind, of his duty to these two young ladies in his care. But with Marion's seventeenth birthday came the landing of Monmouth at Lyme. The Admiral ceased to be a father and became a loyalist magistrate.

With the spring of the following year, however, Mistress Keziah Penrock came down with her coach and servants from Bath, and before she left, did more than find holes in the guest chamber hangings. Time, and the lady's curiosity about her niece, had healed the breach between brother and sister. Thus, for the first time for twelve years, Mistress Keziah visited the home of her childhood. In Marion she scarcely recognised the little one she had seen before; but during her stay the shrewd eyes had glimpses of depths of resolution and hardihood under the girl's gentle demeanour that made the old woman grave. 'She'll go her own way,' she mused. 'And whether 'tis a bid for sorrow or happiness 'twill be just the same. Her mother's given her that sweetness, but she's a Penrock.'

One night when 'the child,' as the Admiral persisted in calling his daughter, was abed, Mistress Keziah hazarded to her brother a plan she had conceived concerning her niece's future. A slight disappointment had preceded the making of this plan. She had hoped Marion would be affectionately inclined towards her and consent to coming to Exeter awhile. But the lady, not realising in time that Marion was no longer a child--indeed being the age when most girls in that period were either married or embroidering their wedding clothes--had weighed a little too heavily on her authority. She had said, 'Do this, my child,' where it had been wiser to say 'Will you, my dear?' She was keen-sighted enough to see that the girl would not come to her for her pleasure, and being sincerely attached to her, decided to try other means of wresting her from that beleaguered garrison which she was pleased to consider Garth had become. Deciding the moment was good, she opened fire on the Admiral.

'Let Marion go up to Constance a spell, or get Constance to come here. A beautiful girl like that should not be married off-hand to a country squire.'

'Married!' said the Admiral, aghast. 'Who's talking of marriage, pray? Not the child herself?'

'Marion has never even thought of it,' said the lady quietly. 'That is the way you have brought her up.'

'All the better,' replied the Admiral with a look of content. Then the heavy brows drew down at an unaccustomed idea. 'Beautiful? Marion beautiful? Nonsense!'

'It were just as well Marion did not hear you say so, or the men fishing in the Channel for that matter,' icily remarked the lady.

The thought was new to the Admiral, who had long ago settled his mind to the fact that however adorable his child might be, beauty was not her lot.

'Her chin is a trifle long,' mused the lady, 'her nose a trifle short. But somehow each makes the other right. 'Tis a straight little nose. She has no colouring, it is true, and her hair is rather spoiled, bleached in parts, through exposure to the sun. But she has the Penrock eyes and air.' The lady drew herself up. She had been a noted beauty in her youth.

The Admiral pish'd and pshaw'd at regular intervals during his sister's recital. 'Why, even Elise says----' he began gravely, watching her.

'Elise!' cries Mistress Keziah, fanning herself with great energy. 'I pray you, brother, do not mention that young person to me just now. I have more to say about her anon. And now, sir,' rising and dropping a state curtsey, 'I will bid you good night.'

And so the old lady swept off to her room.

Between Mistress Keziah and Elise there had been war from the beginning, and only Marion's tact had saved an open breach before her aunt's visit came to an end. The Admiral, watching the sparring of his sister and his ward, and noting how shrewdly the young girl delivered her blows, had been greatly entertained and amused. But the night before she left, Mistress Keziah was closeted a long time with her brother, and when she sought her own chamber the man's chuckles had ceased.

For a long time he sat smoking over the dying logs. Then as he rose and knocked out his pipe, he looked at the portrait of his wife, hanging above the mantelshelf.

'If thou hadst not gone, sweetheart,' he said, the grim old face sorrowful, 'all this had been changed long ago.'

*Chapter III*

*A Letter From Kensington*

When Marion told, at supper, the story of Jack Poole's arrest, the Admiral had no pity whatever to show. If there was one failing about which he was merciless, it was a sympathy with the rebel cause. The truth might be, as Marion guessed, that his heart was sore for Poole's folly in joining Monmouth's standard, for Jack and Bob Tregarthen had more nearly touched the inner circle of the life at Garth than any other of the villagers; but he gave no sign of it.

'Poole has made his bed, and he must lie on it,' he said, slicing at the collared head. 'And all the more pity for his mother.'

'And Charity Borlase,' softly put in Marion. 'Poor girl!'

'He not only made his bed,' remarked Elise, 'but he turned it when he escaped from Bodmin gaol. 'Tis bad enough to make a bed, but to turn it is sheer folly. Defying fate, I say.'

The lack of sympathy in the girl's tone nettled Marion. Indeed, the words were more than unsympathetic; behind them seemed to lie a touch of hardness, of calculated malice, as if on the whole Elise was pleased at the fisher-lad's detention.

Marion's grey eyes looked hard at her across the table. Something had lately seemed to emerge like a cloud that blurred her old regard for Elise, an instinct, hitherto sleeping, rising to respond to her aunt's criticism of her. And Marion was quite unaware that the sharp-eyed French girl was conscious of a subtle change in the attitude of her friend.

More than once Elise had heartily wished Mistress Penrock had never darkened the doors of her guardian's house. She had had overmuch of Aunt Keziah, more than Marion knew. Elise was genuinely fond of Marion. She had never felt more attached to her than at the present moment, in the relief of the elder lady's departure; but the demon lurking in her heart nevertheless singled out Marion as a point of attack; and Elise knew better than any one else just where to strike. Here was a chance of paying back on the niece the snubs she had received from the aunt.

In the short silence that fell after Elise's remarks, Marion had a sudden vision of the look her aunt would have cast on the speaker. How nearly her own expression resembled that of the old lady at the time Marion did not know, but Elise saw it and her mouth tightened. The Admiral, with his sister's warnings fresh in his mind, glanced at his ward sitting there in her elaborate gown that contrasted so much with Marion's. (For though Marion had taken a keen interest in her gowns since the French girl's arrival, she had a naturally simple and rather austere taste.) The Admiral considered the girl afresh. It was not that Elise's skin was unpleasantly sallow, or her features too sharp; but there was something in the expression of the face that made it seem so. As Mistress Keziah had said to her brother when he spoke of the 'poor girl's' looks, 'Tut, tut, brother, where are those sharp eyes of yours? 'Tis not her face. Her face is well enough for a Frenchwoman. All Frenchwomen are yellow. What's wrong with Elise's face is Elise.'

Though neither knew it, the same thought was passing through the mind of father and daughter.

'It was a very great pity that Jack did not get aboard the _Fair Return_ sooner,' Marion went quietly on. 'She's bound for Virginia, I think, and Jack would have been well out of the way.'

'So you are on his side, as well as Roger?'

Marion started and looked again, harder than ever, at Elise. The French girl's face was set, and a malicious gleam shot from her eyes. The Admiral gave a glance over his shoulder, but the servant was gone to the buttery for more ale.

'I said not Roger was on his side,' said Marion, in her usual even tones.

Elise, angrier than ever in the face of Marion's calm, threw all discretion to the winds.

'But he would have tried to save him had you not stopped him.'

Here the Admiral turned his eagle look full on Elise. 'Not a word before the servants,' he said sternly.

The man came in as he spoke, and filling his master's tankard took his place behind his chair. A dark flush mounted to Elise's face, but she said no more. Presently Peter placed the pudding and custards and went out.

'Was there any one else with you when you saw Poole's arrest?' suddenly asked the Admiral of his ward. He had been thinking a little while Marion, in her tranquil way, showing no sign of uneasiness, had gone on talking of ordinary affairs.

Elise, taken off her guard by an unexpected question, stammered slightly. 'I, sir? I never said...' Then faced by her guardian's penetrating eye. 'No, sir.'

The Admiral 'humphed' and turned to the pudding. Marion was silent. Then after a pause, in ominously quiet tones he spoke again. 'Tell us once more exactly what passed, Marion.'

The colour came and went in Marion's face as she obeyed. 'It was not that Roger was on anybody's side, sir,' she said at the finish. 'But Roger always had a great kindness for Jack, as I truly have, as we all have, and he was thinking of the boy, not the party.'

'Of course, of course,' came the Admiral's deep voice in hearty assent. 'Roger Trevannion cares neither for Rebel nor Loyalist, Catholic nor Protestant. All he cares for is to be a sailor.'

Her father's words at once dispelled Marion's lurking fears concerning his attitude to Roger, and her face relaxed a little. Then looking up at Elise she saw a peculiar expression in her eyes, and a dim sense of foreboding assailed her.

There was silence for a few minutes. The man at the head of the table was wearing a look his fellows on the bench knew well. His eyes grew round and hard, as if he had borrowed blue granite marbles for the occasion. Marion, fearing a storm, cast about for some excuse to leave the table. While she was pondering, her father spoke.

'What I cannot understand, Elise,' he said, obviously trying to soften his voice, 'is how your father's daughter comes to have such ways. He was never crooked. He could not be. You know full well, as well as I, the truth of what I have just said concerning the direction of Roger's interests. You are shrewd enough.'

The ugly colour flushed the girl's sallow face again, but she said no word.

The Admiral, staunch loyalist as he was known to be, lowered his voice again, glancing at the closed doors. 'From what we have seen here of the results of that miserable rising, you also know as well as I that such words as you spoke of Roger, overheard by the domestics, breathed abroad and strengthened, as is the way of idle tales, are enough to send the lad to the gallows. Were you one of Jeffreys' agents, well and good. Were you not of the family, well and good. All's fair in war, folk say. But, out of idle malice to give away the life of one's own people--Roger Trevannion is almost as my own son--s'death, girl!' the Admiral's fist smote the table, and his voice slipped its leash, 'how comes a de Delauret to act thus?'

Marion sat aghast, trembling.

'Father,' she implored, distressed and embarrassed at the outburst. Never before had she heard the Admiral speak thus to his ward. But before her father could say anything more, Elise rose from the table, tears in her eyes.

'I am sorry to have offended you, sir,' she said. 'And if my presence is irksome----'

The man stirred uneasily in his chair. He could never abide the sight of women's tears.

'Tut, tut--there's no call for weeping. Sit down. We'll say no more about it. Let us have some more of that pudding, Marion.'

Elise wiped her eyes on her lace handkerchief and pulled awkwardly at its border.

'A little more conserve, Elise,' said Marion gently. ''Tis your favourite, you know.'

The awkward moment passed. The Admiral poured out a little wine for the ladies, and calling 'The King!' drained his own glass.

Presently Marion rose, and the two girls, leaving the Admiral to finish his bottle, went into the hall, which served as a general sitting-room. The little drawing-room above had never been used since my lady's death. According to the wishes of the Admiral that apartment had never been invaded by 'the children.' It remained exactly as in the last days of its mistress, with the little card box and the sugar-plum box on the small table by the high-backed chair, and the work frame with its needle, now sadly rusted, where the fair fingers of the lady of Garth had left it. The servants used lovingly to say that their master went to pray there; and certainly he had been seen to come out with a suspiciously dim look in his honest sailor's eyes.

The evening was soft and warm, full of spring airs, and the doors and casements of the hall were set wide. Without a word Elise settled herself in one of the broad mullioned window seats and took up the embroidery of a petticoat she had in hand. Her mouth was tightly set, her eyes over bright. Marion, her thoughts all criss-cross in her head, like Elise's fancy stitches, sat down at the spinet. She found a relief in drawing out the tinkling airs, and oddly to her as she sat came a dim memory of her mother in a rose-coloured gown sitting on that same stool, playing, when her little daughter, her 'sweet baby,' was taken in to kiss her good night. A wave of loneliness surged over her, and finding her fingers, turned her tunes into sad ones. For the first time she realised that her aunt's presence, while appearing in the nature of a trial, had been a support whose need she had only just begun to realise. She suddenly felt very young, very inexperienced, very forlorn. There was an indefinable change coming over the house, as shapeless as the first wisps that fore-ran the grey sea fogs of the coast. The sad tinkling airs went on and presently drew the Admiral from his bottle.

'Mawfy, Mawfy,' says he, pulling aside the curtain that hung over the dining-room door, 'if you go on much longer I'll be calling to be measured for my shroud.'

Marion smiled and turned into a livelier key but before she had played many bars a door opened to admit Peter bearing a salver.

'A letter, sir,' he said. 'Zacchary found un waiting down to the coaching house to Lostwithiel, sir.'

The Admiral gave a glance at the superscription, then broke the seals.

'Our fair Constance, if I mistake not. Let us see what she writes.'

In a few minutes he laid the letter down with a broad smile.

'None of the Penrocks can write,' he observed, 'and Connie was ever the worst. Her brother has somewhat amended himself since he became his daughter's fellow pupil, but Constance has not had that advantage. Still, the letter has the great virtue of brevity. Read it, Mawfy.'

'Deere brother,' wrote the lady, 'the cumming of your letter was a grate occation of rejoysing for me, I nott having scene your writing this menny years. I am greaved to deny your wish to vissit Garth, but I doe dessire that my littel neace Marion should comme and stay at my house for a space. It will give me grate joy and somme to her I doupt not. I will promisse shee is dressed,--Your trewly loving sister,

Constance Fairfax.'

KENSINGTON, _this 29th of March_. For my deere brother, thes.

'Oh,' said Elise, as Marion laid down the letter. 'How delightful for you, Marion! London! Balls, the play, the gardens, music. Even, I suppose,' she wistfully added, 'the Court.'

Elise seemed certainly to have recovered from her chagrin, and Marion's heart warmed to her for the unselfishness of her words. The Admiral, standing before the chimney, his favourite place both summer and winter, looked curiously at the French girl and then at his daughter.

'Well, Mawfy, now I suppose you be all of a bustle to forsake your old father and this deadly dull place?'

Marion instantly came and clasped her hands round her father's arm. True to her character, she had made no great sign of the delight the letter had given her.

'Do you want me to go or not, Father?'

'What I do mightily like,' chuckled the Admiral, 'is what Constance says about your dress. Doubtless we are half-clothed savages, here at Garth. Yes, my dear, I think you should go. Go and learn to drop a grand curtsey and hold a fan with a languid air and take on that look of boredom your Aunt Keziah has to such perfection. Never again cheat Zacchary of his saddling to ride Molly barebacked; never again come flying across the garden to leap at your father's neck.'

'Father!' An arm stole up towards the said neck. 'I won't ever leave you if you talk so. All the same, I think perhaps I ought to learn some of these things.'

'But certainly she should go!' cried Elise from her window seat. 'Such an excellent opportunity of becoming a lady.'

'Faith! I never thought of that,' drily put in the Admiral. Elise bit her lip.

At that moment the door opened and Victoire, the French girl's one-time nurse and present maid, came with the glass of milk she considered it the nightly duty of her charge to take.

'Only think, Victoire,' cried Elise, 'here is an invitation from the Lady Constance for Mistress Marion to go to Court!'

'To Kensington,' laughed Marion. 'How your thoughts do run on Courts, Elise!'

Victoire's black eyes snapped at the speaker. She was a dark-skinned, vivacious woman, bearing the look of the French peasant without the heavy features that mark that class. Her devotion to her _enfant_ was of an absorbing nature, and came nearer that of confidante than waiting-woman. Marion she treated with a servile deference that was far from the honest humility of the Cornish serving folk.

If Marion had probed her thoughts she would have known that she thoroughly disliked Victoire. But Marion had accepted Elise for her friend in her childhood's days, and (until her aunt had somewhat unsettled her mind) had remained loyal in spite of the drawbacks of the French girl's temperament and character, and for her sake had tolerated Victoire. Frankly, Elise had puzzled her, but Victoire had puzzled her a hundred times more. She refused to discuss her with her own thoughts. And of course Victoire, being a shrewd woman, was aware of the feeling that lay behind Marion's manner towards her. As a result, she became increasingly servile, constantly trying to remind Marion that this person in her household was the poorest of French servants, and that Marion was mistress and heiress of a great house and name.

'But, Madame, how truly excellent!' she cried. 'Madame will certainly go?'

'Yes, I think I shall go,' said Marion quietly.

As the Admiral's curious glance shot towards Elise, he caught a look that passed between his ward and her maid. As the latter left the room the Admiral stepped out on to the terrace.

'How delightful for you, Marion,' said Elise again, as the old man's stumping tread sounded on the stones.

Marion was staring absently out of the window. After Elise's words had died away she became aware of them echoing in her brain, all blurred and mixed up with the magic sound: London. Waking from her day-dream Marion spoke, her fingers on a straying branch that climbed up the woodwork of the casement. 'It is now a long time since you yourself were in London. You have never said much about it. Did you see any of the gay sights while you were waiting for my father to come and fetch you?'

The Admiral's tread sounded coming nearer. There was no reply from the girl in the other window seat. Marion was aware of a slight movement, and then a peculiar stillness, as if her companion was forcibly restraining further motion. Marion glanced over her shoulder and then swung round. On Elise's face was a strange hunted look which gave way to a sorrowfulness that sat strangely on her girlish features. Startled and puzzled, Marion was groping for the right word to say, when the Admiral's figure darkened the window. At the same moment Elise dropped her scissors; and when she was settled in her seat again her face wore its usual expression. The thought crossed Marion's mind that the look had been caused by a sudden homesickness and memory of distant days--France; of her dying father, perhaps. Again her heart softened to the girl.

'What did we do?' said Elise, biting her thread. 'Oh, we did not do much.'

'Come, Marion,' called the Admiral, 'are you so wrapped up in your dreams you have forgotten me already?'

Marion slipped out. It was the nightly habit of the two to wander in the garden after supper. She found her father revolving plans for her immediate departure, and, her thoughts leaping forward to meet the future, the consideration of Elise's affairs left her mind.

For close on an hour the two paced to and fro, and then, finding that Elise had retired, Marion went to her own room. Her sad mood of the earlier part of the evening had disappeared, her apprehensions flown. A bright vista shone before her wherein no mist of doubt was suffered to live. She found the housekeeper, who had combined her own duties with those of waiting-woman, standing by the dressing-table, ready to brush her hair.

'Curnow,' she said as she closed the door, 'you will never guess what has happened. Just try.'

Meanwhile down in the garden the Admiral was solemnly stumping the length of the terrace. The light went softly out of the sky and gleamed on the face of the Channel far below. The scent of the furze, in full bloom, came up from the headland, and over the trees behind the house a slip of a new moon showed.

The serenity of the evening was lost on the old sailor. He was musing on two problems, puffing at his pipe.

What had Elise been doing alone down at Polrennan, on the other side of the water, to-day? That was the only spot whence Poole's cottage, hidden by the winding valley from the sight of Garth, could be seen. And why were she and Victoire so anxious to get rid of Marion?

The night had fully come, and the house was in darkness before the Admiral turned indoors.

*Chapter IV*

*Roger Trevannion*

There is something of peculiar brightness in the dawn of the day following an evening of good news. Old folk and young alike confess to the drowsy joy of that hour, and when the person in question is a girl of seventeen, who has never even crossed the county border, and is now bound for London and moreover lives in an age when to travel thither from Cornwall is as great an adventure as a journey to the East Indies would be some half dozen generations later, then truly there is an unearthly radiance in that first morrow's dawn.

Marion turned lazily on her pillow, dimly aware that something unusual had happened. For a few seconds she lay inert, then heaved a great sigh of content. She remembered. She threw her arms out on the coverlet and smiled. Springing out of bed, she drew back the window curtains and opened the lattice.

A short time later a figure in a white cotton gown, with blue ribbons in her hair, stole lightly downstairs.

It was Marion's loved duty to make the toast for her father's morning tankard. A confused sound of voices came from the kitchen as she crossed the hall, and ceased suddenly as she opened the kitchen door. Two of the serving girls and a milking maid were there; it was easy for Marion to see from their faces that she had been the subject of their chatter.

'Marnin', Mistress Marion!' came in chorus. The girls stood and stared in a stupid sort of way, their great rosy hands wedged on their hips, sleeves and petticoats tucked up for work.

'Us 'as just heard, Mistress Marion, as you be a-gooin' away to London,' said one of them, after a pause. They stared afresh.

'Us ain't niver zeen afore a lady as wor a-gooin' to London, Mistress,' respectfully remarked the milking maid.

A ripple of laughter ran over Marion's face as she stood, her back to the girls, cutting a piece of bread at the trencher. Evidently she was to be a nine days' wonder. For that matter, she had the promise of being a nine days' wonder to herself. 'Is it I?' ran her thoughts. 'Is it really I?' And if the domestics stared now, what would they do when she came back with new gowns and laces, and her hair dressed in a new way; and, she hoped, that indefinable something in her manner that had made them gape at Mistress Keziah, and peep out of doorways at her, their fingers on their lips?

Until her going was decided on, she did not know how much her aunt's talk had awakened a desire to see the world of men and women. Now she was going to see it, as Elise had said--plays, music, the Court. She smiled as she trimmed her piece of bread. Then the voice of one of the wenches roused her to a forgotten sense of duty.

'A bain't niver----'

'Zora,' said Marion, swinging round, 'it is past five o'clock. I can hear Spotty now calling to be milked. You must remember that the cows don't know I'm going to London.'

'Ees fay, so un do sure, Mistress Marion. A told Spotty meself. First thing a did, Mistress. I says to she, I says: "Do ee know Mistress Marion be a-goin' to London?" And her kind of said: "'Er bain't, now, sure!" her did. I allus tells Spotty. A told un when Simon Jibber come a-court----'

'Zora, go at once to your work! Millie and Sue, if you haven't anything to do, I must inquire of Mrs. Curnow of your duties.'

There were no hearers left for the end of Marion's sentence, and it was fortunate for them, for with her last words in came the housekeeper from the dairy, carrying a great bowl of clotted cream.

Her father's toast made, her own breakfast of bread and milk partaken of, Marion set herself to the little duties of the day. Elise, she learned from the housekeeper, was in the throes of one of her periodic headaches, concerning which, it must be confessed, our fair Marion was rather unsympathetic. The young mistress of Garth had never known what it was to be ailing. For all her delicate cheeks, she was as healthy and robust as Zora herself. She got slightly impatient about Elise's migraine, and when the sufferer emerged from her retirement, full of the petulance that generally succeeded her attacks, Marion, in her mental poise of perfect health, did not find it easy to make allowances. Indeed, the only quarrels that rose between them, the only swift, straight-out blows Marion had ever been known to give, seemed to be reserved for these occasions.

Marion went dutifully to her friend's room, and talked with her a few minutes, feeling as usual her impatience arise at Elise's martyr-like tones. Presently, saying she must confer with the housekeeper about the dinner, she went below again.

Dinner was at twelve o'clock, as was the custom of the day, and supper came at five or six. At nine o'clock the household was abed, for it was considered a shameful thing not to be up with the sun. These two meals being the sole fare for the day, were of a generous order, and Marion thought it nothing unusual when the housekeeper told off on her fingers the items for dinner: a dish of prawns, a marrow-bone pie (and the good things that went into that pie!), a pair of fat fowls, a fore-quarter of lamb, and a sirloin of beef; a spiced pudding with brandy sauce, a gooseberry pie, and some little tarts made with conserve, that Victoire had introduced to the household.

Having satisfied herself that the cooking was in a satisfactory way, Marion went into the still-room, to see to the straining of her gooseberry wine. About ten o'clock she mounted to her own chamber and shut the door. A serious business was now afoot. The early joy of the morning had subsided to an under-current of secret pleasure, but even that bade fair to be destroyed when she turned out the contents of her clothes chest. Her going had been settled by the Admiral for Thursday. To-day was Tuesday. There was no time even for Victoire's skilful fingers--and Victoire was better than most sempstresses or tailors--to make her another gown. Marion turned over the laces that had been her mother's, the ribbons that were her sole ornament. Her best embroidered bodice she looked at with a dissatisfied air, and then sought her father, who was casting up accounts at his desk.

'Father,' she said somewhat ruefully, 'I had no idea what a great many things I haven't got. I don't know what Aunt Constance will think of such a niece.'

The Admiral considered his daughter at length. ''Tis certainly a problem, but I should not mind laying long odds Aunt Constance will find her niece fair to middling. For the rest, her father is taking her, and he has a purse heavy enow to stand a new gown, I trow. Now take your hat and come across to the far pasture with me. I hear Sukey's got a fine calf.'

Dinner time passed, and still Elise did not leave her chamber. Marion went again to her door, and finding she was asleep sought her own room. She seated herself at her chamber window, a piece of lace and a mending needle in her hand.

It had been an eventful week, a week unequalled in her simple life; it had opened with the bustle of her Aunt Keziah's departure; a prodigious bustle that, for the lady had elected to travel in state, with six horses to her coach, a couple of out-riders and her page on the step. Marion and Zacchary had ridden on either side the chariot as far as Lostwithiel, and Marion felt she would always have an affectionate memory of the fine old head thrust from the coach as she had turned her chestnut homeward. Coming back, the house had seemed for the first time somewhat lacking. Wearisome as her demands on her niece's liberty had been, the old lady had nevertheless brought an added interest to the girl's quiet life, and, as she had intended, successfully sown the seeds of unrest.

The next day Marion had met Roger on the headland, and later saved him from the folly of championing Jack Poole. Then had come the letter, the dazzling, bewildering prospect of her aunt's house in far-away London opening inviting doors to her. How Roger had scoffed at the idea! Marion smiled and sighed in the same breath. She felt great uneasiness at the thought of leaving Roger, so headstrong and foolish, to act as he chose, to mix himself up with all the rebel factions of the county if the fancy pleased him.

She stitched away at her lace, a look of unusual gravity on her face. Her thoughts had now wandered to Elise; and in spite of the kindly feelings Elise's later behaviour had evoked in her, she could not dispel the sense of foreboding her words at supper had aroused. Nor could she quite forgive her. Roger had been the playmate and sole companion of her childhood for many years before Elise came to Garth. The bond of the boy-and-girl intimacy was of a far stronger nature than the tie of friendship between herself and Elise. In fact, if Roger had not gone away to school and left her sorrowing and lonely, it is probable that the friendship between herself and the French girl would never have ripened at all.

Memories of her childhood days with Roger came up from the early years; the thought of his unswerving loyalty, when she had done things he did not like and he had taken the blame himself; of the boats they had builded together and sailed on the duck-pond; of the hours he had sat by her in the window seat, when she was learning her stitches, and talked and told her stories--always of the sea; of the battles they had had concerning the riding of the colts--'You see, Mawfy,'--she could see him now, a clumsy, thick-set figure of a boy, his sturdy legs planted apart--'you haven't got a brother except me, and your father's no good at riding now, poor old man, so I've got to look after you. And I shan't let you ride Starlight till I've tried him better. If he's going to throw somebody--and he looks like it--I'd rather he threw me than you. I know just how to fall on a place where it doesn't hurt. And you don't. It's no good saying you do, or anything of that sort. I just shan't let you ride Starlight.'

Then, when she had argued and sulked: 'You look much nicer when you're smiling, Mawfy. You've got such a funny face.'

'My hair lies down, any way!' was her unfailing retort on personal questions, 'and I don't look like a heathen black-a-moor.'

Marion laid down her needle, with tears not far from the smile in her eyes as she remembered. In Roger's black thatch of hair there had always been a lock somewhere about the crown stiff as a broom handle, which defied all efforts at persuasion on the fond mother's part. One day Marion had taken a piece of dough from Curnow's kneading-pan, and plastered it in a thick cake over the unruly patch. The dough had hardened and refused to be removed, and Roger had gone about many days wearing this tonsure. In the end (the day being Saturday, and the question of church arising) Marion had worked at the stiff cake and brought it off, plentifully set with hairs, at the sight of which her own tears had dropped.

'Never mind, Mawfy,' Roger had said, between his yells, 'I don't really mind. And perhaps you'll be pretty some day. But I don't care if all my hair stands up. I knew a sailor who wore all his hair standing up. Harder than mine.'

'Oh, Roger, Roger!' said Marion softly, her needle suspended as she stared out over the garden. 'What a dear child you were!'

Then, uncomfortable fact, Roger had grown up. Each time he had come back from Blundell's he had been different: rougher, noisier, not knowing what to do with his strength that was coming on him, given to saying and doing awkward things; with a loudly voiced scorn for girls (in Elise's presence) that disappeared when the two were together; for Marion was Marion, and, like his mother (and no other) set apart in his boyish thoughts.

And all through his growing youth, toughening every year just as an ivy stem toughens and becomes a tree trunk, ran that one desire to be a sailor. Thwarted, it had merely bent another way, and grown stouter for the opposition. That the thwarting was not good for the boy, Marion knew instinctively, as her father knew from experience, and failed not to say so to Mrs. Trevannion. 'You're wrong, Ma'am,' he had said, striking the stones of the Manor porch with his stick. 'Roger's got a sailor's blood, and he'll go to sea. If you won't let him go, he'll run away.'

'No,' said the lady quietly, 'he won't do that. He has promised.'

The old Salt Eagle glared under his pent-house brows. 'Women are queer folk. To make a lad promise that, and continually bid him to wait, knowing all the time you have not the slightest intention of ever letting him go! You will have only yourself to thank if he flings himself hot-headed, in desperation, into some political bother. We live in sorry times, and the country's seething underneath like one of yonder Dartmoor bogs beneath its cap of green slime. And a boy who is discontented is easily drawn into trouble. And now I'll bid you good day, Ma'am.'

And so the old sailor had stumped off, with sorrow in his heart under his rage. He had never had a son, but had fate been kinder to him, he would have been proud of a boy like Roger Trevannion.

Her father's fears were Marion's also, and in the light of experience had been amply justified. That 'miserable rising,' as the Admiral described the Monmouth Rebellion, had stirred the green smooth surface of the bog of unrest, and the black depths still bubbled. The Lord Chief-Justice Jeffreys had come out to the West to hold his 'Bloody Assize,' the punishment meted out by Kirke's Lambs after the battle of Sedgemoor not being deemed sufficient. Jeffreys, doing his work of extermination of the rebels, with one ear listening to the desires of his own foul heart, and the other bent on distant Whitehall, whence James II. smiled approval and murmured encouragement, saw to it that his work was well done. His spies were everywhere, from the White Horse of the Danes in the Mendips to the fishing coves of Land's End. And the net he cast in this way was of the finest mesh. Cornwall was mainly Protestant, and it was more on the grounds of dislike for a monarch who insisted on the observance of the Catholic religion, than allegiance to the youth who led the Protestant rebellion against him, that some of their numbers flocked to Monmouth's standard. The Westerners had had ample cause to rue the day before ever Judge Jeffreys set out on his tour of death. The rebellion had failed, their young lads dying with it in the marshes of Sedgemoor; and Monmouth, their hero and hope, had fled for a coward, and earned the reward of his deeds. And now their lusty cries of: 'God bless the Protestant Duke!' had given way to the silence of unreasoning fear. The country folk had not time to dry their eyes for their sons who would never return, before they were opened wide in horror at this new danger for those who were left. The danger menaced (and touched) high and low alike. Men talking in taverns or at the cross roads on the events of the rising, talking, as they thought, with friends, were haled up the next day and hanged, for the love they bore to Monmouth. It was not necessary even, in some cases, that they should speak the word that showed they were against the Catholic king; a look sufficed; they hanged just the same. Here and there a man who was suspected was found rich enough to pay the Lord Chief-Justice the price of his life. But not many were so fortuned; and before the assize in the West was over, men had learned to distrust their lifelong friends, and to be afraid, going home at night, of their own shadows; and women stilled their crying children with the merest whisper of Jeffreys' name.

Jeffreys had returned to London with his triumphant tale of some hundreds hanged, and many more sold as slaves to the Plantations, and for such loyal service to the Crown had been made the Lord High Chancellor of England.

It had been mainly owing to the Admiral's influence and well-known loyalist views that Garth had escaped suspicion; escaped, that is to say, with the exception of Jack Poole, who, working in a shipwright's yard at Lyme when Monmouth landed, and with plenty of enthusiasm to spare for any cause, such as smuggling or rioting, that ran against authority, joined the lads of Lyme, was taken (not in action) by the loyalists, clapped into jail at Bodmin, and now, in Bodmin again, was awaiting his trial.

Roger had taken no part at all in the rebellion, but his sense of loyalty to his friends would always outride his discretion, as Marion had proved. And she might not always be there to stay his folly.

She sighed, and was laying her work aside, when a quick step sounded on the terrace, and there was a ringing hail.

'Marion, are you there? Curnow said she thought you were above.'

Marion looked out at her casement. Roger was standing just below looking out at the moment on the shrubbery where two of the stable dogs were trespassing. The youth was, as usual, hatless, and the black head was in reach of Marion's fingers as she leaned out. Roger was aware of a sudden tug near the crown of his head.

'Aie! Aie!' he said, swinging round. 'I thought you'd forgotten that. It still stands up--always will.' The brown eyes looked up affectionately. 'Do you remember that dough cake?'

'I had just been thinking of it, and how I cried when the hair came out. It certainly looks queer, Roger. Let us hope you will begin to grow bald just there first.'

'Most probably I shall grow bald all round it, and leave it upstanding. Never mind. I say, Mawfy, I've----'

'Don't speak so loudly,' said Marion in sudden contrition. 'I had forgotten, Elise has a headache.'

Roger made a slight grimace. 'Put on your habit, and come for a ride,' he said softly. ''Tis my last chance. I hear you are going Thursday. And to-morrow I must go down country about some sheep.'

'Good,' said Marion. 'I will only be five minutes. Will you ask Zacchary to saddle the grey?'

As they rode out of the courtyard and turned their horses towards the downs, Marion gave one of her sudden chuckles. 'Do you remember Starlight,' she said, 'and the fights we used to have about my riding him?'

'I remember. He was a vicious brute. I was always glad I bullied you on that score. What has made you remember Starlight?'

'I had a thinking fit this afternoon,' said Marion, 'and all sorts of things came back to me. Things we did when we were children.'

'Ay,' said Roger. 'Do you remember----' And the two went off together on a journey of reminiscences that lasted them, with breathless intervals when the ground tempted a gallop, for close on an hour. The memory of that ride lived long with Marion; in talking of their childhood they had become children again.

On a windy ridge some dozen miles from the house they paused to breathe their horses. Marion looked across the land, all touched with tender green, to the distant Channel.

'I wish Aunt Constance had asked me to visit her at any time but the spring,' she said suddenly. 'And I can't conceive how I shall endure many weeks without the smell of the sea.'

It was the first mention of her approaching journey. The merry, boyish look went out of Roger's face. 'I hate the idea of your going,' he said moodily. 'Who is going to look after you in London, and see that you don't ride Starlight?' A smile came and went, but there was a lingering sadness in his eyes.

'There won't be any chance of riding, I suppose,' said Marion.

'And I hate London, too,' added the young countryman. 'All the troubles in England are brewed first of all in Whitehall.' He looked hard at his companion for a moment, and then back to the distant sea. 'How long are you going to stay?' he asked abruptly.

'I don't know,' said Marion lightly. 'A long time--years perhaps.'

Roger's brows drew together. 'And you have never seen your Aunt Constance. What is Sir John Fairfax like? Who is going to look after you?' he said again.

'I don't know--Roger!' Marion turned in her saddle to face him. 'The point is much more: who is going to look after _you_!'

Roger smiled. 'I do need leading strings and a pinafore, of course.'

Marion's glance ran affectionately over the young giant. 'But really, you know, Roger, I have been rather unhappy about you since the other day at Poole's cottage. If it hadn't been for me, you'd have been in Bodmin gaol now.'

'As well there as anywhere,' replied the youth, his gaze out to sea.

'The nearest road to a vessel of your own lies not through Bodmin gaol. See, Roger, will you promise me to--to be careful?'

The brown eyes looked steadily into the grey ones.

'Careful of what?'

'Why--not to get mixed up in some foolish affair for which you really care nothing.'

Roger roused himself with a laugh. 'I think you have got from the Admiral that trick of turning the tables. Here I was just going to ask you the same thing.'

'_I'm_ not likely to bestir myself about political affairs, sir.'

'I hope not. But seriously, Mawfy, I do not like the whole affair--your going, I mean. Your father cannot stay long with you, and then you will be with strangers. Will you promise to let me know if you should be in any need?'

Marion smiled indulgently, then sobered, and looked broodingly across the land again. 'Oh Roger!' she cried impulsively, not thinking at all of herself, only conscious of the little boy grown big at her side. 'I could wish it were all over, and I were back again. I'm afraid for you. Something is going to happen. For days I've had a foreboding. I always know when a storm is coming, and in the same way I know now----'

She pulled herself up. It was not her way to talk at random of her innermost feelings.

'Nonsense, nonsense!' said Roger briskly. 'Nothing ever happens unless you let it. You had a foreboding when I went to Blundell's. And what happened? Nothing! Oh yes--Elise came.'

They looked at each other in silence. Then Roger smiled. 'Come, Mawfy, 'tis my last half hour.'

He gathered his reins. 'I'll race you to the first pasture.'

*Chapter V*

*'My Little Niece'*

Great festivities were afoot in the house of Lady Fairfax in Kensington. The rooms glittered in the light of hundreds of candles set in sconces on the wall; torches were blazing in their iron sockets at the outer door; beyond the garden was a boisterous confusion of coaches and chairs, the chairmen wrangling with the footmen and pages for a place by the gate; and linkboys, their lights aloft, dodged to and fro, casting gibes on their betters and showing an ability born of long practice in evading their blows.

From time to time the doors opened, and footmen bawled for my lady's or my lord's coach. A certain decorum, at these moments, marked the behaviour of those without the gates. Room was made for the vehicle in question, page boys and footmen ran to their posts, my lord or my lady left the house, entered the coach and drove off. And behind them, like water in the wake of a ship, the noisy groups closed in again.

To be bidden to one of the gatherings of Lady Fairfax was a coveted honour. Just how Lady Fairfax came to be the rallying point of a certain section of the Court society, no one knew. She was envied, feted, flattered, caressed. She walked into the Queen's drawing-room as if it had been her own chamber; she would leave the side of the most exalted personage in order to speak to a humble acquaintance, and there would be no change in her manner. She scolded and smiled as she pleased, and, such was the gift of the gods to her, with impunity. Like the Admiral her brother, she made her own course in the world, and next to a good friend she liked best an honest enemy. For the others, whose smile hid a snarl, she had nothing but disdain.

Concerning Sir John Fairfax, a good deal of whispering ran to and fro, mainly from Whitehall and St. James's to Kensington. Exactly what post he held no one knew; that he was party to the secret diplomacy of the Court every one suspected. He was an old sailor, and in the course of his voyages had contrived to gather a vast information about the ports and defences of alien coasts. Moreover, in various parts of the world he had friends whose loyalty was unquestioned.

A great many people were curious as to the nature of the long conversations, without which few days passed, between Sir John Fairfax and my Lord Churchill; but the matter of their parleys was revealed to no one, least of all to Sir John's wife. He was a smallish, grey, wizened man, with a singularly sweet smile; he had a gentle voice and an unfailing courtesy; his wife adored him, principally because he was the one person in the world whom she could neither hector nor coax into doing something he did not wish to do.

Lady Fairfax went from group to group in her rooms, a gracious figure in her gown of black velvet stitched with silver, a scarf of Malines lace across her shoulders, her grey hair dressed high. No one had ever succeeded in defining her charm; she was one of those middle-aged women who made young girls discontented with their youth, and beautiful women dubious of the power of their beauty.

As Lady Fairfax entered one of the card rooms, and looked from group to group, a couple of young gallants sprang from a window seat where they had been in close converse. Seeing them, their hostess beckoned with her fan, and withdrew.

'What means this?' demanded my lady as the two, with deep bows, stood before her. 'Why are you leaving beauty unattended? Do not the feet of the dancers call you? Fie on you, my lord! And you, sir! Your father had known better.'

'It is but for Lady Fairfax to command,' replied the nobleman with another bow and an air of mock resignation.

'But my father, madam,' retorted the other, who was, as a shrewd eye would see, a favourite with his hostess, 'had doubtless greater attractions offered him.'

'Doubtless, doubtless!' smiled the lady. 'There is, however, a story I may tell you some day. Well now, young man, will you find my husband for me? Stay--what is that noise below?'

Some commotion was arising in the hall, and Lady Fairfax, being then at the head of the stairs, went slowly down, her beautiful hand catching the folds of her dress, the young men at her side.

'Say that again, thou girt fool!' a voice with a strong West Country accent was shouting, 'and thou'lt rue the day.'

There was the sound of a lusty smack, and a footman, with his hand to his cheek, bellowed for his ally within. The West Country voice rang out again, and there was the crack of a whip.

'Be this the house of Lady Constance Fairfax or no? And if 'tis, where's her to?'

The speaker, hatless, muddy, his neck-cloth torn, stared about; his knotted fist and weapon menaced the servants who had hastily approached. A few guests had strolled into the hall, and were looking curiously on. The men accompanying my lady on the stair became aware of a start, and an exclamation. Lady Fairfax dropped her robe and ran down.

'Zacchary,' she said, the group gathering round the countryman falling away at her approach, 'surely 'tis thou, Zacchary!'

The old groom's distressed face changed at the sound of the voice he had not heard for twenty years. He dropped on one knee, and groped for the lady's hand. Then rising, a look of devotion in his eyes, he surveyed her from head to foot.

'I don't allow, Mistress Constance,' he said, scratching his head, 'that you'm changed. But you'm mighty different all the same. But'--his tone altered--''tis the young mistress, my lady. Her's without in the coach yonder, and Peter on the step, and they sons of Belial in the road bean't for letting the coach go by.'

'What! My little niece!' Lady Fairfax turned hastily to the young man at her side. 'I pray you, Master Beckenham, see to this matter without; and you, my lord, if you would look in the rooms above for my husband----'

She needed not to finish her sentence. Master Beckenham followed Zacchary out into the square.

A coach had drawn across the road, a little distance from the entrance. The equipage belonged to my Lord Fetterleigh, who was playing cards within, and the coachman was making it quite clear that until he chose he would not move his coach, his lord taking precedence of the gentlemen whose vehicles were before the gates. As for that outlandish travelling waggon beyond there (his cheek was still smarting from the valiant Peter's whip), it could wait until it was chopped up for---- The harangue was cut short. 'Move thy horses, thou vile wretch!' thundered a voice. 'I will acquaint thy lord of this.'

The light of the torches fell on the face of the newcomer. The coachman, with a qualm, gathered up his reins, and Master Beckenham in his elegant buckled shoes and smart attire slipped in between the hedge and the rear of the coach, and followed Zacchary down the road.

To the accompaniment of Zacchary's heartfelt remarks (sounding to the Londoner like the whinny of a horse) on the vileness of Kensington compared with Cornwall, Beckenham made his way to the country coach. He felt a certain curiosity to see the 'little niece.' A few nights ago, visiting Lady Fairfax's box between the acts, he had heard her telling how she had bidden her brother's little maid to come and stay with her a spell, that she might teach her how to set her toes when she grew taller. Lady Fairfax had never seen the child, because of the disagreement between her brother and herself about her upbringing. Here the curtain had risen, and my lady's complacent recital was stopped. Duly reporting this matter to Madam his mother (one of Lady Fairfax's honest enemies), Mr. Beckenham had been greatly diverted. For that lady and a bosom friend, counting the years on their fingers, with side glances for the unconscious victim in the box, had estimated the age of the 'little niece' as already somewhere in the shadows of the late twenties. Saying nothing, Mr. Beckenham had bided his time, and it pleased him to have an opportunity of satisfying himself on the point.

The loiterers in the road had formed a sturdy group round the vehicle he sought. The coachman on the box, not liking to leave his post, was circling his whip over the heads of the nearest, and adding comments when Peter, bodyguarding on the step, failed for breath. The link boys roared with delight. Such amusement did not often come their way. And even the watch, with his lantern and staff, had stopped in his chant of 'Ten o'clock, and a fine windy night,' to listen to the voices whose tones made him at once contemptuous and envious.

Mr. Beckenham doubled his elbows, and calling: 'Make way there! Make way!' in a voice of unmistakable authority, soon succeeded in reaching the door of the coach, Zacchary lumbering at his heels. Honest Peter, in the act of drawing the back of his hand across his overworked mouth, noted his approach, and his eyes brightened.

''Ere be Zacchary and a gentleman, Mistress Marion. 'Ere a be.'

'Lead the horses to the gate,' commanded the young gentleman. 'Hand me your whip, my man.'

With alacrity Peter tendered his weapon, and Mr. Beckenham, thus armed, took up the position of page on the step of the Penrock coach. The loiterers fled before the hissing lash.

At the gate, Mr. Beckenham opened the coach door with a low bow, and offered his hand to the fair occupant. The light of the flambeaux fell on the two faces confronting each other. Marion's hat had fallen off, her gleaming hair fell in disorder about her face. Nervously she looked at the young man as she took his proffered assistance, and murmured a word of thanks. 'Terrified out of her wits,' summed up the youth. 'How on earth comes she to be travelling without an escort?' And a strong indignation against some unknown person seized him.

Meanwhile Lady Fairfax, standing within the doorway, had been peering from time to time out into the night. She was again explaining to the group of guests in the hall that her little niece was coming from Cornwall to visit her. Her brother was doubtless with her in the coach, and had sent Zacchary to the door. Her brother was, unhappily, lame. And Zacchary, poor man, only being accustomed to see one horse at a time, was a little flustered.

Behind the speaker stood a small grey-haired man, whose smile broadened into a chuckle as his wife's 'little niece' hove in sight.

When Marion stepped into the house, Lady Fairfax for once in her life was speechless. About a figure almost as tall as her own a riding cloak was roughly gathered. The collar fell away from the throat, and the folds of the garment were held by a slim hand to the shoulder. At the scene in the hall, Marion shrank back a second, then stood still.

'My little niece! Is it possible!'

Marion allowed herself to be embraced and drawn into the house. She was vaguely aware of a gentleman with a kind smile, who patted her and called her 'my dear'; of glittering jewels and gay dresses in the background; of the throb of music in the rooms above; of the silent figure of Mr. Beckenham standing at her elbow. Then she looked again at the face before her, and the anger and dismay she had felt at the manner of her arrival melted. In her aunt's eyes she saw her father's. Her face relaxed, and she smiled.

'Did you not expect me then, Aunt Constance?'

'What a voice!' murmured a woman at the back of the hall.

Lady Fairfax gathered the slight form in her arms. 'My little maid!' she crooned. 'My little maid!' Then, holding her at arm's length: 'But--I am speechless! How came you to travel so? But stay. First some food, and you shall tell me.'

She led the girl into a little room off the hall, and while Sir John went himself for wine and cake she took off the cloak and shoes, and held the fair face between her hands. 'My little maid!' she said again. 'I had forgotten you must have grown. Tell me, sweet, one word. Is your father ill? Why is he not here?'

'He is not hurt,' said Marion. 'He----'

'Drink this, my dear,' said a kind voice, and Marion, looking up, saw her uncle at her side. A feeling of warmth and comfort stole over her. 'And I thought I had fallen among thieves,' she faltered.

Meanwhile the men and women who had witnessed the arrival of the 'little niece' were talking about her in the rooms above. As the conversation drifted on to the girl's family, a gentleman strolled up to the group. Underneath the languid pose of the courtier of the day, a shrewd eye would have seen the hardened soldier. 'Did I hear you say Penrock?' he drawled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Chapter VI*

*A Lady-In-Waiting*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Marion stood speechless.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I said it, my lady, and Master----'

'Go and say it again.'

The page boy made a deep obeisance and withdrew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Chapter VII*

*Simone Leblanc*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'How so, Aunt Constance?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Well----' Marion faltered.

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

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

'Roger?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Another time, my child, another time.'

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

*Chapter VIII*

*Haunted Cove*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Queer they let un land,' mused Charity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Charity! Is that you, Charity?'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*Chapter IX*

*A Morning Visit*

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

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

'Like as not, sir.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Victoire thus abroad, the old French attorney on his way to England, the Admiral experienced a sense of relief. He looked forward with the heartiest pleasure to the day when the attorney would arrive at Garth. Then he would consider his duty to his old friend accomplished. He had fathered Elise in her growing girlhood; she was now old enough to be given over to the care of her aunts. He had certainly done his utmost to train the girl to standards of thought which were native to the comrade of his fighting days. The fact that in some way Elise's nature had been warped to begin with, was beyond his control, and there he left the problem, vaguely attri