All along the River: A Novel

All Along The River

A Novel

By The Author Of

“ISHMAEL,” “VIXEN,” “LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET,” “THE VENETIANS,” Etc.

Stereotyped Edition

London Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Limited Stationers’ Hall Court

[_All rights reserved_]

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.

Contents.

Chapter Page

I. “The Rain set early in To-night” 1

II. “But the Days drop One by One” 18

III. “Oh Moment One and Infinite!” 33

IV. “Dreaming, she knew it was a Dream” 50

V. “And the Child-cheek blushing Scarlet for the very Shame of Bliss” 61

VI. “A Love still burning upward” 73

VII. “Look through mine Eyes with thine, True Wife” 91

VIII. My Frolic Falcon, with Bright Eyes 99

IX. “Lies Nothing buried long ago?” 114

X. “Of the Weak my Heart is Weakest” 124

XI. “Where the Cold Sea raves” 142

XII. “Far, too far off for Thought or any Prayer” 153

XIII. “Under the Pine-wood, Blind with Boughs” 159

XIV. “Say the False Charge was True” 169

XV. “My Life continues yours, and your Life mine” 186

XVI. “Sorrow that’s Deeper than we dream, perchance” 197

XVII. “The Year of the Rose is Brief” 202

XVIII. “No Sudden Fancy of an Ardent Boy” 207

XIX. “I have you still, the Sun comes out again” 222

XX. “Thou Paradise of Exiles, Italy” 230

XXI. “The Woods are round us, Heaped and Dim” 241

XXII. Ecco Roma 248

XXIII. “Seek Shelter in the Shadow of the Tomb” 255

XXIV. “Oh, Old Thoughts they cling, they cling!” 267

XXV. “We’ll bind you Fast in Silken Cords” 273

XXVI. “So, Full Content shall henceforth be my Lot” 282

XXVII. “Gone Deeper than all Plummets sound” 292

XXVIII. “Though Love and Life and Death should come and go” 301

XXIX. “I, you, and God can comprehend each other” 318

All Along The River.

Chapter I.

“The Rain Set Early In To-Night.”

It had been raining all the morning, and it was raining still, in that feeble and desultory manner which presages a change of some kind, when the postman came with the long-expected Indian letter.

He was later than usual. It was nearly two o’clock, and Isola had been watching for him since one, watching with an unread book in her lap, listening for the click of the gate. She had been sitting by the open window, looking out at the wet landscape, the glistening hedgerow and dull grey river, with the great, green hill beyond, a steep slope of meadow land, dotted with red cattle, and so divided by hedgerows, as to look like a Titanic chessboard.

At last she heard the familiar tread of the postman’s heavy boots, and saw his shining oilskin hat moving above the edge of the hollies, and heard the click of the iron latch as he came into the little garden.

She called to him from the window, and he came tramping across the sodden grass and put three letters into her outstretched hand.

One from her married sister in Hans Place. That would keep. One from an old schoolfellow. That would keep. And one--the long-looked-for Indian letter, which she tore open eagerly, and read hurriedly, devouring the close lines, in the neat, black penmanship, with its decided up and down strokes, and legible characters, so firm, so strong, so straightforward, like the nature of the man who wrote the letter.

The tears sprang to her eyes as she came to the end, and her hands crushed the thin paper in a paroxysm of vexation or despair.

“Six months--perhaps a year, before he can come back, and I am to go on living here--alone, unless I like to send for a girl whose face I hardly know, to keep me company, and cheer me with her good spirits. I want no strange girls. I want no one’s good spirits. I hate people with good spirits. I want him, and nobody but him! It is hard that we should be parted like this. I ought to have gone with him, in spite of all the doctors in Christendom.”

She relented towards the letter which her feverish hand had used so badly. She smoothed out the flimsy paper carefully with that pretty little hand, and then she re-read the husband’s letter, so full of grave tenderness and fond, consoling words.

He was with his regiment in Burmah, and the present aspect of things gave him no hope of being able to return to England for the next half-year, and there was no certainty that the half-year might not be stretched into a whole year. The separation could not be more irksome to his dearest Isola than it was to him, her husband of little more than a year: but not for worlds would he have exposed her to the risks of that climate. He took comfort in thinking of her in the snug little Cornish nest, with his good Tabitha.

Isola kissed the letter before she put it in her pocket, and then she looked round the room rather dolefully, as if the Cornish nest were not altogether paradise. And yet it was a pretty little room enough, half dining-room, half study, with handsomely bound books on carved oak shelves, and photographs and bright draperies, and cosily cushioned bamboo chairs, and a bird-cage, and a Persian cat. Nor was the garden outside flowerless, even on the threshold of winter. The purple blossoms of the veronica were untouched by frost; there were pale tea roses gleaming yonder against the dark gloss of holly and laurel. There were single dahlias of vividest red, like flaming stars; and close under the open window, last splendour of departed summer, the waxen chalice of a golden lily trembled on its tall stem, and filled the room with perfume.

The rain was over--the monotonous drip, drip, which had irritated Isola’s nerves all that morning, had ceased at last. She left the modest little lunch untouched upon the table, and went out into the hall, where her hat and jacket hung handy for any impromptu ramble. No need to look at one’s self in the glass before going out of doors, at twenty years of age, and in such a place as Trelasco. Isola took her stick from the stand, a green orange stick, bought in the sunny South, on her way to Venice with her husband last year--a leisurely trip, which had been to them as a second honeymoon after a few happy months of wedlock. Then had come the sadness of parting, and a swift and lonely journey for the young wife--a lonely return to the Angler’s Nest, Trelasco, that cosy cottage between Lostwithiel and Fowey, which Major Disney had bought and furnished before his marriage. He was a son of the soil, and he had chosen to pitch his tent in that remote spot for the sake of old associations, and from a fixed belief that there was no locality of equal merit for health, beauty, and all other virtues which a man should seek in his home.

Isola rarely touched that stick without remembering the day it was bought--a rainy day in Milan--just such a day as this, a low, grey sky, and an oppressive mildness of atmosphere. She remembered, with the sick pain that goes with long partings, how she and her husband had dawdled away an afternoon in the Victor Emmanuel Gallery, buying handkerchiefs and neckties, a book or two, a collection of photographs, and finally the orange stick.

She went out to walk down her depression before teatime, if possible. She went along a narrow path by the river, then turned into a road that skirted those green pastures which rose sheer till the ragged edge of the topmost boundary seemed to touch the dim, grey sky. She passed the village inn, deadly quiet at this season and at this hour. She passed the half-dozen decent cottages, and the three or four genteeler houses, each in its neatly kept garden, and she walked with quick, light step along the wet road, her useful tailor-gown well clear of the mud, her stick striking the hedgerow now and then, as she swung it to and fro in dreamy thought.

A long, lonely winter to look forward to--a winter like the last--with her books and drawing-board, and her cottage piano, and the cat and the fox-terrier, and Tabitha for her daily companions. There were a few neighbours within a radius of half a dozen miles, who had been very civil to her; who called upon her, say once in six weeks; who sometimes invited her to a stately dinner-party, and sometimes at a suspiciously short notice, which made her feel she was wanted to fill a gap; who made her free of their tennis lawns; and who talked to her on Sundays after church, and were always very particular in inquiring for news from India. There was not one among them for whom she cared; not one to whom she would have liked to pour out her thoughts about Keats or Shelley, or to whom she would have confided her opinion of Byron. She was more interested in Bulwer’s “Audley Egerton” than in any of those flesh and blood neighbours. She was happier sitting by her chimney corner with a novel than in the best society available within a drive of Trelasco.

She struck off the high road into a lane, a lane that led to the base of a wilder hill than that where the red cattle were grazing. The crest of the hill was common land, and dark fir-trees made a ragged line against the autumn sky, and the view from the summit was wide and varied, with a glimpse of the great brown cliffs and the dark, grey sea far off to the west, to that dim distance where the Dodman shut off the watery way to the new world. On the landward slope of that wild-looking ridge was the Mount, Lord Lostwithiel’s place, uninhabited for the greater part of the year except by servants, his lordship being the very last kind of man to bury himself alive in a remote Cornish fastness, a long day’s journey from the London theatres, and the R.Y.S. Clubhouse at Cowes.

Who was Lord Lostwithiel? Well, in the estimation of Trelasco he was the only nobleman in England, or say that he was to all other peers as the sun to the planets. He belonged to Trelasco by reason of his large landed estate and the accident of his birth, which had taken place at the Mount; and, although his character and way of life were not altogether satisfactory to the village mind, Trelasco made the best of him.

Isola Disney climbed the hill, an easy matter to light-footed twenty. She stood amidst the tall fir columns, and looked down at the November landscape, very distinctly defined in the soft, grey atmosphere. She could see the plough moving slowly across the red earth in the fields below, the clumsy farm horses, white against the deep, rich red. She could see the winding river, bluish grey, between its willowy banks, and far off beyond Fowey there rose the wooded hills, where the foliage showed orange and tawny and russet between the blue-grey water and the pale grey sky.

She loved this lonely hill, and felt her spirits rise in this lighter atmosphere as she stood resting against the scaly trunk of a Scotch fir, with the wind blowing her hair. It was a relief to escape from the silence of those empty rooms, where she had only the sleepy Persian or the hyper-intelligent fox-terrier for company. There was a longer and more picturesque way home than that by which she had come. She could descend the other side of the hill, skirt the gardens of the Mount, by a path that led through the Park to a lodge gate on the Fowey road. It was one of her favourite walks, and she was so accustomed to seeing the shutters closed at the great house that she never expected to meet any one more alarming than a farm-servant or a cottager’s child.

There was a thick chestnut copse upon one side, and the wide expanse of undulating turf, with an occasional clump of choice timber, upon the other. The house stood on higher ground than the park, but was hemmed in and hidden by shrubberies that had overgrown the intention of the landscape gardener who planned them. Only the old grey-stone gables, with their heavy slabs of slate, and the tall, clustered chimneys, showed above the copper beeches, and deodaras, the laurels, and junipers, and Irish yews, and the shining masses of arbutus with crimson berries gleaming amongst the green. Isola had never seen that old Manor House nearer than she saw it to-day, from the path, which was a public right of way through the park. She knew that the greater part of the building dated from the reign of Charles the Second, but that there were older bits; and that about the whole, and about those ancient rooms and passages most especially, there were legends and traditions and historical associations, not without the suspicion of ghosts. The Mount was not a show place, like the home of the Treffrys at Fowey, and of late years it had been very seldom inhabited, except by certain human fossils who had served the house of Hulbert for two generations. She had often looked longingly at those quaint old gables, those clustered stone chimneys, likening the house amidst its overgrown shrubberies to the Palace of the Sleeping Beauty, and had wished that she were on friendly terms with one of those drowsy old retainers.

“I dare say if I were daring enough to open one of the doors and go in I should find them all asleep,” she thought, “and I might roam all over the house without awakening anybody.” She was too depressed to-day to give more than a careless, unseeing glance at those many gables as she walked along the muddy path beside the dripping copse. The chestnut boughs were nearly bare, but here and there clusters of bright yellow leaves were still hanging, shining like pale gold in the last watery gleams of the sun; and though the leaves were lying sodden and brown among the rank, wet grass, there were emerald mosses and cool, green ferns, and red and orange fungi to give colour to the foreground, and to the little vistas that opened here and there amidst the underwood.

Those final yellow gleams were fading low down in the western sky as Isola turned her face towards the river and the Angler’s Nest, and just above that pale radiance there stretched a dense black cloud, like a monstrous iron bar, which she felt must mean mischief. She looked at that black line apprehensively. She was three miles from home, without cloak or umbrella, and with no available shelter within three-quarters of a mile.

She quickened her pace, watching the fading light and lowering cloud, expecting thunder, lightning, hail, she knew not what. A sudden deluge settled the question. Torrential rain! That was the meaning of the inky bar above the setting sun. She looked round her helplessly. Should she dart into the copse, and try to shelter herself amidst those leafless twigs, those slender withies and saplings? Better to face the storm and plod valiantly on. Her neat little cloth gown would not be much the worse for a ducking; her neat little feet were accustomed to rapid walking. Should she run? No; useless when there were three miles to be got over. A brisk, steady tramp would be better. But, brave as she was, that fierce rain was far from pleasant. It cut into her eyes and blinded her. She had to grope her way along the path with her stick.

“Pray let me take you to the house,” said a voice close beside her, a man’s voice--low and deep, and with the accents of refinement.

Could one of Lord Lostwithiel’s fossilized servants talk like that? Impossible. She looked up, as well as she could, under that blinding downpour, and saw a tall man standing beside the pathway with his back to the copse. He was over six feet two and of slim, active figure. He was pale, and wore a short, dark beard, and the eyes which looked at Isola out of the pale, thin face were very dark. That was about as much as she could see of the stranger in the November dusk.

“Pray let me persuade you to come to the house,” he said urgently. “You are being drenched. It is absolutely dreadful to see anybody out in such rain--and there is no other shelter within reach. Let me take you there. My housekeeper will dry your hat and jacket for you. I ought to introduce myself, perhaps. I am Lord Lostwithiel.”

She had guessed as much. Who else would speak with authority in that place? She dimly recalled a photograph, pale and faded, of a tall man in a yeomanry uniform, seen in somebody’s album; and the face of the photograph had been the same elongated oval face--with long thin nose, and dark eyes a shade too near together--which was looking down at her now.

She felt it would be churlish to refuse shelter so earnestly offered.

“You are very kind,” she faltered. “I am sorry to be so troublesome. I ought not to have come so far in such doubtful weather.”

She went with him meekly, walking her fastest under the pelting rain, which was at her back now as they made for the house.

“Have you really come far?” he asked.

“From Trelasco. I live at the Angler’s Nest, a cottage by the river. You know it, perhaps?”

“Yes. I know every house at Trelasco. Then you are staying with Mrs. Disney, I presume?”

“I am Mrs. Disney.”

“You?”--with intense surprise. “I beg your pardon. You are so young. I imagined Mrs. Disney an older person.”

He glanced at the girlish figure, the pale delicate face, and told himself that his new acquaintance could scarcely be more than nineteen or twenty. He had met Major Disney, a man who looked about forty--a lucky fellow to have caught such a pretty bird as this.

They had reached the shrubbery by this time, and were hurrying along a winding walk where the rain reached them with less violence. The narrow walk brought them on to a broad terrace in front of the house. Lostwithiel opened a half-glass door, and led Mrs. Disney into the library, a long, low room, full of curious nooks and corners, formed by two massive chimney-pieces, and by the projecting wings of the heavy oak bookcases. Isola had never seen any room so filled with books, nor had she ever seen a room with two such chimney-pieces, of statuary marble, yellowed with age, elaborately carved with cherubic heads, and Cupids, and torches and festal wreaths, bows and arrows, lyres and urns.

A wood fire was burning upon one hearth, and it was hither Lostwithiel brought his guest, wheeling a large armchair in front of the blaze.

“If you will take off your hat and jacket, and sit down there, I’ll get my housekeeper to attend to you,” he said, with his hand upon the bell.

“You are more than kind. I must hurry home directly the rain abates a little. I have a careful old servant who is sure to be anxious about me,” said Isola, devouring the room with her eyes, wanting to take in every detail of this enchanted castle.

She might never enter it again, perhaps. Lord Lostwithiel was so seldom there. His absenteeism was the lament of the neighbourhood. The things he ought to have done and did not do would have filled a book. He had been wild in his youth. He had once owned a theatre. He had done, or was supposed to have done, things which were spoken of with bated breath; but of late years he had developed new ambitions, and had done with theatrical speculations. He had become literary, scientific, political. He was one of the lights of the intellectual world, or of that small section of the intellectual world which is affiliated to the smart world. He knew all the clever people in London, and a good many of the intellectualities of Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. He had never married; but it was supposed that he would eventually marry, before he was forty, for instance, and that he would make a great match. He was not rich, but he was Lord Lostwithiel. He was by no means handsome, but he was said to be one of the most fascinating men in London.

Isola pulled off her jacket slowly, looking about her all the time; and Lostwithiel forbore from offering her any assistance, lest he should intensify her evident shyness.

A man in plain clothes, who looked more like a valet than a butler, answered the bell.

“Send Mrs. Mayne, and bring tea,” ordered his lordship.

What a slender, girlish form it was which the removal of the tweed jacket revealed! The slim waist and somewhat narrow shoulders betokened a delicacy of constitution. The throat was beautiful, milk white, the throat of Diana, and the head, now the hat was off, would also have done for Diana; a small classic head, with soft, brown hair drawn smoothly away from the low, white brow and rolled into a knot at the back. The features were as delicate as the complexion, in which there was no brilliancy of colouring, only a paleness as of ivory. The eyes were dark grey, with long, brown lashes, and their present expression was between anxiety and wondering interest. Lostwithiel was not such a coxcomb as to appropriate that look of interest. He saw that it was his house and not himself which inspired the feeling.

“You like old houses, I can see, Mrs. Disney,” he said, smiling at her.

“Intensely. They are histories in brick and stone, are they not? I dare say there are stories about this room.”

“Innumerable stories. I should have to ransack the Record Office for some of them, and to draw upon a very bad memory to a perilous extent for others.”

“Is it haunted?”

“I am not one of those privileged persons who see ghosts; neither seventh son of a seventh son, nor of the mediumistic temperament; but I have heard of an apparition pervading the house on occasions, and being seen in this room, which once formed part of a certain small monastery, put down by Henry VIII., and recorded in the Black Book. As one of the oldest rooms it is naturally uncanny; but as I have never suffered any inconvenience in that line, I make it my den.”

“It is the most picturesque room I ever saw. And what a multitude of books!” exclaimed Isola.

“Yes; I have a good many books. I am always buying; but I find I never have exactly the book I want. And as I have no librarian I am too apt to forget the books I have. If I could afford to spend more of my life at the Mount, I would engage some learned gentleman, whose life had been a failure, to take care of my books. Are you Cornish, like your husband, Mrs. Disney?”

“No. I was born at Dinan.”

“What! in that mediæval Breton city? You are not French, though, I think?”

“My mother and father were both English, but my sister and I were born and brought up in Brittany.”

Lostwithiel questioned no further. He had a shrewd idea that when English people live for a good many years in a Breton town they have reasons of their own, generally financial, for their choice of a settlement. He was a man who could not have spent six months of his life away from London or Paris.

The housekeeper made her appearance and offered her services. She wrung the rain out of Isola’s cloth skirt, and wiped the muddy hem. She took charge of the jacket and hat, and at Lostwithiel’s suggestion she remained to pour out the tea. She was a dignified person, in a black silk gown and a lace cap, and she treated her master as if he had been a demi-god. Isola could not be afraid of taking tea in this matronly presence, yet she kept looking nervously towards the window in front of her, where the rain beat with undiminished force, and where the night was closing in.

“I see you are anxious to be on your way home, Mrs. Disney,” said Lostwithiel, who had nothing to do but watch her face, such an expressive face at all times, so picturesquely beautiful when touched by the flickering light of the wood fire. “If you were to wait for fine weather you might be here all night, and your good people at home would be frantic. I’ll order a carriage, and you can be at home in three-quarters of an hour.”

“Oh no, Lord Lostwithiel, I couldn’t give you so much trouble. If your housekeeper will be so kind as to lend me a cloak and umbrella, I can get home very well. And I had better start at once.”

“In the rain, alone, and in the darkness? It will be dark before you are home, in any case. No, Mrs. Disney, if I were to permit such a thing I should expect Major Disney to call me out directly he came home. He is in India, I think?”

“He is with his regiment in Burmah.”

“Do you expect him home soon?”

“Not very soon; not for six months, or perhaps longer. It was that which made me walk so far.”

Lostwithiel looked puzzled.

“I mean that I was so disappointed by his letter--a letter I received to-day--that I went out for a long ramble to walk down my bad spirits, and hardly knew how far I was going. It has made me inflict trouble on you, and Mrs.----”

“Mayne. Both Mrs. Mayne and I are delighted to be of use to you. Order the station brougham, Dalton, immediately,” to the man who answered his bell. “The carriage can hardly be ready in less than twenty minutes, so pray try to do justice to Mrs. Mayne’s tea.”

“It is delicious tea,” said Isola, enjoying the fire-glow, and the dancing lights upon the richly bound books in all their varieties of colouring, from black and crimson and orange-tawny to vellum diapered with gold.

She was evidently relieved in her mind by the knowledge that she was to be driven home presently.

“If you are really interested in this old house you must come some sunny morning and let Mrs. Mayne show you over it,” said Lostwithiel, establishing himself with his cup and saucer upon the other side of the hearth. “She knows all the old stories, and she has a better memory than I.”

“I should like so much to do so next summer, when my husband can come with me.”

“I’m afraid Major Disney won’t care much about the old place. He is a native of these parts, and must have been here often in my father’s time. I shall hope to receive you both, if I am here next October for the shooting--but there is no need to postpone your inspection of the house to the remote future. Come on the first fine morning that you have nothing better to do. Mrs. Mayne is always at home; and I am almost always out of doors in the morning. You can have the house to yourselves, and talk about ghosts to your hearts’ content.”

“Oh, my lord, I hope I know better than to say anything disrespectful of the house,” protested Mrs. Mayne.

“My dear Mayne, a family ghost is as respectable an institution as a family tree.”

Isola murmured some vague acknowledgment of his civility. She was far too shy to have any idea of taking advantage of his offer. To re-enter that house alone of her own accord would be impossible. By-and-by, with her husband at her side, she would be bold enough to do anything, to accept any hospitality that Lostwithiel might be moved to offer. He would invite Martin, perhaps, for the shooting, or to a luncheon, or a dinner. She wondered vaguely if she would ever possess a gown good enough to wear at a dinner-party in such a house.

After this there came a brief silence. Mrs. Mayne stood straight and prim behind the tea-table. Nothing would have induced her to sit in his lordship’s presence, albeit she had dandled him in her arms when there was much less of him than of the cambric and fine flannel which composed his raiment, and albeit his easy familiarity might have invited some forgetfulness of class distinctions. Mrs. Mayne fully understood that she was wanted there to set the stranger at her ease, and she performed her mission; but even her presence could not lessen Isola’s shyness. She felt like a bird caught in a net, or fluttering in the grasp of some strong but kindly hand. She sat listening for carriage wheels, and only hearing the dull thumping of her own scared heart.

And yet he was so kind, and yet he so fully realized her idea of high-bred gentleness, that she need hardly have been so troubled by the situation. She stole a glance at him as he stood by the chimney-piece, in a thoughtful attitude, looking down at the burning logs on the massive old andirons. The firelight shining on a face above it will often give a sinister look to the openest countenance; and to-night Lostwithiel’s long, narrow face, dark, deep-set eyes, and pointed beard had some touch of the diabolical in that red and uncertain glow; an effect that was but instantaneous, for as the light changed the look passed, and she saw him as he really was, with his pale and somewhat sunken cheeks, and eyes darkly grave, of exceeding gentleness.

“Have you lived long at the Angler’s Nest, Mrs. Disney?” he asked.

“Nearly a year and a half; ever since my marriage, with just one interval on the Continent before Martin went to India.”

“Then I need not ask if you are heartily sick of the place?”

“Indeed, I should not be tired of the cottage or the neighbourhood if my husband were at home. I am only tired of solitude. He wants me to send for his sister--a girl who has not long left school--to keep me company; but I detest school-girls, and I would much rather be alone than put up with a silly companion.”

“You are wise beyond your years, Mrs. Disney. Avoid the sister, by all means. She would bore you to death--a scampering, exuberant girl, who would develop hysteria after one month of Cornish dulness. Besides, I am sure you have resources of your own, and that you would rather endure solitude than uncongenial company.”

Isola sighed, and shook her head rather dolefully, tracing the pattern of the Persian rug with the point of her stick.

“I am very fond of books, and of music,” she said; “but one gets tired of being alone after a time. It seems such ages since Martin and I said good-bye in Venice. I was dreadfully unhappy at first. I stand almost alone in the world, when I am parted from him.”

“Your father and mother are dead?” in gentlest inquiry.

“Oh no; they are not dead; they are at Dinan,” she said, almost as if it were the same thing.

“And that is very far from Trelasco.”

“They never leave Dinan. The kind of life suits them. Mamma knits; papa has his club and his English newspapers. People enjoy the English papers so much more when they live abroad than when they are at home. Mamma is a very bad sailor. It would be a risk for her to cross. If my sister or I were dangerously ill, mamma would come. But it would be at the hazard of her life. Papa has often told me so.”

“And your father, is he a bad sailor?”

“He is rather worse than mamma.”

“Then I conclude you were married at Dinan?”

“Oh yes; I never left Brittany until my wedding-day.”

“What a pretty idea! It is as if Major Disney had found a new kind of wild flower in some cranny of the old grey wall that guards the town.”

“You know Dinan?”

“There are very few places within easy reach of a yachtsman that I don’t know. I have anchored in almost every bay between Cherbourg and Brest, and have rambled inland whenever there was anything worth seeing within a day’s journey from the coast. Yes, I know Dinan well. Strange to think that I may have passed you in the street there. Do you sketch, by the way?”

“A little.”

“Ah, then, perhaps you are one of the young ladies I have seen sitting at street corners, or under archways, doing fearful and wonderful things with a box of moist colours and a drawing-board.”

“The young ladies who sit about the streets are tourists,” said Isola, with a look of disgust.

“I understand. The resident ladies would no more do such things than they would sit upon the pavement and make pictures of salmon or men-of-war in coloured chalks, like our Metropolitan artists.”

“I think I hear a carriage,” said Isola, putting down her cup and saucer, and looking at her jacket, which Mrs. Mayne was holding before the fire.

“Yes, that is the carriage,” answered Lostwithiel, opening the glass door. “What a night! The rain is just as bad as it was when I brought you indoors.”

“If you will accept the use of a shawl, ma’am, it would be safer than putting on this damp jacket.”

“Yes, Mayne, get your shawl. Mrs. Disney will wear it, I know.”

The housekeeper bustled out, and Lostwithiel and his guest were alone, looking at each other somewhat helplessly, as they stood far apart, she in the glow of the hearth, he in the darkness near the door, and feeling that every available subject of conversation had been exhausted. Their embarrassment was increased when Dalton and a footman came in with two great lamps and flooded the room with light.

“I hardly know how to thank you for having taken so much trouble about me,” Isola faltered presently, under that necessity to say something which is one of the marks of shyness.

“There has been no trouble. I only hope I got you out of that pelting rain in time to save you from any evil consequences. Strange that our acquaintance should begin in such an accidental manner. I shall be glad to know more of Major Disney when he comes home, and in the meantime I hope I shall have the pleasure of meeting you sometimes. No doubt you know everybody in the neighbourhood, so we can hardly help running against each other somewhere.”

Isola smiled faintly, thinking that the chances of any such meeting were of the slightest; but she did not gainsay him. He wanted to say something courteous no doubt, and had gone into no nice question of probabilities before he spoke. She had heard him described by a good many people, who had hinted darkly at his shortcomings, but had all agreed as to his politeness and persuasive powers.

“A man who would talk over Satan himself,” said the village lawyer.

Mrs. Mayne reappeared with a comfortable Scotch plaid, which she wrapped carefully about Mrs. Disney, in a pleasant, motherly fashion. The rain had all been shaken off the little felt hat, which had no feathers or frippery to spoil. People who live in the west of England make their account with wet weather.

Lord Lostwithiel handed his guest into the carriage, and stood bareheaded in the rain to wish her good-bye before he shut the door.

“I shall be very anxious to know that you have escaped cold,” he said, at the last moment. “I hope you won’t think me a nuisance if I call to-morrow to inquire.”

He shut the door quickly, and the brougham drove off before she could answer. She was alone in the darkness in the snug, warm little carriage. There was a clock ticking beside her, a sound that startled her in the stillness. There was a basket hanging in front of her, and an odour of cigars and Russia leather. There was a black bear rug, lined with white fleeciness, which almost filled the carriage. She had never sat in such a carriage. How different from the mouldy old brougham in which she occasionally went to dinner-parties--a capacious vehicle with a bow window, like a seaside parlour!

She leant back in a corner of the little carriage, wrapped in the soft, warm rug, wondering at her strange adventure. She had penetrated that mysterious house on Black-fir Hill, and she had made the acquaintance of Lord Lostwithiel. How much she would have to tell Martin in her next letter! She wrote to him every week--a long, loving letter, closely written on thin paper, pouring out all her fancies and feelings to the husband she loved with all her heart.

She sighed as her thoughts recurred to the letter received to-day. Six months, or perhaps even a year, before he was to come back to her! Yet the letter had not been without hopefulness. He had the prospect of getting his next step before that year was over, and then his coming home would be a final return. He would be able to retire, and he would buy some land--a hundred acres or so--and breed horses--one of his youthful dreams--and do a little building, perhaps, to enlarge and beautify the Angler’s Nest, and his Isola should have a pair of ponies and a good saddle-horse. He looked forward to a life of unalloyed happiness.

Chapter II.

“But The Days Drop One By One.”

Next morning was fine, a morning so bright and balmy that the month might have been mistaken for September. Isola ran down to the garden in her neat little morning frock and linen collar, and ran about among the shrubs and autumn flowers in a much gayer mood than that of yesterday. She loved her garden--small and modest as it was in comparison with the grounds and gardens of her county neighbours--and on a morning like this it was rapture to her to run from flower to flower, and from shrub to shrub, with her great garden scissors in her hand, and her garden basket hanging over her arm, clipping a withered leaf or a fading flower every here and there, or plucking up those little groundsel plants which seem the perpetual expression of the earth’s fertility.

Alas! those pale tea-roses, those sulphur and flame-coloured dahlias, meant the last crumbs of summer’s plenteous feast. Soon winter and barrenness would spread over the poor little garden; but even in the chill dark heart of mid-winter those graceful conifers and shining laurels, the vermilion on the holly bushes, the crimson of the hawthorn berries would give beauty to the scene; and then would come the return of Persephone with her hands full of gold, the abundant gold of crocus and daffodil, jonquil and pale primrose, the rain of yellow blossoms which heralds the spring.

Half a year did not seem such an appalling interval--nay, even the thought of a year of waiting did not scare her so much this morning in the sunlight and fresh clear air as yesterday in the grey dim rain. What an improvement Martin would find in the garden, should he return before the end of the summer! How tall those Irish yews had grown by the gate yonder, a pair of dark green obelisks keeping stately guard over the modest wooden gate; and the escalonia hedge that screened the kitchen garden was two feet higher since the spring! How the juniper at the corner of the grass plot had shot up and thickened! Arbutus, laurel, ribes, everything had been growing as shrubs only grow in the south and south-west of England. What a darling garden it was, and how full of pleasure her life would be by-and-by, when Martin was able to settle down and buy land, and give her a little herd of Jersey cows! She had always envied the farmers’ wives in that fertile valley of the Rance, where her childhood had been passed. And how delightful to have her own cows and her own farmyard, and a pony-carriage to drive up and down the hilly Cornish lanes and into the narrow little street of Fowey, and to ride her own horse by her husband’s side for long exploring rambles among those wild hills towards Mevagissey!

She had only to wait patiently for a year or less, and that bright life might be hers. She had no frivolous vanities, no craving for dissipations and fine clothes, no fatal thirst for “smartness.” Her ideas were essentially modest. She had never envied her sister, who had married a rich stockbroker, and whose brand new red-brick house in Hans Place towered above surrounding Chelsea as much as her diamonds eclipsed the jewels of other middle-class matrons at the festal gatherings of South Kensington and Bayswater. Gwendolen had married for wealth. Isola had married for love. She had given her girlish affection to a man who was nearly thirty years her senior, her heart going out to him almost at the beginning of their acquaintance, first because he was a soldier, and in her mind a hero, and secondly because he was kinder to her than anybody else had ever been.

He was her first admirer. That delicate loveliness, as of some woodland flower, which distinguished Isola from the herd of women, had been still in embryo when Major Disney spent a summer holiday between Dinard and Dinan. She had scarcely ranked as a pretty girl two years ago. The slight figure was denounced as scraggy; the pale face was voted sickly; and the delicate features were spoken of as insignificant. Gwendolen’s big fair face, with its healthy roses and lilies, her bright hair, and well-developed figure, had completely overshadowed the younger sister. Martin Disney was the first man upon whom Isola’s low-toned beauty had any power. He was drawn to her from the very beginning. She listened so prettily, with such a bewitching modesty and almost tremulous pleasure, when he talked to her, as they sat side by side on the club ground at Dinard, watching Gwendolen playing tennis, superb in striped flannel of delicate pink and cream colour. He could hardly believe that those two were sisters. Isola was so slim and fragile, of such an ethereal prettiness, owing so little to colouring, and nothing to redundancy of form.

He was told that Miss Manwaring was engaged to one of the richest men in London. That, of course, was a gossip’s fable, but it was an established fact that Mr. Hazelrigg had made his fortune in South American railways, water-works, and other public improvements, and could afford to make a liberal settlement.

He showed no indisposition to be generous to his handsome sweetheart. He settled seven hundred a year upon her, and told her that she could spend as much of that income as she liked upon toilet and pocket-money, and that he would invest her surplus advantageously for her.

The two sisters were married on the same day to husbands who were their seniors by more than twenty years in one instance, by thirty years in the other. Daniel Hazelrigg had passed his jubilee birthday when he led Miss Manwaring to the altar; but he was a fine-looking man, straight and tall, like his bride, with a ruddy complexion and iron-grey moustache, and an air and bearing that savoured rather of the mess-room than the city. He had been on the Stock Exchange ever since he came of age; but he had made it the study of his life not to look city or to talk city. Nothing could tempt him to expatiate upon the money market outside his office. He would talk sport, travel, politics--even literature, of which he knew very little--but not stocks and shares, Nicaraguas, or Reading and Philadelphias, Mexican Street Railways, or Patagonian Building Society.

Isola read her sister’s glowing descriptions of dinners and routs, gowns by Worth or Cresser, suppers for two hundred people at a guinea a head, from Gunter, waggon-loads of cut roses from Cheshunt or Cheam, and felt no thrill of longing, no pang of envy. Life in the Angler’s Nest might be dull; but it was only dull because Martin was away. She would have felt more solitary in Hans Place, had she accepted Gwendolen’s invitation to spend her Christmas there, than she would feel in the cottage by the river, even with no better company than Tabitha, Shah, and Tim. She was essentially shy and retiring. Her girlhood had been spent in a very narrow world, among people whom she seemed to have known all her life; for while Gwendolen, who was six years older, and had been “out” for four years before she married, joined in all the little gaieties of the place, and was always making new acquaintance, Isola, who was not “out,” spent her days for the most part in a half-neglected garden on the slope of the hill that looks across the Rance towards the unseen sea. The view from that garden was one of the finest in Western France; and it was Isola’s delight to sit in a little berceau at the end of a terrace walk, with her books and work-basket and drawing-board, all through the long tranquil summer day, in a silence broken by the sound of wheels and horses’ feet on the viaduct and bridge two or three hundred feet below, or by the muffled music of the organ in the convent chapel.

* * * * *

Tim, the fox-terrier, and Shah, the Persian cat, were both on the lawn with their mistress this morning. They were not friendly towards each other, but preserved an armed neutrality. Tim chased every stray strange cat with a fury that threatened annihilation; and he always looked as if he would like to give chase to Shah, when that dignified piece of fluff moved slowly across the lawn before him with uplifted tail that seemed to wave defiance; but he knew that any attack upon that valued personage would entail punishment and disgrace. Isola loved both these animals--the cat a wedding-present from an old Breton lady in Dinan, the terrier her husband’s parting legacy. “Take care of Tim,” he had said, the day they parted on board the steamer at Venice.

The dog loved his mistress vehemently and obtrusively, leaping into her lap at the slightest sign of indulgence in her eye. The cat suffered himself to be adored, receiving all attentions with a sleepy complacency.

It was only half-past eight, and the world was looking its freshest. There was an opening in the shrubbery that let in a view of the river, and just in front of this opening there was a rustic bench on which Major Disney liked to smoke his after-breakfast pipe or after-dinner cigar. The garden contained very little over two acres, but it was an old garden, and there were some fine old trees, which must have shaded hoops and powder, and pig-tails and knee-breeches. Major Disney had done a great deal in the way of planting wherever there was room for improvement, and he had secured to himself an elderly gardener of exceptional industry, who worked in the garden as if he loved it. Tabitha, again, was one of those wonderful women who know all about everything except books; and she, too, loved the garden, and helped at weeding and watering, in seasons of pressure. Thus it had come to pass that these two acres of velvet lawn and flower-bed, shrubbery, and trim, old-fashioned garden had acquired a reputation in Trelasco, and people frequently complimented Mrs. Disney about her garden.

She was proud of their praises, remembering the straggling rose-bushes and lavender, and unkempt flower-beds, and overgrown cabbages, and loose shingly paths in that old garden at Dinan, which she had loved despite its neglected condition. Her house at Trelasco was just as superior to the house at Dinan, as garden was to garden. She often thought of her old home, the shabby square house, with walls and shutters of dazzling white, shining brown floors, and worn-out furniture of the Empire period, furniture which had been shabby and out of repair when Colonel Manwaring took the house furnished, intending to spend a month or two in retirement at Dinan with his wife and her firstborn, a chubby little girl of five. They had lost a promising boy of a year old, and the colonel, having no reason for living anywhere in particular, and very little to live upon, thought that residence in a foreign country would improve his wife’s health and spirits. He had been told that Dinan was picturesque and cheap: and he had put himself and his family on board the _St. Malo_ steamer and had gone out like an emigrant to push his fortunes in a strange land. He had even an idea that he might get “something to do” in Dinan--a secretaryship of a club, an agency, or managerial post of some kind, never having cultivated the art of self-examination so far as to discover that he must have proved utterly incapable, had any such occasion presented itself.

The occasion never did present itself. The one English club existent at Dinan in those days was amply provided with the secretarial element. There was nothing in Dinan for an Englishman to manage; no English agency required. Colonel Manwaring settled down into a kind of somnolent submission to obscure fortunes. He liked the old town, and he liked the climate. He liked the cooking, and he liked being out of the way of all the people he knew, and whose vicinity would have obliged him to live up to a certain conventional level. He liked to get his English newspapers upon French soil, and it irked him not that they were thirty-six hours old. He liked to bask in the sunshine on the terrace above the Rance, or in the open places of the town. He liked talking of the possibilities of an impending war, in very dubious French, with the French officers, whose acquaintance he made at club or café. He had sold his commission and sunk the proceeds of the sale upon an annuity. He had a little income of his own, and his wife had a little money from a maiden aunt, and these resources just enabled him to live with a certain unpretending comfort. He had a good Breton cook, and an old Scotch valet and butler, who would have gone through fire and water for his master. Mrs. Manwaring was a thoroughly negative character, placid as summer seas, sympathetic and helpless. She let Macgregor and Antoinette manage the house for her, do all the catering, pay all the bills, and work the whole machinery of her domestic life. She rejoiced in having a good-tempered husband and obedient daughters. She had no boys to put her in a fever of anxiety lest they should be making surreptitious ascents in balloons or staking their little all upon Zero at the “Etablissement” at Dinard. In summer she sat all day in one particular south window, knitting stockings for the colonel and reading the English papers. In winter she occupied herself in the same manner by the chimney corner. She devoted one day in the week to writing long letters to distant relatives. Once a day, weather permitting, she took a gentle constitutional walk upon the terrace above the Rance, with one of her daughters. Needless to say that in this life of harmless apathy she had grown very stout, and that she had forgotten almost every accomplishment of her girlhood.

From the placid monotony of life in Brittany to the placid monotony of life in Cornwall, was not a startling transition; yet when she married Martin Disney, and bade her commonplace father and her apathetic mother good-bye, Isola felt as if she had escaped from stagnation into a fresh and vigorous atmosphere. Disney’s character made all the difference. He was every inch a soldier, a keen politician, a man who had seen many countries and read many books, clear-brained, strong-willed, energetic, self-reliant. She felt what it was to belong to somebody who was capable of taking care of her. She trusted him implicitly; and she loved him with as deep a love as a girl of nineteen is capable of feeling for any lover. It may be that the capacity for deep feeling is but half developed at that age, and in that one fact may be found the key to many domestic mysteries; mysteries of unions which begin in the gladness and warmth of responsive affection, and which, a few years later, pass into a frozen region of indifference or are wrecked on sunken rocks of guilty passion. Certain it was that Isola Manwaring gave her hand to this grave, middle-aged soldier, in all the innocence of a first love; and the love with which he rewarded her confidence, the earnest watchful love of a man of mature years, was enough for her happiness. That honeymoon time, that summer of installation in the Cornish cottage, and then the leisurely journey to Venice in the waning brilliance of a southern October, seemed like one long happy dream, as she looked back upon it now, after a year of solitude.

The doctor had decided that, in the delicate health in which she found herself at the end of that summer, it would be dangerous for her to accompany her husband to India, more especially as a campaign in Burmah meant roughing it, and she would in all probability have been separated from him in the East; so they bade each other a sad good-bye at Venice, and Isola travelled quickly homeward, all possible comfort having been secured for her on the way, by her husband’s forethought. It had been a long, sad, sleepy journey, through a rain-blurred landscape, and she was glad when the evening of the fourth day brought her to the snug little dining-room in the Angler’s Nest, where Tabitha was waiting for her with a cheerful fire and the amber-shaded reading lamp, and the most delightful little composite meal of chicken and tongue, and tart, and cream, and tea. It was pleasant to be among familiar things, after that long journey in stuffy ladies’ carriages, with elderly invalids, whose chief talk was of their ailments. Pleasant to see the Shah’s solemn sea-green eyes staring at her, and to have to repulse the demonstrative attentions of Tim, who leapt upon her lap and licked her face vehemently every time he caught her off her guard.

She was ill and broken down after her journey, and that sad parting, and she hid her tears upon Tabitha’s comfortable arm.

“It will be at least a year before he comes back,” she sobbed. “How can I live without him all that dreary time?”

Tabitha thought it was very hard upon the girl-wife, but affected to make light of it. “Lor, bless you, ma’am,” she said, “a year looks a long time, but it isn’t much when you come to grapple with it. There’ll be such a lot for you to do. There’ll be the garden. We ought to make ever so many improvements next spring and summer, against the master comes home. And there’s your piano. You want to improve yourself--I’ve heard you say so--and you can get up all sorts of new tunes, and won’t the major be pleased with you; and then--there’ll be something else to occupy your mind before next summer comes.”

That “something else” which was to have filled Isola’s empty life with a new interest, ended in disappointment. She was very ill at the beginning of the new year, and Tabitha nursed her with motherly tenderness long after the doctor and the professional nurse had renounced their care of her. She regained strength very slowly after that serious illness, and it was only in June that she was able to take the lonely rambles she loved, or row in her little boat upon the river.

Tabitha was a servant in a thousand, faithful and devoted, clever, active, and industrious. She had been maid to Martin Disney’s mother for nearly fifteen years, had nursed her mistress through a long and weary illness, and had closed her eyes in death. Martin parted with that faithful servant with reluctance after the breaking up of his mother’s household, and he told her if he should marry and have a house of his own--a very remote contingency--she must be his housekeeper. Love and marriage came upon him before the end of the year, as a delightful surprise. He bought the Angler’s Nest, and he engaged Tabitha for the rest of her life, at wages which, beginning at a liberal figure, were to rise a pound every Christmas.

“As if I cared about wages, Mr. Martin,” exclaimed Tabitha. “I’d just as soon come to you for nothing. I’ve got more clothes than will last my time, I’ll be bound. You’d only have to find me in shoe-leather.”

She had never got out of the way of calling her master by the name by which she had first known him, when his father and elder brother were both at home, in the old family house at Fowey. In all moments of forgetfulness he was still “Mr. Martin.”

* * * * *

And now, in this bright November morning, Tabitha came out to say that breakfast was waiting for her young mistress, and mistress and maid went in together to the cosy dining-room, where the small round table near the window was arranged as only Tabitha could arrange a table--with autumn flowers, and spotless damask, and a new-laid egg, and a dish of honey, and some dainty little rolls of Tabitha’s own making, nestling in a napkin, a breakfast for a Princess in a fairy tale.

There was only one other servant in the little household--a bouncing, rosy-cheeked Cornish girl, who was very industrious under Tabitha’s eye, and very idle when she was out of that faithful housekeeper’s ken. Tabitha cooked and took care of everything, and for the most part waited upon her mistress in this time of widowhood, although Susan was supposed to be parlour-maid.

Tabitha poured out the tea, and buttered a roll, while Isola leant back in the bamboo chair and played with the Shah.

“I never knew him do such a thing before,” said Tabitha, in continuation of a theme which had been fully discussed last night.

“Oh, it was very kind and polite; but it was not such a tremendous thing, after all,” answered Isola, still occupied with the Persian. “He could hardly stand by and see one drowned. You have no idea what the rain was like.”

“But to send you home in his own carriage.”

“There was nothing else for him to do--except send me home in the gardener’s cart. He could not have turned out a dog in such weather.”

“It’s a thing that never happened before, and it just shows what a respect he must have for the Disneys. You don’t know how stand-offish he is with all the people about here--how he keeps himself to himself. Not a bit like his father and mother. They used to entertain all the neighbourhood, and they went everywhere, as affable as you like. He has taken care to show people that he doesn’t want their company. They say he has led a very queer kind of life at home and abroad; never settling down anywhere, here to-day and gone to-morrow; roving about with his yacht. I don’t believe any good ever comes of a young gentleman like that having a yacht. It would be ever so much better for him to live at the Mount and keep a pack of harriers.”

“Why should a yacht be bad?” asked Isola, lazily beginning her breakfast, Tabitha standing by the table all the time, ready for conversation.

“Oh, I don’t know. It gives a young man too much liberty,” answered Tabitha, shaking her head with a meaning air, as if with a knowledge of dark things in connection with yachts. “He can keep just what company he likes on board--gentlemen or ladies. He can gamble--or drink--as much as he likes. There’s nobody to check him. Sundays and weekdays, night and day, are all alike to him.”

“Lord Lostwithiel is not particularly young,” said Isola, musingly, not paying much attention to this homily on yachts. “He must be thirty, I think.”

“Thirty-two last birthday. He ought to marry and settle down. They say he’s very clever, and that he’s bound to make a figure in politics some of these odd days.”

Isola looked at the clock on the chimney-piece--a gilt horse-shoe with onyx nails; one of her wedding presents. It was early yet--only half-past nine. Lord Lostwithiel had talked about calling to inquire after her health. She felt overpowered with shyness at the thought of seeing him again, alone--with no stately Mrs. Mayne to take the edge off a _tête-à-tête_. Anything to escape such an ordeal! There was her boat--that boat of which she was perfect mistress, and in which she went for long, dawdling expeditions towards Fowey or Lostwithiel with only Tim for her companion--Tim, who was the best of company, in almost perpetual circulation between stem and stern, balancing himself in perilous places every now and then, to bark furiously at imaginary foes in slowly passing fishermen’s boats.

“Have you any fancy about lunch, ma’am?” asked Tabitha, lingering with feather-brush in hand over a side-table, on which work-basket, books, writing-case, and flower-vases were arranged with tasteful neatness by those skilful hands.

“No, you dear old Tabbie; you know that anything will do for me. Bread and jam, if you like, and some of your clotted cream. Won’t it be nice when we have our very own dairy, and our very own cows, who will know us and be fond of us, like Tim and the Shah?”

She put on her hat and jacket, and went out into the garden again, singing “La Lettre de Perichole” as she went. It was a capital idea to take refuge in her boat. If his lordship should call--which was doubtful--since he might be one of that numerous race of people whose days are made up of unfulfilled intentions and promises never realized--if he should call, she would be far away when he came. He would make his inquiry, leave his card, which would look nice in the old Indian bowl on the hall-table. Such cards have a power of flotation unknown to other pasteboard; they are always at the top.

Isola went to the little boat-house on the edge of the lawn, Tim following her. She pushed the light skiff down the slope into the water, and in a few minutes more her sculls were in the rowlocks and she was moving slowly up the river, between autumnal woods, in a silence broken only by the dip of the sculls and the little rippling sound as the water dropped away from them. A good deal of her life was spent like this, moving slowly up the river through that deep silence of the woodland shores. The river was as beautiful as the Dart almost, but lonelier and more silent. It was Martin Disney’s river--the river whose ripples had soothed his mother’s dying ears--the last of all earthly sounds that had been heard in the stillness of the death-chamber.

In that tranquil atmosphere Isola used to dream of her absent husband and of that mystical world of the East which seemed made up of dreams--the world of Brahma and Buddha, of jewel-bedecked Rajahs and Palace-tombs--world of beauty and of terror; of tropical forests, tigers, orchids, serpents, elephants, Thugs.

She dreamt her dream of that strange world in fear and trembling, conjuring up scenes of horror--tiger hunts; snakes hidden in the corner of a tent; battle; fever; fire; mutiny. Her morbid imagination pictured all possible and impossible danger for the man she loved. And then she thought of his home-coming--for good, for good--for all the span of their joint lives; and she longed for that return with the sickness of hope deferred.

She would go back to the Angler’s Nest sometimes after one of these dreamy days upon the river, and would pace about the house or the garden, planning things for her husband’s return, as if he were due next day. She would wheel his own particular chair to the drawing-room fireplace, and look at it, and arrange the fall of the curtains before the old-fashioned bow-window, and change the position of the lamp, and alter the books on the shelves, and do this and that with an eye to effect, anxious to discover how the room might be made prettiest, cosiest, most lovable and home-like--for him, for him, for him!

And now she had to resign herself to a year’s delay, perhaps. Yes, he had said it might be a year. All that bright picture of union and content, which had seemed so vivid and so near, had now grown dim and pale. It had melted into a shadowy distance. To a girl who has but just passed her twentieth birthday a year of waiting and delay seems an eternity.

“I won’t think of him,” she said to herself, plunging her sculls fiercely into the rippling water. The tide was running down, and it was strong enough to have carried her little boat out to sea like an autumn leaf swept along the current. “I must try to lull my mind to sleep, as if I were an enchanted Princess, and so bridge over twelve slow months of loneliness. I won’t think of you, Martin, my good, brave, truest of the true! I’ll occupy my poor, foolish little mind. I’ll write a novel, perhaps, like old Miss Carver at Dinan. Anything in the world--just to keep my thoughts from always brooding on one subject.”

She rowed on steadily, hugging the shore under the wooded hillside, where the rich autumn colouring and the clear, cool lights were so full of beauty--a beauty which she could feel, with a vague, dim sense which just touched the realm of poetry. Perhaps she felt the same sense of loss which Keats or Alfred de Musset would have felt in the stillness of such a scene--the want of something to people the wood and the river--some race of beings loftier than fishermen and peasants; some of those mystic forms which the poet sees amidst the shadows of old woods or in the creeks and sheltered inlets of a secluded river.

She thought, with a half-smile, of yesterday’s adventure. What importance that foolish Tabitha gave to so simple an incident; the merest commonplace courtesy, necessitated by circumstances; and only because the person who had been commonly courteous was Richard Hulbert, thirteenth Baron Lostwithiel. Thirteenth Baron! There lay the distinction. These Cornish folks worshipped antique lineage. Tabitha would have thought very little of a mushroom peer’s civility, although he had sent her mistress home in a chariot and four. She was no worshipper of wealth, and she turned up her blunt old nose at Mr. Crowther, of Glenaveril--the great new red-brick mansion which had sprung up like a fungus amidst the woods only yesterday--because he had made his money in trade, albeit his trade had been upon a large scale, and altogether genteel and worthy to be esteemed--a great cloth factory at Stroud, which was said to have clad half the army at one period of modern history.

Poor, foolish Tabitha! What would she have thought of the tea-drinking in that lovely old room, mysteriously beautiful in the light of a wood fire--the playful, uncertain light which glorifies everything? What would she have thought of those walls of books--richly bound books, books in sombre brown, big books and little books, from floor to ceiling? A room which made those poor little oak bookcases in the cottage parlour something to blush for. What would Tabitha have thought of his deferential kindness--that tone of deepest consideration with which such men treat all women, even the old and uncomely? She could hardly have helped admiring his good manners, whatever dark things she might have been told about his earlier years.

Why should he not have a yacht? It seemed the fittest life for a man without home ties; a man still young, and with no need to labour at a profession. What better life could there be than that free wandering from port to port over a romantic sea?--and to Isola all seas were alike mysterious and romantic.

She dawdled away the morning; she sculled against the stream for nearly three hours, and then let her boat drift down the river to the garden above the towpath. It was long past her usual time for luncheon when she moored her boat to the little wooden steps, leaving it for Thomas, the gardener, to pull up into the boat-house. She had made up her mind that if Lostwithiel troubled himself to make any inquiry about her health he would call in the morning.

She had guessed rightly. Tabitha was full of his visit, and his wondrous condescension. He had called at eleven o’clock, on his way to the railway station at Fowey. He called in the most perfect of T carts, with a pair of bright bays. Tabitha had opened the door to him. He had asked quite anxiously about Mrs. Disney’s health. He had walked round the garden with Tabitha and admired everything, and had told her that Major Disney had a better gardener than any he had at the Mount, after which he had left her charmed by his amiability. And so this little episode in Isola’s life came to a pleasant end, leaving no record but his lordship’s card, lying like a jewel on the top of less distinguished names in the old Indian bowl.

Chapter III.

“Oh Moment One And Infinite!”

Isola fancied that her adventure was all over and done with after that ceremonious call of inquiry; but in so narrow a world as that of Trelasco it was scarcely possible to have seen the last of a man who lived within three miles; and she and Lord Lostwithiel met now and then in the course of her solitary rambles. The walk into Fowey, following the old disused railway, was almost her favourite, and one which she had occasion to take oftener than any other, since Tabitha was a stay-at-home person, and expected her young mistress to do all the marketing, so that Isola had usually some errand to take her into the narrow street on the hillside above the sea. It was at Fowey that she oftenest met Lostwithiel. His yacht, the _Vendetta_, was in the harbour under repairs, and he went down to look at the work daily, and often dawdled upon the deck till dusk, watching the carpenters, or talking to his captain. They had been half over the world together, master and man, and were almost as familiar as brothers. The crew were half English and half foreign; and it was a curious mixture of languages in which Lostwithiel talked to them. They were most of them old hands on board the _Vendetta_, and would have stood by the owner of the craft if he had wanted to sail her up the Phlegethon.

She was a schooner of two hundred and fifty tons, built for speed, and with a rakish rig. She had cost, with her fittings, her extra silk sails for racing, more money than Lostwithiel cared to remember; but he loved her as a man loves his mistress, and if she were costly and exacting, she was no worse than other mistresses, and she was true as steel, which they are not always; and so he felt that he had money’s worth in her. He showed her to Isola one evening from the promontory above the harbour, where she met him in the autumn sundown. Her work at the butcher’s and the grocer’s being done, she had gone up to that airy height by Point Neptune to refresh herself with a long look seaward before she went back to her home in the valley. Lostwithiel took her away from the Point, and made her look down into the harbour.

“Isn’t she a beauty?” he asked, pointing below.

Her inexperienced eyes roamed about among the boats, colliers, fishing-boats, half a dozen yachts of different tonnage.

“Which is yours?” she asked.

“Which? Why, there is only one decent boat in the harbour. The schooner.”

She saw which boat he meant by the direction in which he flourished his walking-stick, but was not learned in distinctions of rig. The _Vendetta_, being under repair, did not seem to her especially lovely.

“Have you pretty cabins?” she asked childishly.

“Oh yes, they’re pretty enough; but that’s not the question. Look at her lines. She skims over the water like a gull. Ladies seem to think only what a boat looks like inside. I believe my boat is rather exceptional, from a lady’s point of view. Will you come on board and have a look at her?”

“Thanks, no; I couldn’t possibly. It will be dark before I get home as it is.”

“But it wouldn’t take you a quarter of an hour, and we could row you up the river in no time--ever so much faster than you could walk.”

Isola looked frightened at the very idea.

“Not for the world!” she said. “Tabitha would think I had gone mad. She would begin to fancy that I could never go out without over-staying the daylight, and troubling you to send me home.”

“Ah, but it is so long since you were last belated,” he said, in his low caressing voice, with a tone that was new to her and different from all other voices; “ages and ages ago--half a lifetime. There could be no harm in being just a little late this mild evening, and I would row you home--myself, under the new moon. Look at her swinging up in the grey blue there above Polruan. She looks like a fairy boat, anchored in the sky by that star hanging a fathom below her keel. I look at her, and wish--wish--wish!”

He looked up, pale in the twilight, with dark deep-set eyes, of which it was never easy to read the expression. Perhaps that inscrutable look made those sunken and by no means brilliant eyes more interesting than some much handsomer eyes--interesting with the deep interest that belongs to the unknowable.

“Good night,” said Isola. “I’m afraid that I shall be very late.”

“Good night. You would be earlier if you would trust to the boat.”

He held out his hand, and she gave him hers, hesitatingly for the first time in their acquaintance. It was after this parting in the wintry sundown that she first began to look troubled at meeting him.

The troubled feeling grew upon her somehow. In a life so lonely and uneventful trifles assume undue importance. She tried to avoid him, and on her journeys to Fowey she finished her business in the village street and turned homewards without having climbed the promontory by that rugged walk she loved so well. It needed some self-denial to forego that keen pleasure of standing on the windy height and gazing across the western sea towards Ushant and her native province; but she knew that Lord Lostwithiel spent a good deal of his time lounging on the heights above the harbour, and she did not want to meet him again.

Although she lived her quiet life in the shortening days for nearly a month without meeting him, she was not allowed to forget his existence. Wherever she went people talked about him and speculated about him. Every detail of his existence made matter for discussion; his yacht, his political opinions, his talents, his income, his matrimonial prospects, the likelihood or unlikelihood of his settling down permanently at the Mount, and taking the hounds, which were probably to be without a master within a measurable distance of time. There was so little to talk about in Trelasco and those scattered hamlets between Fowey and Lostwithiel.

Isola found herself joining in the talk at afternoon tea-parties, those casual droppings in of charitable ladies who had been their rounds among the cottagers and came back to the atmosphere of gentility worn out by long stories of woes and ailments, sore legs and rheumatic joints, and were very glad to discuss a local nobleman over a cup of delicately flavoured Indian tea in the glow of a flower-scented drawing-room.

Among other houses Mrs. Disney visited Glenaveril, Mr. Crowther’s great red-brick mansion, with its pepper-box turrets, and Jacobean windows, after the manner of Burleigh House by Stamford town.

Here lived in wealth and state quite the most important family within a mile of Trelasco, the Vansittart Crowthers, erst of Pilbury Mills, near Stroud, now as much county as a family can make itself after its head has passed his fortieth birthday. Nobody quite knew how Mr. Crowther had come to be a Vansittart--unless by the easy process of baptism and the complaisance of an aristocratic sponsor; but the Crowthers had been known in Stroud for nearly two hundred years, and had kept their sacks upright, as Mr. Crowther called it, all that time.

Fortune had favoured this last of the Crowthers, and, at forty years of age, he had found himself rich enough to dispose of his business to two younger brothers and a brother-in-law, and to convert himself into a landed proprietor. He bought up all the land that was to be had about Trelasco. Cornish people cling to their land like limpets to a rock; and it was not easy to acquire the ownership of the soil. In the prosperous past, when land was paying nearly four per cent. in other parts of England, Cornishmen were content to hold estates that yielded only two per cent.; but the days of decay had come when Mr. Crowther entered the market, and he was able to buy out more than one gentleman of ancient lineage.

When he had secured his land, he sent to Plymouth for an architect, and he so harried that architect and so tampered with his drawings that the result of much labour and outlay was that monstrosity in red brick with stone dressings, known in the neighbourhood as Glenaveril. Mr. Crowther’s elder daughter was deep in Lord Lytton’s newly published poem when the house was being finished, and had imposed that euphonious name upon her father. Glenaveril. The house really was in a glen, or at least in a wooded valley, and Glenaveril seemed to suit it to perfection; and so the romantic name of a romantic poem was cut in massive Gothic letters on the granite pillars of Vansittart Crowther’s gate, beneath a shield which exhibited the coat of arms made and provided by the Herald’s College.

Mrs. Vansittart Crowther was at home on Thursday afternoons, when the choicest Indian tea and the thickest cream, coffee as in Paris, and the daintiest cakes and muffins which a professed cook could provide, furnished the zest to conversation; for it could scarcely be said that the conversation gave a zest to those creature comforts. It would be perhaps nearer the mark to say that Mrs. Crowther was supposed to sit in the drawing-room on these occasions while the two Miss Crowthers were at home. The mistress of Glenaveril was not an aspiring woman; and in her heart of hearts she preferred Gloucestershire to Cornwall, and the stuccoed villa on the Cheltenham road, with its acre and a half of tennis-lawn and flower-beds, open to the blazing sun, and powdered with the summer dust, to Glenaveril, with its solemn belt of woodlands, and its too spacious grandeur. She was not vulgar or illiterate. She never misplaced an aspirate. She had learnt to play the piano and to talk French at the politest of young ladies’ schools at Cheltenham. She never dressed outrageously, or behaved rudely. She had neither red hands nor splay feet. She was in all things blameless; and yet Belinda and Alicia, her daughters, were ashamed of her, and did their utmost to keep her, and her tastes, and her opinions in the background. She had no style. She was not “smart.” She seemed incapable of grasping the ideas, or understanding the ways of smart people; or at least her daughters thought so.

“Your mother is one of the best women I know,” said the curate to Alicia, being on the most confidential terms with both sisters, “and yet you and Miss Crowther are always trying to edit her.”

“Father wants a great deal more editing than mother,” said Belinda, “but there’s no use in talking to him. He is encased in the armour of self-esteem. It made my blood run cold to see him taking Lord Lostwithiel over the grounds and stables the other day--praising everything, and pointing out this and that,--and even saying how much things had cost!”

“I dare say it was vulgar,” agreed the curate, “but it’s human nature. I’ve seen a duke behave in pretty much the same way. Children are always proud of their new toys, and men are but children of a larger growth, don’t you know. You’ll find there’s a family resemblance in humanity, and that nature is stronger than training.”

“Lord Lostwithiel would never behave in that kind of way--boring people about his stables.”

“Lord Lostwithiel doesn’t care about stables--he would bore you about his yacht, I dare say.”

“No, he never talks of himself or his own affairs. That is just the charm of his manner. He makes us all believe that he is thinking about us; and yet I dare say he forgets us directly he is outside the gate.”

“I’m sure he does,” replied Mr. Colfox, the curate. “There isn’t a more selfish man living than Lostwithiel.”

The fair Belinda looked at him angrily. There are assertions which young ladies make on purpose to have them controverted.

Mrs. Disney hated the great red-brick porch, with its vaulted roof and monstrous iron lantern, and the bell which made such a clamour, as if it meant fire, or at least dinner, when she touched the hanging brass handle. She hated to find herself face to face with a tall footman, who hardly condescended to say whether his mistress were at home or not, but just preceded her languidly along the broad corridor, where the carpet was so thick that it felt like turf, and flung open the drawing-room door with an air, and pronounced her name into empty space, so remote were the half-dozen ladies at the other end of the room, clustered round Belinda’s tea-table, and fed with cake by Alicia, while Mrs. Crowther sat in the window a little way off, with her basket of woolwork at her side, and her fat somnolent pug lying at her feet. To Isola it was an ordeal to have to walk the length of the drawing-room, navigating her course amidst an archipelago of expensive things--Florentine tables, portfolios of engravings, Louis Seize Jardinières, easels supporting the last expensive etching from Goupil’s--to the window where Mrs. Crowther waited to receive her, rising with her lap full of wools, to shake hands with simple friendliness and without a vestige of style. Belinda shook hands on a level with the tip of her sharp _retroussé_ nose, and twirled the silken train of her tea-gown with the serpentine grace of Sarah Bernhardt. She prided herself on those serpentine movements and languid graces which belong to the Græco-Belgravian period; while Alicia held herself like a ramrod, and took her stand upon being nothing if not sporting. Her olive-cloth gown and starched collar, her neat double-soled boots and cloth gaiters, were a standing reproach to Belinda’s silken slovenliness and embroidered slippers, always dropping off her restless feet, and being chased surreptitiously among her lace and pongee frillings. Poor Mrs. Crowther disliked the Guard’s collar, which she felt was writing premature wrinkles upon her younger girl’s throat, but she positively loathed the loose elegance of the Indian silk tea-gown, with its wide Oriental sleeves, exhibiting naked arms to the broad daylight. That sloppy raiment made a discord in the subdued harmony of the visitors’ tailor-made gowns--well worn some of them--brown, and grey, and indigo, and russet; and Mrs. Crowther was tortured by the conviction that her elder daughter looked disreputable. This honest matron was fond of Isola Disney. In her own simple phraseology, she had “taken to her;” and pressed the girl-wife to come every Thursday afternoon.

“It must be so lonely for you,” she said gently, “with your husband so far away, and you such a child, too. I wonder your mamma doesn’t come and stay with you for a bit. You must always come on our Thursdays. Now mind you do, my dear.”

“I don’t think our Thursdays are remarkably enlivening, mother,” said Alicia, objecting to the faintest suggestion of fussiness, the crying sin of both her parents. And then she turned to Isola, and measured her from head to foot. “It’s rather a pity you don’t hunt,” she said. “We had a splendid morning with the hounds.”

“Perhaps I may get a little hunting by-and-by, when my husband comes home.”

“Ah, but one can’t begin all at once; and this is a difficult country; breakneck hills, and nasty banks. Have you hunted much?”

“Hardly at all. I was out in a boar-hunt once, near Angers, but only as a looker-on. It was a grand sight. The Duke of Beaufort came over to Brittany on purpose to join in it.”

“How glorious a boar-hunt must be! I must get my father to take me to Angers next year. Do you know a great many people there?”

“No, only two or three professors at the college, and the Marquis de Querangal, the gentleman who has the boar-hounds. His daughter used to visit at Dinan, and she and I were great friends.”

“Lord Lostwithiel talked about boar-hunting the other night,” said Alicia. “It must be capital fun.” His name recurred in this way, whatever the conversation might be, with more certainty than Zero on the wheel at roulette.

He had been there in the evening, Isola thought. There had been a dinner-party, perhaps, at which he had been present. She had not long to wonder. The name once pronounced, the stream of talk flowed on. Yes, there had been a dinner, and Lord Lostwithiel had been delightful; so brilliant in conversation as compared with everybody else; so witty, so cynical, so _fin de siècle_.

“I didn’t hear him say anything very much out of the common,” said Mrs. Crowther, in her matter-of-fact way.

She liked having a nobleman or any other local magnate at her table; but she had too much common sense to be hypnotized by his magnificence, and made to taste milk and water as Maronean wine.

“Do you know Lord Lostwithiel?” Belinda asked languidly, as Isola sipped her tea, sitting shyly in the broad glare of a colossal fireplace. “Oh yes, by-the-by, you met him here the week before last.”

Mrs. Disney blushed to the roots of those soft tendril-like curls which clustered about her forehead; but she said never a word. She had no occasion to tell them the history of that meeting in the rain, or of those many subsequent meetings which had drifted her into almost the familiarity of an old friendship. They might take credit to themselves for having made her acquainted with their star if they liked. She had seen plenty of smart people at Dinan in those sunny summer months when visitors came from Dinard to look at the old quiet inland city. Lostwithiel’s rank had no disturbing influence upon her mind. It was himself--something in his look and in his voice, in the mere touch of his hand--an indescribable something which of late had moved her in his presence, and made her faintly tremulous at the sound of his name.

He was announced while they were talking of him, and he seemed surprised to come suddenly upon that slim unobtrusive figure almost hidden by Belinda’s flowing garment and fuller form. Belinda was decidedly handsome--handsomer than an heiress need be; but she was also just a shade larger than an heiress need be at three and twenty. She was a Rubens’ beauty, expansive, florid, and fair, with reddish auburn hair piled on the top of her head. Sitting between this massive beauty and the still more massive chimney-piece, Mrs. Disney was completely hidden from the new arrival.

He discovered her suddenly while he was shaking hands with Belinda, and his quick glance of pleased surprise did not escape that young lady’s steely blue eyes. Not a look or a breath ever does escape observation in a village drawing-room. Even the intellectual people, the people who devour all Mudie’s most solid books--travels, memoirs, metaphysics, agnostic novels--even these are as keenly interested in their neighbours’ thoughts and feelings as the unlettered rustic in the village street.

Lostwithiel took the proffered cup of tea, and planted himself near Mrs. Disney, with his back against the marble caryatid which bore up one-half of the chimney-piece. Alicia began to talk to him about his yacht. How were the repairs going on? and so on, and so on, delighted to air her technical knowledge. He answered her somewhat languidly, as if the _Vendetta_ were not first in his thoughts at this particular moment.

“What about this ball?” he asked presently. “You are all going to be there, of course?”

“Do you mean the hunt ball at Lostwithiel?”

“Of course! What other ball could I mean? It is the great festivity of these parts. The one tremendous event of the winter season. It was a grand idea of you new people to revive the old festivity, which had become a tradition. I wore my first dress coat at the Lostwithiel Hunt Ball nearly twenty years ago. I think it was there I first fell in love, with a young lady in pink tulle, who was miserable because she had been mistaken enough to wear pink at a hunt ball. I condoled with her, assured her that in my eyes she was lovely, although her gown clashed--that was her word, I remember--with the pink coats. My coat was not pink, and I believe she favoured me a little on that account. She gave me a good many waltzes in the course of the evening, and I can answer for her never wearing that pink frock again, for I trampled it to shreds. There were traces of her to be found all over the rooms, as if I had been Greenacre and she my victim’s body.”

“It will be rather a humdrum ball, I’m afraid,” said Belinda. “All the best people seem to be away.”

“Never mind that if the worst people can dance. I am on the committee, so I will answer for the supper and the champagne. You like a dry brand, of course, Miss Crowther?”

“I never touch wine of any kind.”

“No; then my chief virtue will be thrown away upon you. Are all young ladies blue-ribbonites nowadays, I wonder? Mrs. Disney, pray tell me you are interested in the champagne question.”

“I am not going to the ball.”

“Not going! Oh, but it is a duty which you owe to the county! Do you think because you are an alien and a foreigner you can flout our local gaieties--fleer at our solemnities? No, it is incumbent upon you to give us your support.”

“Yes, my dear, you must go to the ball,” put in Mrs. Crowther, in her motherly tone. “You are much too young and pretty to stay at home, like Cinderella, while we are all enjoying ourselves. Of course you must go. Mr. Crowther has put down his name for five and twenty tickets, and I’m sure there’ll be one to spare for you, although we shall have a large house-party.”

“Indeed, you are too kind, but I couldn’t think----” faltered Isola, with a distressed look.

She knew that Lostwithiel was watching her from his vantage ground ever so far above her head. A man of six feet two has considerable advantages at a billiard-table, and in a quiet flirtation carried on in public.

“If it is a chaperon you are thinking about, I’ll take care of you,” urged good Mrs. Crowther.

“No, it isn’t on that account. Mrs. Baynham offered to take me in her party. But I really would much rather not be there. It would seem horrid to me to be dancing in a great, dazzling room, among happy people, while Martin is in Burmah, perhaps in peril of his life on that very night. One can never tell. I often shudder at the thought of what may be happening to him while I am sitting quietly by the fire. And what should I feel at a ball?”

“I should hardly have expected you to have such romantic notions about Major Disney,” said Belinda, coolly, “considering the difference in your ages.”

“Do you suppose I care the less for him because he is twenty years older than I am?”

“Twenty! Is it really as much as that?” ejaculated Mrs. Crowther, unaffectedly shocked.

“He is just as dear to me,” pursued Isola, warmly. “I look up to him, and love him with all my heart. There never was a better, truer man. From the time I began to read history I always admired great soldiers. I don’t mean to say that Martin is a hero--only I know he is a thorough soldier--and he seemed to realize all my childish dreams.”

She had spoken impetuously, fancying that there was some slight towards her absent husband in Miss Crowther’s speech. Her flash of anger made a break in the conversation, and nothing more was said about her going or not going to the Hunt Ball. They talked of that entertainment in the abstract--discussed the floor--the lighting--the band--and the great people who might be induced to appear, if the proper pressure were put upon them.

“There is plenty of time,” said Lostwithiel, “between now and the twenty-second of December--nearly three weeks. Time for you and your sister to get new frocks from London or Paris, Miss Crowther. You mean having new frocks, I suppose?”

“One generally does have a new frock for a dance,” replied Belinda, “though the fashions this winter are so completely odious that I would much rather appear in a gown of my great-grandmother’s.”

Lostwithiel smiled his slow secret smile high up in the fainter firelight. He was reflecting upon his notion of Miss Crowther’s great-grandmother, in linsey-wolsey, with a lavender print apron, a costume that would be hardly impressive at a Hunt Ball. He did not give the young lady credit for a great-grandmother from the Society point of view. There was the mother yonder--inoffensive respectability--the grandmother would be humbler--and the great-grandmother he imagined at the wash-tub, or cooking the noontide meal for an artisan husband. He had never yet realized the idea of numerous generations of middle-class life upon the same plane, the same dead level of prosperous commerce.

Isola rose to take leave, after having let her tea get cold, and dropped half her cake on the Persian rug. She felt shyer in that house than in any other. She had a feeling that there she was weighed in the balance and found wanting; that unfriendly eyes were scrutinizing her gloves and hat, and appraising her features and complexion. She felt herself insignificant, colourless, insipid beside that brilliant Miss Crowther, with her vivid beauty, and her self-assured airs and graces.

Tabitha urged her to be of good heart when she hinted at these feelings.

“Why, Lord have mercy upon us, ma’am, however grand they may all look, it’s nothing but wool--only wool; and I heard there used to be a good deal of devil’s dust mixed with it, after this Mr. Crowther came into the business.”

The dusk was thickening as she went along the short avenue which led to the gates. Mr. Crowther, having built his house in a wood, had been able to cut himself out a carriage drive, which gave him an avenue of more than two centuries’ growth, and thus imparted an air of spurious antiquity to his demesne. He felt, as he looked at the massive boles of those old Spanish chestnuts, as if he had belonged to the soil since the Commonwealth.

Even the lodge was an important building, Tudor on one side, and monastic on the other; with that agreeable hodge-podge of styles which the modern architect loveth. It was a better house than the curate lived in, as he often told Miss Crowther.

Isola quickened her pace outside that solemn gateway, and seemed to breathe more freely. She hurried even faster at the sound of a footstep behind her, though there was no need for nervous apprehensions at that early hour in the November evening on the high road between Fowey and Trelasco. Did she know that firm, quick footfall; or was it an instinctive avoidance of an unknown danger which made her hurry on till her heart began to beat stormily, and her breath came in short gasps?

“My dear Mrs. Disney, do you usually walk as if for a wager?” asked a voice behind her. “I can generally get over the ground pretty fast, but it was as much as I could do to overtake you without running.”

He was not breathless, however. His tones were firm and tranquil. It was she who could scarcely speak.

“I’m afraid I am very late,” she answered nervously.

“For what? For afternoon tea by your own fireside? Have you anybody waiting for you at the Angler’s Nest, that you should be in such a hurry to get home?”

“No, there is no one waiting, except Tabitha. I expect no one.”

“Then why walk yourself into a fever?”

“Tabitha gets fidgety if I am out after dusk.”

“Then let Tabitha fidget! It will be good for her liver. Those adipose people require small worries to keep them in health. You mustn’t over-pace yourself to oblige Tabitha.”

She had slackened her steps, and he was walking by her side, looking down at her from that superb altitude which gave him an unfair advantage. How could she, upon her lower level, escape those searching glances?

She knew that her way home was his way home, so far as the bend of the road which led away from the river; and to avoid him for the intervening distance would have been difficult. She must submit to his company on the road, or make a greater effort than it was in her nature to make.

“You mean to go to this ball, don’t you?” he asked earnestly.

“I think not.”

“Oh, but pray do! Why should you shut yourself from all the pleasures of this world, and live like a nun, always? You might surely make just one exception for such a grand event as the Hunt Ball. You have no idea how much we all think of it hereabouts. Remember, it will be the first public dance we have had at Lostwithiel for ever so many years. You will see family diamonds enough to make you fancy you are at St. James’s. Do you think Major Disney would dislike your having just one evening’s dissipation?”

“Oh no, he would not mind! He is only too kind and indulgent. He would have liked me to spend the winter with my sister in Hans Place, where there would have been gaieties of all kinds; but I don’t want to go into society while Martin is away. It would not make me happy.”

“But if it made some one else happy--if it made other people happy to see you there?”

“Oh, but it would not matter to anybody! I am a stranger in the land. People are only kind to me for my husband’s sake.”

“Your modesty becomes you as the dew becomes a rose. I won’t gainsay you--only be sure you will be missed if you don’t go to the ball. And if you do go--well, it will be an opportunity of making nice friends. It will be your _début_ in county society.”

“Without my husband? Please don’t say any more about it, Lord Lostwithiel. I had much rather stay at home.”

He changed the conversation instantly, asking her what she thought of Glenaveril.

“I think the situation most lovely.”

“Yes, there we are all agreed. Mr. Crowther had the good taste to find a charming site, and the bad taste to erect an architectural monstrosity, a chimera in red brick. There was a grange once in the heart of that wood, and the Crowthers have the advantage of acorns and chestnuts that sowed themselves while the sleepy old monks were telling their beads. How do you like Miss Crowther?”

“I hardly know her well enough to like or dislike her. She is very handsome.”

“So was Rubens’ wife, Helena Forman; but what would one do in a world peopled with Helena Formans? There are galleries in Antwerp which no man should enter without smoke-coloured spectacles, if he would avoid being blinded by a blaze of red-haired beauty. I am told that the Miss Crowthers will have, at least, a million of money between them in days to come, and that they are destined to make great matches. Perhaps we shall see some of their _soupirants_ at the ball. Since the decay of the landed interest, the _chasse aux dots_ has become fiercer than of old.”

This seemed to come strangely from him who had already been talked of as a possible candidate for one of the Miss Crowthers. It would be such a particularly suitable match, Mrs. Baynham, the doctor’s wife, had told Isola. What could his lordship look for beyond a fine fortune and a handsome wife?

“They would make such a splendid pair,” said Mrs. Baynham, talking of them as if they were carriage-horses.

Mrs. Disney and her companion crossed a narrow meadow, from the high road to the river-path which was the nearest way to the Angler’s Nest. The river went rippling by under the gathering grey of the November evening. On their right hand there was the gloom of dark woods: and from the meadow on their left rose a thick white mist, like a sea that threatened to swallow them up in its phantasmal tide. The sound of distant oars, dipping with rhythmical measure, was the only sound except their own voices.

Did that three-quarters of a mile seem longer or shorter than usual? Isola hardly knew; but when she saw the lights shining in Tabitha’s kitchen, and the fire-glow in the drawing-room, she was glad with the gladness of one who escapes from some fancied danger of ghosts or goblins.

Lostwithiel detained her at the gate.

“Good night,” he said; “good night. You will change your mind, won’t you, Mrs. Disney? It is not in one so gentle as you to be inflexible about such a trifle. Say that you will honour our ball.”

She drew herself up a little, as if in protest against his pertinacity.

“I really cannot understand why you should care whether I go or stay away,” she said coldly.

“Oh, but I do care! It is childish, perhaps, on my part, but I do care; I care tremendously; more than I have cared about anything for a long time. It is so small a thing on your part--it means so much for me! Say you will be there.”

“Is that you, ma’am?” asked Tabitha’s pleasant voice, while Tabitha’s substantial soles made themselves audible upon the gravel path. “I was beginning to get fidgety about you.”

“Good night,” said Isola, shortly, as she passed through the gate.

It shut with a sharp little click of the latch, and she vanished among the laurels and arbutus. He heard her voice and Tabitha’s as they walked towards the house in friendly conversation, mistress and maid.

There was a great over-blown Dijon rose nodding its heavy head over the fence. Roses linger so late in that soft western air. Lostwithiel plucked the flower, and pulled off its petals one by one as he walked towards the village street.

“Will she go--will she stay--go--stay--go--stay?” he muttered, as the petals fluttered to the ground.

“Go! Yes, of course she will go,” he said to himself as the last leaf fell. “Does it need ghost from the grave or rose from the garden to tell me that?”

Chapter IV.

“Dreaming, She Knew It Was A Dream.”

Isola and Lostwithiel met a good many times after that walk through the autumn mists. She tried her utmost to avoid him. She went for fewer walks than of old; nay, she chiefly confined her perambulations to those domestic errands which Tabitha imposed upon her, and such afternoon visits as she felt it incumbent upon her to pay, in strict return for visits paid to her. Major Disney had begged her to be exact in such small ceremonies, and to keep upon the best possible terms with his friends. “I love every soul in the place, for old sake’s sake,” he told her; and for old sake’s sake Isola had to cultivate the people her husband had known all his life.

She tried to avoid Lostwithiel, but Fate was against her, and they met. He was unvaryingly courteous. He said no word which could offend the most sensitive of women. Prudery itself could have had no ground for alarm. He did not again allude to the ball, or his wishes upon that point. He talked of those common topics of interest to which every day and every season give rise, even in a Cornish village; and yet in this common talk acquaintance ripened until it became friendship unawares. And then--as all sense of shyness and reserve upon Isola’s part gave way to a vague, reposeful feeling, like drifting down a sunlit river, with never a breath of chilling wind--they began to exchange confidences about their past lives. Unawares Martin Disney’s wife found herself entering into the minutest details about the people she had met on that level road of a monotonous girlhood by which she had come to be what she was. Unawares she betrayed all her feelings and opinions, her likes and dislikes, and even the little weaknesses and eccentricities of her parents--her sister--her wealthy brother-in-law. Never before had she found so good a listener. Her husband had been all affectionate interest in the things that concerned her; yet she had often discovered that his mind was wandering in the midst of some girlish reminiscence; and he had a tiresome trick of forgetting all those particulars about her friends which would have enabled him to distinguish the personages of a story. He had to be told everything afresh at each recurrence of those names that were so familiar to her. Nor had he Lostwithiel’s keen sense of humour, and quick perception of the ridiculous side of life, whereby many a small social sketch fell flat.

The glimpses she caught of her new friend’s past existence enthralled her. It was to see new vistas opening into unknown worlds; the world of university life; the world of society, English and continental, with all its varieties of jargon; the world of politics, and literature, and art. It charmed him to see her interest in all those unknown things and people.

“You would very soon be tired of it, and would come back to Trelasco--like the hare to her form--or like me,” he said, smiling at her ardent look. “Believe me, it is all dust and ashes. My happiest hours have been on board a yacht, with only half a dozen good books, and ten or a dozen ignoramuses in blue serge for my companions.”

* * * * *

She was to go to the Hunt Ball after all; not because he wished it, but because other people had taken her affairs in hand, and decided that she should go. Dr. and Mrs. Baynham had decided for her. Mrs. Vansittart Crowther had decided for her, and had sent her a ticket with her love by that very footman whose appearance when he opened the door always crushed her, and who had given her a frightful shock when she danced into the kitchen to speak to Tabitha, and found him meekly sitting on a Windsor chair, with his knees drawn up nearly to his chin. Lastly, Tabitha had decided; and Tabitha’s opinion went for more than that of anybody else.

“You want a little bit of change and gaiety,” said the faithful stewardess. “You have been looking pale and worried ever since you had that bad news from Broomer,” this was Tabitha’s nearest approach to Burmah, “and you’ll be all the better for an evening’s pleasure. It isn’t as if you had to buy a dress, or even a pair of gloves. You’ve only worn your wedding-dress at three parties since you came home from your honeymoon, and it’s as fresh as if you’d been married yesterday. You’ve got everything, and everything of the best. Why shouldn’t you go?”

Isola could advance no reason, except her vague fear that her husband might not approve of her appearing at a public ball without him; but at this objection honest Tabitha snapped her fingers.

“I’ll answer for Mr. Martin,” she said. “He’ll be pleased for you to enjoy yourself. ‘Don’t let her mope while I’m away, Tabby,’ he said to me the day before he started for foreign parts. He’d like you to be at the ball. You’ll have Mrs. Baynham to take care of you, and what can you want more than that, I should like to know?”

Mrs. Baynham, the portly doctor’s wife, was, in Tabitha’s mind, the representative of all the respectabilities. How could a girl just out of her teens--a girl who loved dancing, and had been told she danced exquisitely--turn a deaf ear to such arguments, put forward by the person to whose care her husband had in some wise confided her. If Tabitha approved, Isola thought she could not do wrong in yielding; so the simply-fashioned white satin gown--made in Paris, and with all Parisian _chic_--was taken out of the pot-pourri perfumed drawer. Gloves and fan, and little white slippers were passed in review. There was nothing wanted. The carefullest housewife need not have hesitated on the score of economy.

So the question was finally settled--she was to go to the Hunt Ball. A fly was engaged for her especial service, so that she might not crowd Mrs. Baynham, who was to take two fresh, fat-cheeked nieces, who looked as if they had been fed from infancy upwards upon apple pasties and clotted cream. She was to drive to Lostwithiel in the fly from the Maypole Inn, and she was to join Mrs. Baynham in the cloak-room, and make her entrance under that lady’s wing.

This final decision was arrived at about ten days before the event, and for nine of those intervening days Isola’s life went by as if she were always sitting in that imaginary boat drifting down a sunlit river; but on the day of the dance, after just half an hour’s quiet walk with Lostwithiel on the towpath, she went back to the cottage pale as ashes; and sat down at her little davenport in the drawing-room, trembling, breathless, and on the verge of hysteria.

She opened the drawers of the davenport one after another, looking for something--helplessly, confusedly, as one whose brain is half distraught. It was ten minutes before she found what she wanted--a sheaf of telegram forms.

“To Major Disney, Cornwall Fusiliers, Rangoon.--Let me go to you at once. I am miserable. My heart will break if you leave me here.”

This was the gist of a message which she wrote half a dozen times, in different words, upon half a dozen forms. Then she tore up all but the last, threw that into a drawer, and began to pace the room feverishly, with her hands clasped before her face.

What fever-fraught vision was it that those hands tried to shut out from her burning eyes? So little had happened--so little--only half an hour’s quiet walk along the towpath, where the leafless willows had a grim, uncanny look, like those trees whose old grey branches seemed the arms of the Erlking’s daughters, beckoning the child as he nestled in his father’s arms, riding through the night. So little--so little--and yet it meant the lifting of a veil--the passage from happy innocence to the full consciousness of an unholy love. It meant what one kiss on trembling lips meant for Paolo and Francesca. It meant the plunge into a gulf of dark despair--unless she had strength to draw back, seeing the abyss at her feet, warned of her danger.

What had he said? Only a few agitated words--only a revelation. He loved her, loved her with all the passion of his passionate soul; loved her as he had never loved before. They all tell the same story, these destroyers of innocence; and, for that one burning moment, they all mean what they say. Every seducer has his hour of sublime truthfulness; of generous feeling; of ardent heroic aspirations; the hour in which he would perish for the woman he loves; cut off his right hand; burn out his eyes; leap off a monument; do anything except surrender her, except forego his privilege to destroy her.

It was not too late. The warning had come in time--just in time to save her. She knew now to what ocean that drifting boat was carrying her--through the sunny atmosphere, between the flowery shores of dreamland. It was taking her to the arctic ocean of shame and ruin--the great sea strewn with the corpses of women who had sinned, and suffered, and repented, and died--unforgiven of mankind--to wait the tribunal of God.

* * * * *

“Oh, lor!” cried Tabitha, bursting into the room. “I thought you were never coming home. You ought to go and lay down for two or three hours after your tea, or we shall have you fainting away before the night’s over. You’ve not been eating enough for a healthy canary bird for the last week.”

“I’m not very well, Tabbie. I don’t think I’ll go to the ball.”

“Not go! and when the fly’s ordered--and will have to be paid for whether or no; for Masters told me he could have let it twelve deep. Not go! and disappoint Mrs. Baynham, who has set her heart on taking you; and Mrs. Crowther, who gave you the ticket! Why, it would never do! You’ll feel well enough when you’re there. You won’t know whether you’re standing on your head or your heels. It’s past five o’clock, and your tea has been ready in the study since a quarter to.”

“How do you send telegrams to India, Tabitha?”

“Lor, ma’am, how should I know? From the post-office, I suppose, pretty much like other telegrams. But they cost no end of money, I’ll be bound. You’re not wanting to send a telegram to the major, are you, ma’am, to ask his leave about the ball?”

“No; I was only wondering,” Isola answered feebly.

She shut and locked the davenport, leaving her message in the drawer. She meant to send it--if not to-day, to-morrow; if not before the ball, after the ball. She felt that her only hope of peace and safety and a clear conscience was at her husband’s side. She must go out to him yonder in the unknown land. She must get to him somehow, with or without his leave--with or without his help. She would brave anything, hazard anything to be with that faithful friend and defender--her first love--her brave, self-denying, God-fearing lover. She felt as if there were no other safety or shelter for her in all the world.

“God will not help me unless I help myself,” she muttered distractedly, as she sat in her low chair by the fire, with her head flung back upon the cushions and the untouched meal at her side. Tabitha had left off providing dinner for her, at her particular request. She had neither heart to sit down alone to a formal dinner nor appetite to eat it; so Tabitha had exercised all her skill as a cook, which was great, in preparing a dainty little supper at nine o’clock; and it had irked her that her mistress did such scant justice to the tempting meal.

Isola fell asleep by the fire, comforted by the warmth, worn out by nights that had been made sleepless by vague agitation--by the living over again of accidental meetings, and friendly conversations--not by fear or remorse--for it was only this day that the danger of that growing friendship had been revealed to her. It was only to-day that she knew what such friendships mean. She slept a feverish sleep, from sheer exhaustion, and dreamt fever-dreams.

Those willows on the bank had recalled Goethe’s “Erl König”--the ballad she had learnt by rote in her earliest German studies--and the willows and the ballad were interwoven with her dreams. It was Martin Disney who was riding his charger along a dark road, and she was sitting in front of his saddle, clinging to him, hiding her face upon his breast, and the willows were beckoning--she knew those gaunt arms were beckoning to her, although her eyes were hidden--and _he_ was following. He was thundering behind them, on a black horse. Yes, and then the dream changed--the dreamer’s wandering thoughts directed by another reminiscence of those girlish studies in German poetry. She was Lenore, and she was in the arms of her dead lover. She felt that bony arm--Death’s arm--clutching her round the waist. Her streaming hair mingled with the streaming mane of that unearthly horse. She was with Lostwithiel--in his arms--and they were both dead and both happy--happy in being together. What did they want more than that?

“Vollbracht, vollbracht ist unser Lauf! Das Hochzeitbette, thut sich auf! Die Todten reiten schnelle! Wir sind, wir sind, zur Stelle.”

She woke with the chill of the charnel-house freezing her blood. The fire had gone out. Tim had curled himself at her feet in the folds of her gown. The Persian was staring discontentedly at the ashes in the grate, and Tabitha’s sturdy footsteps might be heard in the room above, bustling to and fro, and anon poking the fire, and putting on coals, making all snug and ready for her mistress’s toilet.

Isola rang, and Susan, the parlour-maid, brought in the lamp.

“I came twice before, ma’am; but you were fast asleep, so I took the lamp back to the pantry.”

Isola looked at the clock. Ten minutes to nine, and she was to meet Mrs. Baynham in the cloak-room at half-past ten. Ten o’clock was the hour on the card, and the fat-faced nieces were feverishly afraid that all the eligible partners would be snapped up by those wise virgins who appeared earliest on the scene.

“You won’t keep us waiting in the cloak-room, will you, dear Mrs. Disney?” they pleaded coaxingly.

Was she to put on her finery and go! There would be time yet to send a note to Mrs. Baynham, excusing herself on the score of illness. The doctor’s party would not start before half-past nine. What was she to do? Oh, she wanted to see him once more--just once more--in the brightly-lighted rooms, amidst a crowd--in a place where he would have no chance of repeating those wicked, wicked words--of forgetting all that was due to his own honour and to hers. In the crowded ball-room there would be safety--safety even from evil thoughts. Who could think of anything amidst the sound of dance music, the dazzle of lamps and flashing of jewels?

She wanted to go to the ball, to wear her satin gown, to steep herself in light and music; and thus to escape from the dim horrors of that awful dream.

Tabitha seemed like a good angel, when she came in at this juncture with a fresh cup of tea and a plate of dainty little chicken sandwiches.

“Come now, ma’am, I shan’t let you go to the ball if you don’t take these. What, not a bit of fire--and you asleep here in the cold? What was that addle-pated Susan thinking about, I wonder? I’ll take the tray upstairs. There’s a lovely fire in your room, and everything ready for you to dress. I want to be able to tell Mr. Martin that his young wife was the belle of the ball.”

Isola allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bright, cheerful bedroom, with its pretty chintz-pattern paper, and photographs, and artistic muslin curtains, and glowing fire, and toilet-table, with its glitter of crystal and silver in the pleasant candlelight. She suffered herself to be fed and dressed by Tabitha’s skilful hands, almost as if she had been a child; and she came out of her dismal dream into the glad waking world, a radiant figure, with violet eyes and alabaster complexion, flushed by the loveliest hectic. The simply-made, close-fitting bodice, with folded crape veiling the delicate bust, and the pure pearly tint of the satin, set off her fragile beauty, while the long train and massive folds of the rich fabric gave statuesque grace to her tall, slim figure; but the crowning glory of her toilette was the garland of white chrysanthemums, for which Tabitha had ransacked all the neighbouring green-houses; a garland of fluffy, feathery petals, which reached in a diagonal line from her shoulder to the hem of her gown. It was her only ornament, for by some strange caprice she refused to wear the modest pearl necklace and diamond cross which had been her husband’s wedding gift.

“Not to-night, Tabbie,” she said; and Tabitha saw in this refusal only the coquetry of a lovely woman, who wanted to show the great ladies and squire’s wives how poor and common diamonds are by the side of youth and beauty.

“Well, you don’t want any jewels, certainly,” said Tabitha. “You look as if you were going to be married--all but the veil. Those chrysanthemums are ever so much prettier than orange blossoms. There’s the fly. Let me put on your cloak. It’s a beautiful night, and almost as mild as May. Everybody will be at the ball. There’s nothing to keep folks away. Well, I do wish the major was here to go with you. Wouldn’t he be proud?”

The stars were shining when Isola went along the gravel path to the gate where Masters’ fly was waiting, with blazing lamps, which seemed to put those luminous worlds yonder to shame. There was no carriage-drive to the hall door of the Angler’s Nest. The house retained all its ancient simplicity, and ignored the necessities of carriage people. Tabitha wrapped her mistress’s fur-lined cloak close round her, before she stepped into the fly, which was provided with those elaborate steps that seem peculiar to the hired brougham.

“Good night, Tabitha, and thank you for all the pains you’ve taken in dressing me--and for the lovely wreath. I shall come home early. I shan’t wait for Mrs. Baynham’s party.”

“Don’t you hurry,” said Tabitha, heartily. “The Hunt Ball only comes once a year, and you’d better make the most of it. I shan’t mind sitting up; and perhaps I shan’t be half so dull as you think for.”

The flyman shut the door, which nobody but himself could shut--another peculiarity of hired broughams. The fly vanished in the darkness, and Tabitha ran back to the house, where she found Susan waiting at the hall door in her jacket and hat, as near a reproduction of Mrs. Disney’s jacket and hat as local circumstances--or the difference between Bond Street and Lostwithiel--would allow.

“Have you locked and bolted the back doors?” asked Tabitha; “but, lor, I’ll go and look myself; I won’t trust to your giddy young brains. Mr. Tinkerly will be here with the cart directly. I’ve only got to put on my bonnet and dolman, after I’ve taken a look round, and put away Mrs. Disney’s jewel-box.”

Tabitha was no light-minded housekeeper, but she had her hours of frivolity, and she loved pleasure with the innocent freshness of a most transparent soul. Tinkerly, the butcher, had offered to drive the two ladies--Tabitha and Susan--into Lostwithiel in his tax cart, and, furthermore, to place them where they would see something of the ball, or at least of the company arriving and departing, and beyond all this to give them a snack of supper, “Just something to bite at and a glass of beer,” he told Tabitha deprecatingly, lest he should raise hopes beyond his power of realization.

He meant to do the thing as handsomely as circumstances would permit, certainly to the extent of cold boiled beef and pickles, with Guinness or Bass. He was a family man, of irreproachable respectability, and his meat was supposed to be unmatchable for thirty miles round. He grew it himself, upon those picturesque pastures which sloped skyward, dipping towards the blue of the river, rising towards the blue of the sky.

No precaution of lock, bolt, or bar did Tabitha neglect before she put on her best bonnet, and dignified black cloth dolman, heavy with imitation Astrachan. She and Susan were standing at the gate when Tinkerly drove up with his skittish mare and spring cart, a cart so springy that it threatened to heel over altogether when Tabitha clambered into the place of honour. Mr. Tinkerly’s foreman was sitting behind to take care of Susan, and the foreman was unmarried, and of a greasy black-haired comeliness, and there was none happier than Susan under those wintry stars--not even the great ladies in their family diamonds.

“What are diamonds,” said Susan, philosophically, with the foreman’s arm sustaining her at a sharp turn in the road, “if you don’t care for each other?”

Chapter V.

“And The Child-Cheek Blushing Scarlet For The Very Shame Of Bliss.”

People who were familiar with the Talbot Hotel, Lostwithiel, in its everyday aspect would hardly have recognized the old-fashioned hostelry to-night, under the transforming hand of the Hunt Club, with Lord Lostwithiel and Vansittart Crowther on the committee. The entrance hall, usually remarkable only for various cases of stuffed birds, and a monster salmon--caught in the Lerrin river in some remote period of history--was now a bower of crimson cloth and white azaleas. In the ball-room and ante-room, tea-room and supper-room, were more flowers, and more crimson cloth, while on every side brushes and vizards against the crimson and white panelling testified to the occasion. The dancing-room was very full when Mrs. Baynham’s party made their entrance, the matron in her historical black velvet--which had formed part of her trousseau thirteen years before, when she left the family residence in the chief street of Truro, and all those privileges which appertained to her as the only daughter of a provincial banker, to grace Dr. Baynham’s lowlier dwelling. The black velvet gown had been “let out” from time to time, as youth expanded into maturity: and there had been a new bodice and a real Maltese lace flounce within the last three years, which constituted a second incarnation; and Mrs. Baynham walked into the Talbot ball-room with the serene demeanour that goes with a contented mind. She was satisfied with herself, and she was proud of her party, the two fresh, rosy-cheeked girls in sky-blue tulle, Isola, looking like a Mary lily in her white satin raiment, and the village surgeon, who always looked his best in his dress clothes, newly-shaven, and, as it were, pulled together in honour of the occasion.

The room was full, and very full; but Lostwithiel was not there. Isola had an instinctive consciousness that he was missing in that brilliant crowd. People came buzzing round her, and she was made room for upon a raised bench opposite the gallery where a military band was playing a polka in which the brasses predominated to an ear-splitting extent.

The Glenaveril party made their entrance ten minutes later. The Crowther girls were not afraid of wanting partners. Most young men are glad to dance with half a million of money. There is always an off chance of a good thing, just as there is a chance of breaking the bank at Monte Carlo. Belinda looked superb in a cloud of tulle, like a goddess. Alicia looked too well on horseback to look well off. Her spare straight figure and sharp elbows were not at their best in evening dress. She wore black, and an infinity of bugles, and flashed and glittered more than any one else in the room, though she wore never a jewel.

“Worth, my dear,” said Mrs. Baynham to a blue niece, in a mysterious whisper; “I know his style.”

There was a buzz of conversation on that raised divan where the matrons were sitting with those newly arrived maidens who were like ships waiting to slide out of their cradles and float away to sea. Isola and the sky-blue nieces had not long to wait; especially Isola. Men were entreating the stewards to introduce them to that lovely fragile-looking creature in white satin--the best men in the neighbourhood, or those wandering stars from distant counties, or the London galaxy, “men with handles to their names,” as Mr. Baynham told Mrs. Crowther, resplendent in salmon brocade, and Venetian point.

“My presentation gown,” she informed the doctor’s wife; “the Court mantle is ruby velvet, lined with salmon satin. The weight of it almost pulled me backwards when I curtsied to the royalties--such a lot of them, and I’m afraid I curtsied rather too low to one of the Princesses, for I caught her taking me off when she returned my curtsy.”

Isola danced through the lancers as one in a dream. When the heart of a man is oppressed with care, “Ta-rarra, ta-rarra, ta-rà, ta-rà!” What foolishness it all seemed. And her husband in Burmah, hemmed round by murderous dacoits!

She went back to her seat among the matrons, after almost curtly refusing either refreshment or a promenade through the rooms. Mrs. Crowther was saying solemnly, “I do believe Lord Lostwithiel is not coming after all, and yet he worked so hard on the committee, my husband said, and took such pains about the flowers, and what not.”

The tall, slim figure cut its way through the crowd two or three minutes later, and Lostwithiel was standing in front of Isola, and the two matrons.

He wore a pink coat, as became a member of the Lostwithiel Hunt, and the vivid colour accentuated the pallor of his long thin face. He talked to all the ladies on the divan; to the sky-blue nieces even, hoping that their cards were full.

“If not, I must bring you some men I know,” he said. “You mustn’t miss a dance.”

They blushed and trembled with delight, never before having been thus familiarly addressed by a peer of the realm. He asked Isola for her programme, with well-simulated indifference, yet with that air of profound respect with which he talked to all women.

“I hope you can spare me some waltzes,” he said.

“She is only just come,” said Mrs. Baynham.

“And yet her card is almost full. People have been very officious. Here is a poor little waltz--number seven. May I have that, and number eleven, and number----”

“Please don’t put down your name for anything later than number eleven. I shall be gone long before those late dances.”

“Oh, surely, you don’t mean to desert us early. Remember this is the one festive occasion of our lives as a sporting community. All our other meetings are given up to carking care, financial difficulties, and squabbling. I shall put down my name in these tempting blanks, and if you disappoint me--well--it will only be like my previous experiences as a fox-hunter.”

He gave her back her programme, with all the blanks filled in, and at the bottom a word written, and triply underscored,

ἉΝΑΓΚΗ.

They had talked of Victor Hugo’s romantic story--that romance which the great man so despised in after years that he was almost offended if any one presumed to praise it in his hearing, although in the half-century that has gone since Victor Hugo was a young man this story of Notre Dame has been unsurpassed as an example of the romantic novel. Lostwithiel had praised the book, and had talked of the monk Frollo, and his fatal love--and that word Fatality, graven upon the wall of his cell, and burnt into his soul.

Isola knew what those Greek letters meant. She dropped the little white and gold programme as if it had been an adder. He went away to a duty dance with a great lady of the district--a lady whose diamonds made a light about her wherever she moved; and then he waltzed with Belinda Crowther, to the admiration of the young lady’s mother, and of two or three other matrons on the divan by the door. Were they not a splendid couple, she so brilliantly fair, he dark and pale, bronzed slightly with exposure to the sun in warmer climates than this--not positively handsome, but with such an interesting countenance. So, and so, and so prosed the matrons, until various middle-aged cavaliers came to invite them to the tea-room, where there was the usual drawback in the shape of a frightful draught from open windows, which the dancers, coming in flushed and heated, voted delicious.

“This will be a good night’s work for me,” said Dr. Baynham, cheerfully, although he considered it his duty to warn his patients of their danger.

Conscience thus satisfied, he could look on complacently as they eat ices, and selected cool corners of the refreshment-room to flirt in.

“Next to a juvenile party, I don’t know anything better--from a professional point of view--than a public ball,” he said. “Your canvas corridors, decorated with flowers and bunting, are a fortune to a family practitioner.”

Isola danced every dance. She hardly knew who her partners were. She had only a sense of floating in a vortex of light and colour, to some swinging melody. Everything was dream-like--but not horrible, as in her dream by the fireside at home. This was a happy dream, as of a creature with wings, who knew not of care in the present or a soul to be saved in the future. And then came her waltz with Lostwithiel, and that strong arm was round her, bearing her up as a flower is borne upon a rushing tide, so that she had no consciousness of movement on her own part, only of floating, floating, floating, to that languid three-time melody.

It was the last popular waltz they were playing--a waltz that had been last summer’s delight in the arid gardens of South Kensington--“Il n’y a que toi;” a waltz with a chorus which the band trolled out merrily, at intervals, in the French of Stratford atte Bow.

“Il n’y a que toi,” whispered Lostwithiel, with his lips close to the soft brown hair above the white forehead. “Not a bad name for a waltz when one is waltzing with just one person in the world.”

* * * * *

Out in the cool night there was a little knot of people as merry after their homelier fashion as town and county in the ball-room. One of the windows had been opened at the top for ventilation, and this opening had been turned to advantage. A large, substantial kitchen table had been placed in front of the window, and upon this improvised platform stood Tabitha, Susan, the head chamber-maid, and the ostler’s wife--this last on sufferance, and evidently not in society--looking on at the ball. The window was under a verandah, that sloped above these spectators’ heads. They were thus in dense shadow, and unseen by the occupants of the lamp-lit room.

Susan was exuberant in her delight.

“I was never at a ball before,” she said. “Oh, ain’t it lovely? Don’t I wish I could dance like that? Lor, do look at that fat old party, spinning round like a teetotum! Well, I never did! Don’t she perspire!” exclaimed Susan, indulging in a running commentary which left much to be desired in the matter of refinement.

This unsophisticated damsel heartily admired youth and beauty, and the smart frocks and flashing gems; but she was cruelly hard upon those dancers whose charms were on the wane, or whose frocks were inferior or ugly.

“Well, I wouldn’t,” said Susan, “I wouldn’t go to a ball like this if I couldn’t have everythink nice. Look at that tall girl in yeller. Did you ever see such a scarecrow? I’d ever so much rather stay at home, or stand outside, like this. I should feel it better became me.”

Tabitha made no such remarks. She was singularly silent and thoughtful, as she stood looking down at the crowded room from her point of vantage on the kitchen table. She had only eyes for one figure--the willowy form in the glistening white satin gown, with the feathery Japanese chrysanthemums, a little crushed and faded by this time; or perhaps it may be said for two figures, since one followed the other as the shadow follows the substance. She saw them waltzing together, when supper was in full progress, and the room comparatively clear. She saw the graceful head inclining towards his shoulder, the slender waist held in his firm embrace; and it seemed to her that the waltz was an invention of the Arch Enemy. She thought of it very much as people thought seventy years ago when Byron wrote his poetical denunciation of the new dance. She saw those two moving slowly towards an adjacent ante-room, where banks of flowers, and a couple of sofas and low easy-chairs made a retreat which was half boudoir, half conservatory. She saw them moving side by side, talking to each other in tones so confidential that his head bent low over hers each time she spoke; and then she watched them sitting just within the doorway, at an angle where she could see their faces, and attitudes, still in the same confidential converse, she with downcast eyes, and he leaning forward with his elbow on his knee, and looking up at her as he talked.

“It is too bad of him,” muttered Tabitha, writhing at that spectacle. “Does he think what a child she is, and what harm he may be doing? It is wicked of him, and he knows it; and other people must notice them--other people must see what I see--and they will be talking of her, blighting her good name. Oh, if I could only get her away at once before people begin to notice her!”

She could see her young mistress’s face distinctly in the lamplight. Isola was very pale, and her face was full of trouble; not the face of a woman amusing herself with an idle flirtation, playing with fire without the least intention of burning her fingers. There were plenty of flirtations of that order going on in the Talbot ball-room; but this was not one of them. This meant peril of some kind. This was all evil. That pale face, those heavy eyelids, shrouding eyes which dared not look up. That tremulous, uncertain movement of the snowy ostrich fan! All these were danger signals.

“If I get her safe at home presently, I’ll open her eyes for her,” thought Tabitha. “I’ll talk to her as if I was her mother. God knows I should be almost as sorry as ever her mother could be if she came to any harm.”

If she came to any harm. What harm was there to fear for her, as she sat there, with Lostwithiel lounging across the low chair beside the sofa where she sat, leaning forward to look into her downcast face? What harm could come to her except that which meant destruction--death to peace, and gladness, and womanly fame? If there were danger it was a desperate danger, and Tabitha shuddered at the mere thought of that peril.

“But, lor, she’s little more than a child,” mused Tabitha. “She means no wrong, and she knows no wrong. She’s too innocent to come to any harm.”

Yet in the landlady’s snuggery, by-and-by, seated at the comfortable round table, with its spotless damask and bright glass and silver, Tabitha was quite unable to do justice to that snack which Mr. Tinkerly had ordered in her honour--a chicken and lobster-salad from the supper-room, and three parts of a pine-apple cream. Susan and the foreman fully appreciated these dainties; but Tabitha only munched a crust and sipped a tumbler of beer.

“I’m a little bit out of sorts to-night,” she said.

“I hope you haven’t taken cold, Mrs. Thomas,” said the polite Tinkerly. “Perhaps we ought to have brought another rug?”

“No, it isn’t that. I’ve been quite warm and comfortable. Eat your supper, Mr. Tinkerly, and don’t bother about me. I’ve been interested in looking on, and I’m too much took up with what I’ve seen to be able to eat.”

“Well, it was a pretty sight,” exclaimed Tinkerly, enthusiastically; “but I don’t think I ever saw such a mort of plain women in my life.”

“Lor, Mr. Tinkerly,” cried Susan, with a shocked air. “Why, look at our young mistress, and at Miss Crowther, and Miss Spenthrop from Truro, and Mrs. Pencarrow, and Lady Chanderville.”

“Well, I don’t say they’re all ugly. Some of ’em are handsome enough, and there’s plenty of thorough-breds among ’em, but there’s a sight of plain-headed ones. There’s quite as much beauty in your spear as there is among the county folks, Miss Susan. I’ll answer for that.”

* * * * *

The night was waning. Isola had ordered her carriage for half-past two: but three o’clock had struck from the church tower of Lostwithiel, and the dance was still at its height--at its best, the dancers said, now that the sensual attractions of the supper-room drew off a good many people, and left the floor so much clearer than before supper, when bulky middle-aged gentlemen, talking to the matrons seated upon the divan, had projected their ponderous persons into the orbit of the waltzers.

Isola and Lostwithiel had danced only two waltzes, but since two o’clock they had sat out several dances, Mrs. Disney having cancelled all her engagements after that hour by declaring that she would dance no more.

“I am dreadfully tired,” she told her partners piteously, and her pallor gave force to the assertion. “Please get some one else for our dance, Captain Morshead,” and so on, and so on, to half a dozen disappointed suitors.

Perhaps some of those who happened to be experienced in such complications may have divined which way the wind blew, for no one offered to sit out the promised dances, and Isola and Lostwithiel were left pretty much to themselves among the palms and orange-trees in the ante-room. They were not unobserved, however; and among the eyes which marked them with no friendly notice were the fine, steel-blue eyes of Miss Crowther.

“Is that a flirtation?” she asked Captain Morshead, glancing in the direction of the ante-room where those two were sitting, as she and Isola’s cast-off partner waltzed past the muslin-draped doorway.

“They seem rather fond of talking to each other, don’t they? Who was she? She’s uncommonly pretty.”

“Oh, her people were army, I believe--as poor as church mice--buried alive in Dinan.”

“At Dinan--and now she lives at Trelasco, she tells me. It seems scarcely worth while to have exhumed her in order to bury her again. Such a girl as that ought to be in London enjoying life.”

“Oh, but she’s a grass widow, don’t you know. Her husband is in Burmah. I don’t think it’s quite nice in her to be here to-night; only as my too good-natured mother sent her a ticket, I suppose I oughtn’t to say anything about it. Perhaps if mother sees the way she goes on with Lord Lostwithiel she’ll rather regret that ticket.”

* * * * *

What was Lostwithiel saying all this time in that gentle baritone, which was heard only by one listener? He was asking forgiveness for his indiscretion of the afternoon, and in that prayer for pardon was repeating his offence. Isola was less inclined to be angry, perhaps, now. The magic of the dance was still upon her senses, the dance which had brought them nearer than all the days they had met; than all their long confidential conversations on the heights above the harbour, or on the river path, or dawdling on the bridge. She had felt the beating of his heart against her own, breath mingling with breath, the thrilling touch of his encircling arm; and it was as if he had woven a spell around her which made her his. She had never danced with her husband, who had no love of that heathenish art. In all their brisk, frank courtship there had been no intoxicating hours. She hardly knew what dancing meant till she waltzed with Lostwithiel, who had something of the fiery ardour of a Pagan worshipping his gods in wild gyrations upon moonlit mountain or in secret cave. She let him talk to her to-night--let him pour out the full confession of his unhappy love. He spoke not as one who had hope; not with that implied belief in her frailty which would have startled her into prompt resistance. His accents were the accents of despair, his love was a dark fatality.

ἉΝΑΓΚΗ

“Why did you write that word?” she asked.

“Why? Because I could not give you back that card without some token of my passion--with only commonplace entries which Jones, Brown, and Robinson might write there. I want you to feel that you belong to me, somehow, in some way, as the spirits of the dead and the souls of the living belong to each other sometimes, by links which none can see. When I am at the other end of the earth I want to feel that there is something, if it were only a word, like a masonic sign, between us; if it were only a promise that in such or such a phase of the waning moon we would each look up and breathe the other’s name.”

“You are going away?”

“What else can I do? Can I stay? You tell me I made you miserable by what I said this afternoon. That means we must meet no more. I can’t be sorry for my offence. I cannot answer for myself. My love has passed the point of sanity and self-control. I have no option. I must offend you, or I must leave you.”

“You need not leave Trelasco,” she said gently. “I am going away to-morrow.”

“Going away! Where?”

“To London first, and then to India.”

“To Burmah? Impossible!”

“If not to the front, to the nearest convenient station. I am going to my husband; as nearly as I can reach him; and as quickly as I can make the journey.”

“You are dreaming.”

“No, I have quite made up my mind. I hated to be left behind last year; and now that his return is deferred my only chance of happiness is to go to him. Some one called me a grass widow the other day. What a detestable name!”

“Give me this one waltz?” he asked, without any comment upon her intended journey.

“Impossible. I told them all I shouldn’t dance any more.”

“Oh, your partners are all in the supper-room, I dare say. The dancing men go in last. Hark! it’s the Myosotis. Just one turn--only one.”

He had risen from his low seat, and she rose involuntarily at the sound of the opening bars. He put his arm round her gently, and drew her into the ball-room, waltzing slowly as they went, and then, with the sudden impetus of an enthusiastic dancer, he was whirling her round the room, and she know nothing, cared for nothing, in the confusion of light and melody.

“Think of me sometimes when you are far away!” he whispered, with his lips almost touching her forehead.

She did not resent that whisper. Already, within a dozen hours of his first offence, she had grown accustomed to his words of love. It seemed to her as if they had loved each other for years--had loved and had despaired long ago, in some dim half-remembered past. A passion of this kind is like a dream, in which an instant gives the impression of half a lifetime, of long memories and old habit.

The room was much clearer now.

“Is it very late?” asked Isola.

“About four.”

“So late--and I told the flyman half-past two. It is dreadful. Let us stop, please.”

He obeyed, and went with her towards the cloak-room. The seats were nearly empty now where the matrons had sat in their velvet and brocade, a gorgeous background to the clouds of tulle and sylph-like figures of the dancers. Mrs. Baynham was nowhere to be seen, and the diminished bundles of tabby-cat cloaks and Shetland shawls in the cloak-room indicated that a good many people had left. Isola put on her soft white shawl hurriedly, and went out into the hall, where Lostwithiel had gone to look for her carriage.

People were going away very fast, and through the open doorway there was a sound of voices and wheels; but, in spite of footmen, constables, and hangers-on, there seemed a prodigious difficulty in getting any particular carriage to the door.

It was a mild, misty night, and the moon, which had been counted on for the return home, was hidden behind a mass of black clouds--or in the expressive phraseology of one of the foxhunters, had gone to ground. Mrs. Disney waited near the door while Lostwithiel searched for her fly. There were several departures of other muffled figures, features undistinguishable behind Shetland wraps, or furry hoods, as the men hustled their womenkind into the carriages. It seemed an age to Isola, waiting there alone in the corridor, and seeing no mortal whom she knew among those passersby, before Lostwithiel came, hurried and breathless, to say that her carriage was just coming up to the door.

“Wrap your shawl round your head,” he said quickly, as he gave her his arm. “There’s a nasty damp fog--so,” muffling her, almost to blindness. “Come along.”

She looked at the carriage, with its lamps shining red against the grey mistiness like great fiery eyes, and then, glancing at the horse, she cried suddenly, “I’m afraid that’s the wrong fly. I think mine had a grey horse.”

“No, no, it’s all right. Pray don’t loiter in this chilling air.”

The carriage door was open, the constable standing by, bull’s-eye in hand, a pair of horses snorting close behind, another carriage coming up so near that the pole threatened destruction. There was no time for loitering. Everybody was in a hurry to get home. Isola stepped lightly into the brougham, which drove slowly off.

“Next carriage, Mrs. Brune Prideaux,” roared the constable. “Mrs. Prideaux’ carriage stops all the way.”

Chapter VI.

“A Love Still Burning Upward.”

It was early summer, summer in her first youth, when she is frivolous and capricious, laughs and weeps she knows not why; smiling through her tears, and never knowing her own mind for a week together; to-day gracious-tempered and tropical; to-morrow east-windy and morose. In a word, it was June, a season of roses and rains, blue skies and thunder-clouds. It was June, and Martin Disney was looking out of the window with a keen eager face, much bronzed, and somewhat haggard, after a fatiguing campaign, looking out across the vales and woods of his native county, as the Penzance train sped along the high-level line betwixt Plymouth and Par. Those keen, grey eyes of his, accustomed to searching out far-off objects, looked as if they could pierce through the green heart of the Cornish valleys to the sheltered little harbour of Fowey and the blue sea that opened wide to the far-off West.

His labours were over, and he was going to take his rest, going to hang up his sword, that sword which had done such good work, or to transform it into a reaping-hook. He was Colonel Disney now, had given the State his best service, and now, in the very prime and vigour of his manhood, the State had done with him, and he was free to do what he listed with the maturer half of his life. He would have been very sorry to retire from active service had it not been for that tender tie which gave such sweetness to the thought of retirement and tranquil days. He was going home. The word thrilled him like music; home to his fair young wife, his chosen one, his domestic divinity. He had not left off wondering how it had ever come to pass that so young and fair a creature could care for him.

“It isn’t as if I were one of your accomplished fellows,” he said to himself, “able to sing, or play the flute, or paint in water-colours. Except a very earnest love of a few good books, I have no culture. How can any girl in the present day care for a man without culture? I could never appreciate Keats, for instance; and not to appreciate Keats is to be an outsider in literature.”

Yet, in spite of his seven and forty years, in spite of his deficiencies, his homeliness, that young heart had gone out to him. She loved him, and his lot was full. There was nothing more upon God’s earth that he could desire, were it not a miracle, and that the mother he had so fondly loved might be given back to him, to share his happiness, to make the third in a trinity of trusting love. Since that could not be, there was nothing left for him to yearn for.

The beating of his heart quickened almost unbearably, as the train drew near Par. Isola would meet him at the Junction, perhaps. He had not announced the actual hour of his arrival, for matters had been a little uncertain when he wrote yesterday, and he had not cared to telegraph this morning before he left Paddington. Yet she would know that this was the only likely train for him to choose; and she would be at the Junction, he thought, smiling her glad welcome, a fair young face, rosy in the sunset; for it was evening as he drew near the end of his journey.

No; there was nobody he knew at the Junction. He walked up and down the platform, and stared about him in rather a forlorn way during the few minutes before the starting of the train for Fowey. She had not come to anticipate their meeting by an hour or so, as he had hoped, as he had felt almost certain, she would come.

It was more natural that she should wait and receive him at the Angler’s Nest, he told himself, sitting in the corner of the railway carriage presently, in a train of three coaches, steaming through the pretty picturesque country between Par and Fowey. In the colder light of reason it seemed preposterous to have expected to see her at the Junction. She would like to welcome him amidst her own surroundings, in the home to which she had doubtless given those little beautifying touches in honour of his coming, which are such delight to women, and which sometimes pass altogether unobserved by that pachydermatous animal, man! How slowly the engine moved along that little bit of line! Martin Disney sat with his face to the wind, and snuffed the sea breeze as if it had been the odour of home. He thought of Ulysses, and his return from distant lands. Would Tim, the fox terrier, know him? and Shah, the Persian cat? Perhaps not. Tim was no Argus; vastly affectionate and demonstrative, but not a dog to expire at one’s feet, in the rapture of his master’s return. Penelope would know him, and welcome him. That was enough for this modern Ulysses, who had no reason to disguise himself in re-entering his home--who had no fear of rival suitors, or interlopers of any kind. Penelope would welcome him, and trusty Tabitha. He thought of the old servant’s honest face with delight. She was something left to him out of boyhood and youth. He felt like a young man when he talked to her. She was the one strong link betwixt the present and the past. She was his memory embodied. He could refer to her as to a dictionary of days long gone. When did we do such and such a thing--or go to such a place? What was the name of the bay horse I bought at Plympton? Where did my mother pick up the Sheraton secretaire? Tabitha could answer all such trivial questions: and Tabitha could talk to him for hours of his mother’s words and ways--of the things that were only history.

At last! The train crept into the little station, nestling on the edge of a wood, and there was Fowey, homely, friendly little Fo