All in the dark

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By The Same Author

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GUY DEVERELL ALL IN THE DARK THE WYVERN MYSTERY THE COCK AND ANCHOR WYLDER’S HAND THE WATCHER CHECKMATE THE ROSE AND THE KEY TENANTS OF MALORY WILLING TO DIE GOLDEN FRIARS THE EVIL GUEST TORLOGH O’BRIEN

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All In The Dark

By

J. S. Le Fanu

Downey & Co 12 York St Covent Garden.

[ 1898 ]

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All In The Dark.

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Chapter I.

Gilroyd Hall And Its Mistress.

Near the ancient and pretty village of Saxton, with its gabled side to the road, stands an old red-brick house of moderate dimensions, called Gilroyd Hall, with some tall elms of very old date about it; and an ancient, brick walled garden, overtopping the road with standard fruit-trees, that have quite outgrown the common stature of such timber, and have acquired a sylvan and venerable appearance.

Here dwelt my aunt, an old maid, Miss Dinah Perfect by name; and here my Cousin William Maubray, the nephew whom she had in effect adopted, used to spend his holidays.

I shall have a good deal to say of her by-and-by, though my story chiefly concerns William Maubray, who was an orphan, and very nearly absolutely dependent upon the kindness of his aunt. Her love was true, but crossed and ruffled now and then by temper and caprice. Not an ill temper was hers, but whimsical and despotic, and excited oftenest upon the absurdities which she liked letting into her active and perverse little head, which must have been the proper nidus of all odd fancies, they so prospered and multiplied there.

On the whole, Gilroyd Hall and the village of Saxton were rather slow quarters for the holidays. Besides his aunt, William had but one companion under that steep and hospitable roof. This was little Violet Darkwell, a child of about eleven years, when he had attained to the matured importance of seventeen, and was in the first eleven at Rugby, had his cap, and was, in fact, a person with a career to look back upon, and who had long left childish things behind him.

This little girl was—in some roundabout way, which, as a lazy man, I had rather take for granted than investigate—a kinswoman; and Miss Dinah Perfect had made her in some sort her property, and had her at least eight months out of the twelve down at Gilroyd Hall. Little Violet was lonely at home—an only daughter, with a father working sternly at the bar, not every day seen by her, and who seemed like a visitor in his own house—hurried, reserved, unobtrusive, and a little awful.

To the slim, prettily-formed little girl, with the large dark eyes, brown hair and delicate bright tints, the country was delightful—the air, the flowers, the liberty; and old Aunt Dinah, though with a will and a temper, still so much kindlier and pleasanter than Miss Placey, her governess, in town; and good old Winnie Dobbs was so cosy and good-natured.

To this little maid, in her pleasant solitude, the arrival of William Maubray for the holidays was an event full of interest and even of excitement. Shy as he was, and much in awe of all young lady-kind, she was far too young to be in his way. Her sparkling fuss and silvery prattle were even pleasant to him. There was life and something of comicality in her interruptions and unreasonableness. She made him visit her kittens and kiss them all round, and learn and recite their names; whistle after tea for her bullfinch, dig in her garden, mend and even nurse her doll, and perform many such tasks, quite beneath his dignity as a “swell” at Rugby, which, however, the gentle fellow did very merrily and industriously for the imperious little woman, with scant thanks, but some liking for his guerdon.

So, in his fancy, she grew to be mixed up with the pleasant influences of Gilroyd Hall, with the flowers and the birds, with the freaks of the little dog Pixie, with the stories he read there, and with his kindly welcomes and good-byes.

Sitting, after breakfast, deep in his novel in the “study,” with his white flannel cricket trousers on, for he was to play against Winderbroke for the town of Saxton that day, he received a smart tweak by the hair, at the back of his head, and, looking round, saw little Vi, perched on the rung of his old-fashioned chair, and dimly recollected having received several gentler tweaks in succession, without evincing the due attention.

“Pert little Vi! what’s all this?” said the stalwart Rugby boy, turning round with a little shake of his head, and his sweet smile, and leaning on his elbow. The sunny landscape from the window, which was clustered round with roses, and a slanting sunbeam that just touched her hair, helped to make the picture very pretty.

“Great, big, old bear! you never listen to one word I say.”

“Don’t you call names, Miss,” said Aunt Dinah, who had just glided into the room.

“What was little silver-hair saying? What does she want?” he replied, laughing at the child’s indignation, and pursuing the nomenclature of Southey’s pleasant little nursery tale. “Golden-hair, I must call you, though,” he said, looking on her sun-lit head; “and not quite golden either; it is brown, and very pretty brown, too. Who called you Violet?” He was holding the tip of her pretty chin between his fingers, and looking in her large deep eyes. “Who called you Violet?”

“How should I know, Willie?” she replied, disengaging her chin with a little toss.

“Why, your poor mamma called you Violet. I told you so fifty times,” said Aunt Dinah sharply.

“You said it was my godfathers and godmothers in my baptism, grannie!” said Miss Vi, not really meaning to be pert.

“Don’t answer me, Miss—that’s of course, your catechism—we’re speaking of your poor mamma. ’Twas her mamma who called her Violet. What about it?”

“Nothing,” answered William, gently looking up at his aunt, “only it is such a pretty name;” and glancing again at the child, “it goes so well with her eyes. She is a jolly little creature.”

“She has some good features, I suppose, like every other child, and you should not try to turn her head. Nothing extraordinary. There’s vanity enough in the world, and I insist, William, you don’t try to spoil her.”

“And what do you want of me, little woman?” asked William.

“You come out and sow my lupins for me.”

“Why, foolish little woman, it isn’t the season; they would not grow.”

“Yes, they would though—you say that just because you don’t like; you story!”

“_Violet!_” exclaimed Aunt Dinah, tapping the table with the seal end of her silver pencil-case.

“Well, but he is, grannie, very disobliging. You do nothing now but read your tiresome old books, and never do anything I bid you.”

“Really! Well, that’s very bad; I really must do better,” said William, getting up with a smile; “I will sow the lupins.”

“What _folly_!” murmured Aunt Dinah, grimly.

“We’ll get the hoe and trowel. But what’s to be done? I forgot I’m to play for the town to-day; and I don’t think I have time—no, certainly—no time to-day for the lupins;” and William shook his head, smiling disconsolately.

“Then I’ll _never_ ask you to do anything for me again as long as I live—never—never—_never_!” she vowed with a tiny stamp.

“Yes you shall—you shall, indeed, and I’ll do ever so much; and may she come and look at the cricket?”

So, leave granted, she did, under old Winnie’s care; and when she returned, and for days after, she boasted of Willie’s long score, and how he caught the ball.

When he returned at the end of next “half” he found old Miss Dinah Perfect with her spectacles on, in her comfortable old drawing-room, in the cheer of a Christmas fire, with her head full of the fancies and terrors of a certain American tome, now laid with its face downwards upon the table—as she jumped up full of glee and affection, to greet him at the threshold.

It was about this period, as we all remember, that hats began to turn and heads with them, and tables approved themselves the most intelligent of quadrupeds; chests of drawers and other grave pieces of furniture babbled of family secrets, and houses resounded with those creaks and cracks with which Bacon, Shakespeare, and Lord Byron communicated their several inspirations in detestable grammar, to all who pleased to consult them.

Aunt Dinah was charmed. Her rapid genius loved a short-cut, and here was, by something better than a post-office, a direct gossiping intimacy opened between her and the people on t’other side of the Styx.

She ran into this as into her other whimsies might and main, with all her heart and soul. She spent money very wildly, for her, upon the gospels of the new religion, with which the transatlantic press was teeming; and in her little green-papered dressing-room was accumulating a library upon her favourite craze, which might have grown to the dimensions of Don Quixote’s.

She had been practising for a year, however, and all the minor tables in her house had repeatedly prophesied before she disclosed her conversion to her nephew, or to anyone else except old Winnie.

It was no particular business of his if his aunt chose to converse with ghosts and angels by the mediation of her furniture. So, except that he now and then assisted at a _séance_, the phenomena of which were not very clear to him, though perfectly so to his aunt, and acquiesced in dimly and submissively by good old Winnie, things went on in their old course; and so, for some three or four years more, during which William Maubray read a great deal of all sorts of lore, and acquired an erudite smattering of old English authors, dramatists, divines, poets, and essayists, and time was tracing fine wrinkles about Aunt Dinah’s kind eyes and candid forehead, and adding graceful inches to the lithe figure of Violet Darkwell; and the great law of decay and renewal was asserting itself everywhere, and snows shrouding the dead world in winter, and summer fragrance, and glow of many hues in the gardens and fields succeeding, and births and deaths in all the newspapers every morning.

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Chapter II.

A Letter.

The following letter, posted at Saxton, reached a rather solitary student in St. John’s College, Cambridge.

“Dear William,

“You will be sorry—I know you will—to hear that poor old auntie is not long for this world; I don’t know exactly what is wrong, but something I am certain very bad. As for Doctor Drake, I have no faith in him, or, indeed, in medicine, and don’t mean to trouble him except as a friend. I am quite happy in the expectation of the coming change, and have had within the last week, with the assistance of good old Winnie Dobbs, some very delightful _communications_, you know, I dare say, what I mean. Bring with you—for you _must_ come _immediately_, if you care to see poor Aunt Dinah before she departs—a basket-bottle of eau de Cologne, like the former, you know the kind I mean, and buy it at the same place. You need not get the cameo ring for Doctor Drake; I shan’t make him a present—in fact, we are not now on terms. I had heard from many people of his incivility and want of temper; God forgive him his _ingratitude_, however, as I do. The basket-bottle holds about a pint, _remember_. I want to tell you exactly what I can do for you by my will; I always told you, dear William, it was very _small_; still, as the people used to say, ‘every little makes a muckle,’ and though little, it will be a _help_. I cannot rest till you come; I know and am sure you love poor old auntie, and would like to close her eyes when the hour comes; therefore, dear Willie, come without delay. Also bring with you half a pound of the snuff, the same mixture as before; they make it up at Figgs’s—_get it there_—not in paper, observe; in a canister, and _rolled in lead_, as will be poor auntie before long! Old Dobbs will have your room and bed comfortable, as usual; come by the cross coach, at eight o’clock. Tea, and anything else you like, will _await_ you.

“Ever your fond old

“Auntie.

“P.S.—I send you, _to guard against mistakes_, the exact proportions of the mixture—the _snuff_ I mean, of course. I quite forgot a new collar for Psyche, _plated_. Make them engrave ‘Mrs. Perfect, Gilroyd Hall,’ upon it. Heaven bless you. We are all progressing upward. Amen! says your poor old Aunt Dinah, who loves you.”

It was in his quiet college room by candlelight that William Maubray read this letter from his kind, wild, preposterous old aunt, who had been to him as a mother from his early days.

Aunt Dinah! was it possible that he was about to lose that familiar friend and face, the only person on earth who cared about him?

He read the letter over again. A person who did not know Aunt Dinah so well as he, would have argued from the commissions about scents, dog-collars, and snuff, that the old lady had no honest intention of dying. But he knew that incongruous and volatile soul too well to infer reliable consolation from those levities.

“Yes, yes—I shall lose her—she’s gone,” said the young man in great distress, laying the letter, with the gentleness of despair, upon the table, and looking down upon it in pain and rumination.

It would certainly make a change—possibly a fatal one—in his prospects. A sudden change. He read the letter through again, and then, with a sinking heart, he opened the window and looked out upon the moonlight prospect. There are times when in her sweetest moods nature seems unkind. Why all this smiling light—this cheer and serenity of sky and earth—when he was stricken only five minutes since, perhaps undone, by the message of that letter—that sorrow-laden burlesque?

This sort of suggestion, in such a moment, comes despairingly. The vastness of creation—the inflexibility of its laws, and “What is man, and what am I among men, that the great Projector of all this should look after ephemeral me and my concerns? The human sympathy that I could rely upon, and human power—frail and fleeting—but still enough—is gone, and in this solitary hour, as in the coming one of death, experience fails me, and I must rest all upon that which, according to my light, is faith, or theory, or chance!”

With a great sigh, and a heavy heart, William Maubray turned away from the window, and a gush of very true affection flooded his heart as he thought of kind old Aunt Dinah. He read the letter once more, to make out what gleams of comfort he could.

A handsome fellow was William Maubray—nearly three-and-twenty by this time—good at cricket—great at football: three years ago, in the school days, now, so old, tall, and lithe. A studious man in his own way—a little pale, with a broad forehead, good blue eyes, and delicately formed, but somewhat sad features.

He looked round his room. He had grown very fond of that homely apartment. His eyes wandered over his few shelves of beloved old books, in all manner of dingy and decayed bindings—some of them two centuries and a half old, very few of later birth than a hundred years ago. Delightful companions—ready at a moment’s call—ready to open their minds, and say their best sayings on any subject he might choose—resenting no neglect, obtruding no counsel, always the same serene, cheerful inalienable friends.

The idea of parting with them was insupportable, nearly. But if the break-up came, they _must_ part company, and the world be a new one for him. The young man spent much of that night in dismal reveries and speculations over his future schemes and chances, all of which I spare the reader.

Good Dr. Sprague, whom he saw next day, heard the news with much concern. He had known Miss Perfect long ago, and was decorously sorry on her account. But his real regrets were for the young man.

“Well, you go, of course, and see your aunt, and I do trust it mayn’t be quite so bad. Stay, you know, as long as she wants you, and don’t despond. I could wish your reading had been in a more available direction, but rely on it, you’ll find a way to make a start and get into a profession, and with your abilities, I’ve no doubt you’ll make your way in the world.”

And the doctor, who was a shrewd as well as a kindly little gentleman, having buttoned the last button of his gaiter, stood, cap in hand, erect, and smiling confidently, he shook his hand with a “God bless you, Maubray,” and a few minutes later William Maubray, with all his commissions stowed away in his portmanteau, had commenced his journey to Gilroyd Hall.

The moon was up, and the little town of Saxton very quiet, as Her Majesty’s mail, dropping a bag at the post-office, whirled through it, and pulled up at the further end, at the gate of Gilroyd Hall, there to drop our friend, an outside passenger.

The tall, florid iron gate was already locked. William tugged at the bell, and drew back a little to reconnoitre the premises. One of the old brick gables overhangs the road, with only a couple of windows high up, and he saw that his summons had put a light in motion within them. So he rejoined his hat-case, and his portmanteau, awaiting him on its end, in front of the white iron gate that looked like lace-work in the moonlight.

“Ha! Tom; glad to see you.”

“Welcome, Mr. William, Sir; she a wearyin’ to see ye, and scarce thought you’d a come to-night.”

The wicket beside the great gate was now open, and William shook hands with the old retainer, and glancing anxiously up at the stone-faced windows, as it were to read the countenance of the old house, he asked, “And how _is_ she, Tom, to-night?”

“Complainin’ an’ down-hearted a bit for _her_, that is now and again. She cried a good bout to-day wi’ old Winnie, in the little parlour.”

“She’s up, then?”

“Ooh, ay; she’s not a body to lay down while she’s a leg to stan’ on. But I do think she’s nigh her endin’. Gie’t to me,” this referred to the portmanteau. “I do, poor old girl; and we’s all be sorry, Master Willie.”

William’s heart sank.

“Where is she?” he inquired.

“In the drawing-room, I think.”

By this time they were standing in the oak-panelled hall, and some one looked over the banister from the lobby, upon them. It was old Winnie; the light of her candle was shining pleasantly on her ruddy and kindly face.

“Oh! Master Willie. Thank God, you’re come at last. Glad she’ll be to see you.”

Old Winnie ambled down the stairs with the corner of her apron to her eye, and shook him by both hands, and greeted him again very kindly, and even kissed him according to the tradition of a score of years.

“Is she _very_ ill, Dobbs?” whispered he, looking pale.

“Well, not to say _very_ to look at, you’d say, but she’s had a warnin’, her and me sittin’ in the bed-room, an’ she’s bin an’ made a new will; the lawyer’s bin up from Saxton. Don’t ye say I said nothing, mind; ’twould only fret her, maybe.”

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Chapter III.

Miss Dinah Perfect And Her Guests.

“Is she alone?” he asked, postponing the trying moment of seeing her.

“No, the doctor’s with her still—Dr. Drake, and Miss Letty, his sister, you remember; they’re drinkin’ a cup o’ tea, and some crumpets, and they’ll all be right glad you’re come.”

“They ought to go away, don’t you think?” mildly suggested William Maubray, a good deal shocked. “However, let me get to my room for two or three minutes, and I shall be ready then.”

They passed the drawing-room door, and Miss Letty Drake’s deliberate tones were audible from within. When he had got to his room he asked Dobbs—

“What was the _warning_ you spoke of?”

“Well, dear me! It was the table; she and me, she makes me sit before her, poor thing, and we—well, there _is_ cracks, sure, on and off! And she puts this an’ that together; and so one way or other—it puzzles my poor head, how—she does make out a deal.”

William Maubray was an odd, rather solitary young man, and more given to reading and thinking than is usual at his years, and he detested these incantations to which his aunt, Miss Perfect, had addicted herself, of late years, with her usual capricious impetuosity; and he was very uncomfortable on hearing that she was occupying her last days with these questionable divinations.

When, in a few minutes, William ran down to the drawing-room, and with a chill of anticipation opened the door of that comfortable rather than imposing chamber, the tall slim figure of his aunt rose up from her armchair beside the fire, for though it was early autumn, the fire was pleasant, and the night-air was frosty, and with light and wiry tread, stepped across the carpet to meet him. Her kind, energetic face was pale, and the smile she used to greet him with was nowhere, and she was arrayed from head to foot in deep mourning, in which, particularly as she abhorred the modern embellishment of crinoline, she looked more slim and tall even than she was.

The presence of her guests in nowise affected the greeting of the aunt and nephew, which was very affectionate, and even agitated, though silent.

“Good Willie, to come so quickly—I knew you would.” Miss Perfect never wept, but she was very near tears at that moment, and there was a little silence, during which she held his hands, and then recollecting herself, dropt them, and continued more like herself.

“You did not expect to see me up and here; everything happens oddly with me. Here I am, you see, apparently, I dare say, much as usual. By half-past twelve o’clock to-morrow night I shall be dead! There, don’t mind now—I’ll tell you all by-and-by. This is my friend, Miss Drake, you know her.”

They shook hands, Miss Drake smiling as brisk a smile as in a scene so awful she could hazard.

“And this, my kind friend Dr. Drake.”

William had occasionally seen Dr. Drake in the streets of Saxton, and on the surrounding high roads at a distance, but he had never before had the honour of an interview.

The doctor was short and fat, a little bald, and rather dusty, and somehow, William thought, resembled a jolly old sexton a good deal more than a physician. He rose up, with his hands in his trowsers pockets, and some snuff in the wrinkles of his black cloth waistcoat, and bowed, with raised eyebrows and pursed mouth, gravely to his plate of crumpet.

William Maubray looked again on his aunt, who was adjusting her black draperies in her chair, and then once more at the doctor, whose little eye he caught for a second, with a curious and even cunning expression in it; but it was averted with a sudden accession of melancholy once more—and William asked—

“I hope, Sir, there is nothing very imminent?”

The doctor cleared his voice, uneasily, and Aunt Dinah interposed with a nod, a little dryly—

“It is not quite in _his_ department.”

And whose department _is_ it in? the student thought.

“I dare say Doctor Drake would tell you I’m very well—so, perhaps, in a sense, I am; but Doctor Drake has kindly come here as a friend.”

Doctor Drake bowed, looking steadfastly into his cup.

“As a friend, dear Willie, just as you have come—an old friend.” Miss Perfect spoke low, with a little tremor in her voice, and was, I believe, near crying, but braced her resolution. William drew near gently and sat down beside her, and placing her hand upon his, she proceeded.

“My dear friend Miss Drake, there, does not agree with me, I’m aware; but Doctor Drake who has read more, and perhaps, _thought_ more, thinks otherwise—at least, so I’m led to suppose.”

The doctor coughed a little; Miss Drake raised her long chin, and with raised eyebrows, looked down on her finger-tips which were drumming on the table, and my Cousin William glanced from one to the other, not quite understanding her drift.

“But,” she continued, “I’ve apprised them already, and I tell _you_ of course; it is—you’ll remember the name—an intimation from Henbane.”

“Poison!” said William, under his breath, with a look of pale inquiry at Doctor Drake, who at the moment was swallowing his tea very fast, and was seized on a sudden with an explosion of coughing, sneezing, and strangling, which compelled him to jump to his feet, and stagger about the room with his face in his pocket-handkerchief and his back to the tea-table.

“When Dr. Henbane,” said my aunt with severity, “I mean a—Doctor _Drake_—has quite done coughing, I’ll go on.”

There was a little pause.

“Confound it,” thought William, who was half beside himself, “it’s a very odd dying scene!”

The doctor, blowing his nose, returned very red and solemn, and explained, still coughing at intervals, that it was a little tea in the trachea; it invariably occurred to him when he drank tea in the evening; he _must_ give it up; “_you_ know, Letty.”

Miss Drake did not deign to assist him.

“She does not seem to know so much about it as you do,” observed Aunt Dinah with an irony.

“Owing to my not _thinking_ so much,” replied Miss Letty, sarcastically.

“Henbane?” murmured William again, in a puzzled horror.

“H’m!—yes!—Henbane? you seem to have forgotten; one of those—one of the spirits who have attached themselves to me,” and Aunt Dinah shot a quick glance at the doctor, who, though looking again at his crumpet, seemed to cower awfully under it.

“Oh—ay—Henbane?” exclaimed William in a tone of familiarity, which indicated anything but respect for that supernatural acquaintance. “Henbane, to be _sure_.”

And he looked on his aunt with a half amused recognition, which seemed to say, “Well—and what about that humbug?”

But Aunt Dinah said decisively—

“So much for the present; you shall hear _more_—everything, by-and-by.”

And there followed a silence.

“Did you remember the snuff, dear William?” inquired the doomed lady, with rather an abrupt transition.

“Certainly; shall I fetch it?” said William, half rising.

Miss Perfect nodded, and away he went, somehow vastly relieved, and with his bed-room candle in his hand, mounted the oak stairs, which were broad and handsome in proportion to the other dimensions of that snug old house.

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Chapter IV.

Violet Darkwell.

At the head of the stairs, the topmost step of which had been their bench, there rose to him two female figures. He did not instantly recognise them, for one candle only was burning, and it was on the little table nearly behind them. One was old Winnie Dobbs, the other Violet Darkwell; she stood up slight and girlish still, but looking taller than he had expected, with an old faded silk quilted shawl of Aunt Dinah’s about her shoulders, and hood-wise over her head, for the night was frosty.

“Ha! Vi—little Vi, I was going to say; dear me! how you have grown! So glad to see you.”

He had the girl’s slim hand in his, and was speaking as he felt, very kindly.

“We’ve been waiting here, Winnie and I, to hear what you thought of dear grannie,”—(grannie was merely a pet name in this case, defining no relationship)—“and what do you think, William?”

“I really don’t understand it,” he answered. “I—I hope it’s all nonsense; I really think so. She says she is very well; and the doctor—Drake, you know—I really think he was laughing, and one thing I’m quite certain of—it is connected in her mind with that foolish spirit-rapping.”

“And you don’t believe in it?” inquired the young lady.

“All bosh and nonsense. Not a bit of it,” he replied.

“Oh, William, I am so delighted to hear you say so!” she exclaimed, much relieved by the promulgation of so valuable an opinion. “And you’re quite right, I _know_, about grannie. It _is_, really—is not it, Winnie?—all, all about that awful spirit-rapping. Grannie never speaks of it to me; I believe she’s afraid of frightening me; but old Winnie, here—you must not tell of her—she tells me all about it—everything; and I _am_ so afraid of it; and it is _entirely_ that. Grannie thinks she has got a message! fancy! How awful! And Winnie does not know what the words were; for grannie writes down the letters with a pencil, and tells her only what she thinks fit; and I am _so_ delighted—you can’t think.”

“You good little Vi, I’m so glad to see you!” She laughed a low little laugh—the first for several days—as he shook her hand again; and he said—

“Winnie, do, like a dear old thing, open my portmanteau—here’s the key—and fetch me a canister you’ll see at the top, with a great paper label, blue and red, on it.”

Away went Winnie Dobbs, with his key and candle, and he said to the pretty girl who stood leaning lightly against the banister—

“My old friend, Vi! When I went into the drawing-room just now, I looked all round for you, and could not think what had become of you, and was really afraid you had gone away to London. I don’t think I should ever care to come to Gilroyd Hall again; I should prefer seeing my aunt anywhere else—it would not be like itself if you were gone.”

“So you really missed me, William!” she laughed.

“I should think so. And another thing—you are not to call me William. Why don’t you call me Willie, or old bear, as you used to do? If you change old names, I’ll begin and call you Miss Darkwell.”

“How awful!”

“Indeed I will, and be as formal as you please, and treat you like a young lady, and you’ll never be ‘wicked little Vi’ any more.”

She was laughing as she leaned back, and he could see her small teeth, and he bethought him that she was looking really quite lovely; so with two fingers he picked up her little hand again, as it lay at her side, and he said—

“And we are always to be good friends, you know—great friends; and although you’ve no more dolls to mend, I’ll still be of use. I’m going to the bar, and I’ll manage all your law suits, if you let me; and when you are going to be married, I’ll draw your settlements, and you are to have me always for your counsel.”

She was still smiling, but said nothing, and looked wonderfully pretty, with the old gray silk hood wrapped all about her, so that sober old William was on the very point of kissing the slender hand he held in his. But a new feeling of shyness prevented, and he only shook her hand gently once more, and laid it by her side again, as you replace some precious thing you have been admiring where you found it.

“And you really think we may be happy about dear old grannie again?” she said.

The sound of Winnie’s footsteps was heard approaching.

“Yes; certainly. I’ll try to get a word with Doctor Drake. I can’t imagine anything serious. Won’t you come to the drawing-room now?”

“No; not to-night; not while those people are there. I was so wretched about dear grannie, I could not bear to go in at first; and now it would be odd, I think, going down when tea is over.”

“As if I had brought you down from the nursery, as I often did, Vi, on my back. Well, old Winnie, have you got it?”

“Here, I think, Master William,” answered Winnie.

“Yes; all right. So you won’t come, Vi?”

“No.”

“Quite made up your mind?”

“Quite, Willie.”

“That’s right—_Willie_,” said he, with a smile, and a nod of approbation. “I should so like to stay here a little longer, as you won’t come, and hear all the news, and tell you mine; but Aunt Dinah would lose patience—I’m afraid she _has_.”

“Yes, indeed; you had better go. Good-night, bear.”

“Good-night, wicked little Vi. Remember we meet at breakfast—shan’t we?”

“Oh, certainly. Good-night.”

“Good-night.”

And so the gray silk hood vanished, with a smile, prettily, round the corner, and William Maubray descended with his snuff to the drawing-room, with the pretty oval portrait of that young face still hovering before him in the air.

Miss Letty Drake, whose countenance was unpleasantly long in proportion to her height, and pallid, and her small figure bony, and who was dressed on this sad occasion in her silk “half-mourning,” a sad and, it was thought, a dyed garment, which had done duty during many periods of affliction, as William entered the room, was concluding a sentence with a low and pointed asperity, thus—“which seems to me hardly compatible with Saint Paul’s description of Christian charity,” and a short silence followed these words.

“I was going to ring the bell, William,” said the doomed lady of the house. “One would have thought you were _making_ that snuff. Let me see it—h’m. See, get off this cover. Ho! what is this? A lead wrapper!”

“You said, Aunt Dinah, you wished it.”

“Did I? Well, no matter. Get it open. Thanks. Yes; that’s it. Yes; very good. You take snuff, doctor, don’t you?”

“Aw—_yes_, certainly, nothing like it, I do believe—where a man is obliged to work his head—aw haw—a stimulus and a sedative.”

The doctor, it was averred, “worked” his occasionally with brandy and water, and not a great deal otherwise.

“No, many thanks; don’t care for perfumes; high toast is my snuff.” And Doctor Drake illustrated the fact by a huge pinch, which shed another brown shower over the wrinkles of his waistcoat.

“Letty, dear,” said Aunt Dinah, turning suddenly to Miss Drake, “we won’t quarrel; we can’t agree, but I won’t quarrel.”

“Well, dear, I’m glad to hear you say so. I’m sure, for my part, I never quarrel. ‘Be ye angry, and let not the sun go down on your wrath.’”

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Chapter V.

Aunt Dinah Is In The Horrors, And Doctor Drake Puts His Nightcap In His Pocket.

“I wish to say good-bye to you very kindly,” said Aunt Dinah, quite sadly and gently, and somehow not like herself, “and—and I’ve tried to keep up; I know it must happen, and I’m sure it is for the best, but⸺”

“I hope and expect, my dear Dinah,” interposed Miss Letty, sharply—she was pulling on her worsted “wrists”—“to see you in the enjoyment of many years of your accustomed health and spirits, and I have no doubt, humanly speaking, that I shall.”

Miss Letty was quiet and peremptory, but also a little excited. And the doctor, for want of something better to do, cleared his voice, in a grand abstraction, and wound up his watch slowly, and held it to his ear, nobody knew exactly why.

“You won’t believe me, but I know it, and so will you—too late; to-morrow night at twelve o’clock I shall be dead. I’ve tried to keep up—I have; I’ve tried it; but oh! Ho, ho, hoo, ooh,” and poor Aunt Dinah quite broke down, and cried and hooted hysterically.

Dr. Drake had now before him an intelligible case, and took the command accordingly with decision. Up went the window; cold water was there, and spirit of hartshorn. And when she had a little recovered, the doctor, who was a good-natured fellow, said—

“Now, Miss Perfect, Ma’am, it won’t do, I tell you; it’s only right; you may want some assistance; and if, as an old friend, you’ll allow me to return and remain here for the night, a sofa, or an armchair, anything, I’ll be most happy, I do assure you.”

But Aunt Dinah, with many thanks, said, “No,” peremptorily, and wilful man or woman, who will contend with?

So, like the awful banquet in Macbeth, Miss Dinah Perfect’s tea-party broke down and up, and the guests, somewhat scared, got into their walking wrappers, rather silently, and their entertainer remained behind unstrung and melancholic.

But William Maubray, who came down to assist in the rummage for cloaks and umbrellas, asked leave, in his blunt modest way, to accompany Miss Letty and her brother, the doctor, to Saxton.

Now there seemed something real and grisly in Aunt Dinah’s terror, which a little infected William Maubray; and the little party marched in silence along the frost-hardened road, white in moonlight, with the bare switch-like shadows of the trees across it, on their way to the pretty old town of Saxton.

At last the doctor said—

“She won’t miss you, do you think?”

“She told me she’d like to be quiet for half an hour, and I should be so much obliged if you could tell me, whether you really, that is, _still_ think that she ought to have a medical man in attendance to-night.”

“Why, you know what hysteria is. Well, she is in a highly hysterical state. She’s a woman who resists; it would be safer, you see, if she gave way and cried a bit now and then, when nature prompts, but she won’t, except under awful high pressure, and then it might be serious; those things sometimes run off into fits.”

And so the doctor lectured William upon his aunt’s nerves, until they had arrived at the door of his snug house in the High Street.

Here they shook hands; but William Maubray, who was unhappy about Aunt Dinah, after Miss Letty had mounted to her chamber, very urgently entreated the doctor to return and see how it might end.

With a bottle of valerian, his slippers, and a nightcap in his pocket, Doctor Drake did consent to return, and be smuggled into Gilroyd Hall.

“I don’t know what to make of that spirit-rapping quite,” said the doctor, as side by side they approached the Hall. “There’s a quantity of books published on it—very unaccountable if half what they say is true. I suppose you’ve read it all. You read a lot, Miss Perfect tells me.”

“I’ve read very little about it, except in the papers. She fancies she has had a message, telling her she is to die sometime to-morrow. I can’t believe there’s really anything more than self-deception; but is there not a danger?”

“How?” asked the doctor.

“I mean, being so nervous as you suppose, and quite convinced that she is to die at a particular time; might not her own mind—you know Lord Lyttelton died in consequence of such a persuasion.”

William paused, Doctor Drake lowered, between his fingers, the cigar he was smoking, and they came to a halt, with a little wheel to the left, and the doctor, with his head aside, blowing the smoke up in a thin stream, looked with a thoughtful scrutiny up at the clear bright moon; perhaps a not unsuitable source of inspiration upon their crazy theme.

“I forget _which_ Lord Lyttelton that was,” said the doctor, wisely. “Isn’t it _Lyttelton_, you say? But the thing is quite possible. There’s a spirit you know she’s always talking about. She calls him Henbane. Egad, Sir, I was devilish near laughing at tea when she named him so suddenly that time; I’d have been up a tree if I had, you know. You did not see what she was at, but I did. That Henbane’s her gospel, egad, and she thinks it was he who told her—d’ye see? Come along. She’ll be wondering where you are.”

So on they went towards Gilroyd Hall, whose outline, black and sharp, against the luminous sky, was relieved at one point by the dull glow of candle-light through the red curtains of what William Maubray knew to be Aunt Dinah’s bed-chamber window.

“She is in her room, I think—there’s light in her window,” said William. The doctor nodded, chucking his cigar stump far away, for he knew Aunt Dinah’s antipathy to tobacco, and they were now on the door-step. He was thinking, if the case were to end tragically, what a capital paper he would make of it, beside the interesting letter he would send to the editor of the _Spatula_.

“Winnie’s bin a callin’ over the stairs for you, Master Willie. Missis wants ye to her room,” said Tom, who awaited them on the door-steps.

“I’ll sit by the fire in the study,” whispered the doctor. “I don’t mind sitting up a night now and then. Give me a cloak or something. There’s a sofa, and I’ll do very well.”

The principle of life was strong in Aunt Dinah, and three hours later that active-minded lady was lying wide awake on her bed, with a variety of topics, not all consisting with the assumed shortness of her hours, drifting in succession through her head. The last idea that struck her was the most congruous, and up she jumped, made a wild toilet, whose sole principle was warmth, tied a faded silk handkerchief over her nightcap, across her ears, and with her long white flannel dressing-gown about her, and a taper in her hand, issued, like the apparition of the Bleeding Nun, upon the gallery, and tapped sharply on William Maubray’s door.

“William, William!” she called as she tapped, and from within William answered drowsily to the summons.

“Wait a moment,” said the lady, and

“In glided Margaret’s grimly ghost, And stood at William’s feet.”

“We _must_ have a _séance_, my dear boy; I’m going to wake up old Winnie. It certainly has a connexion with your arrival; but anything like the cracking, knocking, and creaking of _everything_, I’ve never yet heard. I have no doubt—so sure as you sit there”—(William was sitting up in his bed with glazed eyes, and senses only half awake)—“that your poor dear mother is here to-night. We’re _sure_ of Henbane; and—just get your clothes on—I’m going for Winnie, and we meet in the study, mind, in five minutes.”

And Aunt Dinah, having lighted William’s candle, disappeared, leaving him with a fund of cheerful ideas to make his yawning and bewildered toilet.

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Chapter VI.

In Which The Witches Assemble.

A few minutes later she glided into the study, overthrowing a small table, round which her little _séances_ were accustomed to be made, and which the doctor had providently placed against the door.

Aunt Dinah held under her arm the 8vo “Revelations of Elihu Bung, the Pennsylvanian Prophet,” a contribution to spiritual science which distanced all contemporary competition; and the chapter which shows that a table of a light, smart build, after having served a proper apprenticeship to ‘rapping,’ may acquire the faculty of locomotion and self-direction, flashed on her recollection as she recognised prostrate at her feet, in the glimmer of her taper, the altar of their mysteries, which she had with reverent hands herself placed that evening in its wonted corner, at the opposite end of the room.

Such a manifestation was new to her. She looked on it, a little paler than usual, and bethought her of that other terrible chapter in which Elihu Bung avers that spirits, grown intimate by a long familiarity, will, in a properly regulated twilight—and her light at the moment was no more—make themselves visible to those whom they habitually favour with their advices.

Therefore she was strangely thrilled at sight of the indistinct and shadowy doctor, who, awakened by the noise, rose at the opposite end of the room from the sofa on which he had fallen asleep. Tall and thin, and quite unrecognisable by him, was the white figure at the door, with a taper elevated above its head, and which whispered with a horrid distinctness the word “Henbane!”—the first heard on his awakening, the last in his fancy as he dropped asleep, and which sounded to him like the apparition’s considerate announcement of its name on entering the room; he echoed “Henbane” in a suppressed diapason, and Aunt Dinah, with an awful ejaculation, repeated the word from the distance, and sank into a chair.

“Henbane!” cried the doctor briskly, having no other exclamation ready and reassured by these evidences of timidity in the spectre, he exclaimed, “Hey, by Jove! what the plague!” and for some seconds he did not know distinctly where he was.

“Merciful goodness! Doctor Drake, why _will_ you try to frighten people in this manner? Do you want to _kill_ me, Sir?”

“I? Ho! Ha, ha! Ma’am,” replied the learned gentleman, incoherently.

“What are you doing _here_, Sir? I think you’re mad!” exclaimed Aunt Dinah, fiercely.

The doctor cleared his voice, and addressed himself to explain, and before his first period was reached, William and old Winnie, wofully sleepy, had arrived.

Luckily the person who approaches such oracles as “Henbane,” it is well known, must do so with a peaceful and charitable soul. So Miss Perfect was appeasable, and apologies being made and accepted, she thus opened her mind to the doctor—

“I don’t complain, Doctor Drake—William, light the candles over the chimney-piece—although you terrified me a great deal more than in my circumstances I ought to have been capable of.”

The candles were now lighted, and shone cheerfully upon the short, fat figure, and ruddy, roguish face of Doctor Drake, and as he was taking one of his huge pinches of snuff, she added—

“And I won’t deny that I _did_ fancy for a moment you might be a spirit-form, and possibly that of Henbane.”

William Maubray, who was looking at the doctor, as Miss Perfect reverently lowered her voice at these words, exploded into something so like a laugh, though he tried to pass it off for a cough, that his aunt looked sharply on him in silence for a moment.

“And I’m blowed but I was a bit frightened too, Ma’am, when I saw you at the door there,” said the doctor.

“Well, let us try,” said Miss Perfect. “Come, we are four; let us try who are present—what spirits, and seek to communicate. You don’t object, Dr. Drake?”

“I? Ho! oh! dear no. I should not desire better—aw-haw—_instruction_, Ma’am,” answered the doctor.

I am afraid he was near saying “fun.”

“Winnie, place the table as usual. There, yes. Now let us arrange ourselves.”

The doctor sat down, still blinking, and with a great yawn inquired—

“Do we waw—haw—wa—w—want any particular information?”

“Let us first try whether they will communicate. We _always_ want information,” said Miss Perfect. “William, sit you there; Winnie, _there_. I’ll take pencil and paper and record.”

All being prepared, fingers extended, company intent, Aunt Dinah propounded the first question—

“Is there any spirit present?”

There was a long wait and no rejoinder.

“Didn’t you hear something?” inquired the doctor.

William shook his head.

“I thought I _felt_ it,” persisted the doctor. “What do _you_ say, Ma’am?” addressing himself to Winnie, who looked, after her wont, towards her mistress for help.

“Did you feel anything?” demanded Miss Perfect, sharply.

“Nothing but a little wind like on the back of my head, as I think,” replied Winnie, driven to the wall.

“Wind on her head! That’s odd,” said Miss Perfect, looking in the air as if she possessed the porcine gift of seeing it, “_very_ odd!” she continued, with her small hand expanded in the air. “Not a breath stirring, and Winnie has no more imagination than that sofa pillow. You never fancy anything, Winnie?”

“Do I, Ma’am?” inquired Winnie Dobbs, mildly.

“Well, _do_ you, I say? No, you don’t; of course you don’t. You know you don’t as well as I do.”

“Well, I did think so, sure, Ma’am,” answered Winnie.

“Pity we can’t get an answer,” remarked the doctor, and at the same moment William felt the pressure of a large foot in a slipper—under the table. It had the air of an intentional squeeze, and he looked innocently at the doctor, who was, however, so entirely unconscious, that it must have been an accident.

“I say it _is_ a pity, Mr. Maubray, isn’t it? for we _might_ hear something that might interest Miss Perfect very much, possibly, I say?”

“I don’t know; I can’t say. I’ve never heard anything,” answered William, who would have liked to kick the table up to the ceiling and go off to bed.

“Suppose Ma’am, we try again,” inquired Doctor Drake.

“Certainly,” replied Aunt Dinah; “we must have patience.”

“Will you ask, Ma’am, please, again if there’s a spirit in the room?” solicited the doctor; and the question being put, there came an upward heave of the table.

“Well!” exclaimed the doctor, looking at Winnie, “did you feel that?”

“Tilt, Ma’am,” said Winnie, who knew the intelligence would be welcome.

“What do _you_ say?” inquired Miss Perfect triumphantly of William.

“Doctor Drake was changing his position just at the moment, and I perceived no other motion in the table—nothing but the little push he gave it,” answered William.

“Oh, pooh! yes, of course, there was that,” said the doctor a little crossly; “but I meant a sort of a start—a crack like, in the leaf of the table.”

“I felt nothing of the kind,” said William Maubray.

The doctor looked disgusted, and leaning back took a large pinch of snuff. There was a silence. Aunt Dinah’s lips were closed with a thoughtful frown as she looked down upon the top of the table.

“It is very strange. I certainly never witnessed in this house more unequivocal evidences—_preliminary_ evidences, of course—of spiritual activity.”

“I think, Ma’am, I have read,” said the doctor, with his hands in his pockets, “I _think_, somewhere, that if anyone of the manipulators happens to be an unbeliever⸺”

“An unbeliever in the manifestations, of course the spirits won’t communicate,” interrupted Miss Perfect, volubly laying down the law. “Winnie is a believer as much as I. We all know _that_. Nephew, how are you? Do you _believe_? You shake your head. Speak out. Yes or no?”

“Well, I don’t,” said he, a little sheepishly.

“You don’t? And, not believing, you sit here with your fingers on the table, keeping Doctor Drake out of his—his⸺”

She could not say bed, and the doctor relieved her by saying, “Oh, as to me, Ma’am, I’m only too happy; but you know it’s a pity, all the same.”

“Very true, doctor. Much obliged. We shall set it to rights. My dear William, you might have told us at starting; but we’ll commence again. Sit by the fire, William, and I trust in a little time you may be convinced.”

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Chapter VII.

The Familiar Speaks.

So the excommunicated William, with his feet upon the fender, leaning upon his elbow in the great chair, made himself comfortable by the fire, and heard his aunt propound the questions, and the answers by the previously appointed manifestations, duly noted down.

“Is there a spirit present?”

“Yes.”

“Are there more than one?”

“No.”

“Is it a male or female spirit?”

No answer.

“Is it Henbane?”

“Yes” (emphatically).

William _was_ surprised. All was now going smoothly, and he could not for a moment suspect a gentleman of Dr. Drake’s respectability of participating in a trick. But there was a monotony in the matter of a quieting kind, and William grew too drowsy to keep his eyes long open.

“Did you give Miss Dinah Perfect a message on Monday last?”

“Yes.”

“Did it concern her death?”

“Yes.”

“Is her death to take place at the time then appointed?”

Here the table made a positive jump, and in spite of a grasp made at it by the doctor’s fingers, it fell flat on the floor, and it must have been a very violent impulse, for Dr. Drake’s slipper was off, and he, very red, no doubt from his effort to prevent the wilful fall of the table.

“Very extraordinary!” exclaimed he, standing up.

“Most wonderful!” said my aunt.

Good old fat Winnie sat with her fingers raised in the air, looking at the prostrate table with placid astonishment.

“That’s a tilt,” said the doctor, “that means _no_—a very _emphatic_ tilt.”

“I think it was a _jump_,” said my aunt, sadly.

“No, Ma’am, no—a tilt, a tilt, I’ll take my oath. Besides a _jump_ has no meaning,” urged he with energy.

“Pardon me: when a question is received with marked impatience a jump is no unfrequent consequence.”

“Oh, ho!” groaned the doctor reflectively. “Then it counts for nothing.”

“Nothing,” said Miss Perfect in a low tone. “Winnie, get the table up again.”

“Suppose, Ma’am, to avoid mistakes,” said the doctor, after reflection, “suppose we put it upon it to express itself in language. Just ask it what about Miss Dinah Perfect’s death.”

“I’ve no objection,” said Miss Perfect; and in the terms prescribed by Dr. Drake the momentous question was put.

Hereupon the spelling commenced—

“A-D-J-O-U-R-N-E-D.”

“Postponed, put off, Ma’am!” said the doctor, expounding eagerly.

“I know; good Heaven! I understand,” answered Aunt Dinah faintly.

“Give her some water. _Here_, Ma’am,” said he, presenting a glass of water at her pale lips. She sipped a little.

“Now we’ll ask, Ma’am, please, for how long?” suggested the doctor.

And this question likewise having been propounded, the table proceeded once more to spell—

“S-I-N-E D-I-E.”

“It ends with _die_,” said my poor aunt, faintly.

“_Sine die_, Ma’am. It means indefinitely, Ma’am; your death is postponed without a day named—for ever, Ma’am! It’s all over; and I’m very happy it has ended so. What a marvellous thing, Ma’am—give her some more water, please—those manifestations are. I hope, Ma’am, your mind is quite relieved—perfectly, Ma’am.”

Miss Dinah Perfect was taken with a violent shivering, in which her very teeth chattered. Then she cried, and then she laughed; and finally Doctor Drake administered some of his ammonia and valerian, and she became, at last, composed.

With audible thanksgivings old Winnie accompanied her mistress up stairs to her room, where Aunt Dinah herself, who, notwithstanding her necromancy, was a well-intending, pious Churchwoman, descended to her knees at her bedside, and poured forth her gratitude for the reprieve, and then in a loud and distinct voice read to old Winnie Dobbs the twentieth chapter of the Second Book of Kings, in which we read how the good king Hezekiah obtained by prayer ten years more of the light of life.

Then old Winnie persuaded her to have a glass of very hot port wine-negus, which agreed with her so well that she quickly fell asleep; and never did poor lady need repose more, or drink deeper and more tranquil draughts of that Lethe.

William Maubray was now wide awake, and he and the doctor, being a little chilly, sat before the study fire.

“It’s jolly, isn’t it?” exclaimed William for the seventh time. “But isn’t it all very odd, Sir, and very unaccountable—I—I think?”

“Very, very odd, to be sure,” said the doctor, poking the corner of a lump of coal—“very, no doubt.”

“I wish I had been awake. I should like to see one of those things—those _séances_. I had no idea there really was anything so coherent.”

“Very lucky for her,” replied the doctor, with a sly little wink to William.

William looked inquiringly at the doctor, who smiled on the poker’s end, and pushed the embers gently with it.

“You don’t believe in it, Sir—do you?” inquired William, puzzled.

“I? Well, I don’t know exactly what to say, you know. I put my foot in it on Sunday last, when I told her I did not believe a bit of it; nor more I _did_. Egad, you never saw a woman so angry, when I called it all bosh. You’d better not vex her that way, my boy—d’ye see? She lent me one of those wonderful queer books from America—very odd they are—and I read it to please her. So, you see, that’s how we stand; very good friends again.”

“And you are convinced it’s true?” urged William, who, like other young men who sit up late, and read wild books, and drink strong coffee, was, under the rose, addicted to the supernatural.

“Why, you see, as Shakespeare says, there are more bubbles between heaven and earth than are dreamt of by the philosophers,” observed the doctor with a little paraphrase. “I wish to live at peace with my neighbours; and I’d advise you to think over this subject, old fellow, and not to tease the old lady up stairs about it—that’s all.”

“I wish he’d speak out, and tell me what happened to-night, and tell me his real opinion,” thought William Maubray. “I’ve read in some old medical book,” he continued aloud, “that the vital electricity escapes and diffuses itself at the finger-tips.”

“Oh, to be sure! All sorts of theories. The hand’s a very mysterious organ. The hand of glory, you may be certain, was not altogether a story. The electric light has been seen at the finger-tips in consumptive cases in the dark; and a patient convulsed, or in a state of extreme nervous exhaustion, will clench the hand so as to prevent the escape of this influence at the finger-points, and then joining hands, in love, you know, or friendship—and in fact it is, Sir, a very mysterious organ; and I’m prepared to believe a great deal that’s curious about its occult powers. Your aunt told you about the toad she saw climb over her coverlet one night, and turn into a hand and grasp her wrist.”

“No,” said William.

“Egad, she’s ready to swear to it. Last winter she was so frightened, she was not fit to stand for a week after. She reads too much of those books. Egad, Sir, she’ll turn her head, and that will be the end of it. However, we’ve pulled her through this, and I hope she’ll give it up, true or false. You see, there’s no good in it; and if she goes on, sooner or later she’ll frighten herself out of her wits.”

“But that toad was a very curious idea,” said William. “What does she make of it? Does she think it was a fancy only, or a real thing?”

“Pooh! A spirit of course. She calls it the key-spirit that unlocks the spirit-world, you see; and from the time it touches you, you are in rapport with the invisible world, and subject, as she says she is, to their visitations, you see—ha, ha, ha!”

William laughed too.

“Last winter?” he said. “She never told me.”

“Pooh! All fancies,” observed the doctor. “Better she should not talk of them. Those American people are all going mad. She’ll get touched in the upper story if she does not mind.”

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Chapter VIII.

William Maubray’S Vision.

After some more talk of this kind, they parted, and William Maubray, as he lay down again in his bed, wondered whether the doctor, whom he had heard described as a shrewd man, believed in the revelations at which he had assisted; or, was it possible—could he have been accessory to—Oh, no, it could not be!

The student, as I have said, had a sort of liking for the supernatural, and although now and then he had experienced a qualm in his solitary college chamber at dead of night, when, as he read a well-authenticated horror, the old press creaked suddenly, or the door of the inner-room swung slowly open of itself, it yet was “a pleasing terror” that thrilled him; and now as he lay this night awake, with a patch of moonlight spread askance on the floor—for Aunt Dinah insisted on a curfew, and he, “preferring the light that heaven sheds” to no lamp at all, left the window-shutter a little open, and for a while allowed his eyes to wander over the old-fashioned and faded furniture of the apartment, and his fancy to wander among those dreams of superstition with which he rather liked to try his courage.

He conned over his aunt’s story of the toad, recounted to him by Doctor Drake, and which he had never heard before, until the nodding shadow of the sprig of jessamine on the floor took the shape of the sprawling reptile, and seemed to swagger clumsily towards his bed, and every noise in the curtains suggested its slimy clamberings.

Youth, fatigue, pure country air, in a little while overpowered these whimsies, and William Maubray fell into a deep sleep.

I am now going to relate a very extraordinary incident; but upon my honour the narrative is true. William Maubray dreamed that he was in the room in which he actually lay; that he was in bed, and that the moonlight entered the room, just as he had seen it before going to sleep. He thought that he heard a heavy tread traverse the room over his head; he heard the same slow and ponderous step descend the narrow back stair, that was separated from him only by the wall at the back of his bed. He knew intuitively that the person thus approaching came in quest of him, and he lay expecting, in a state of unaccountable terror. The handle of his door turned, and it seemed that his intending visitor paused, having opened the door about a hand’s breadth, and William knew that he had only suspended, not abandoned his purpose, be it what it might. Then the door swung slowly open, and in the deep shadow, a figure of gigantic stature entered, paused beside his bed, and seized his wrist with a tremendous gripe.

For a time, unable to stir, he remained passive under its pressure. Then with a horrified struggle he awoke. There was no figure visible, but his wrist was actually compressed in a cold grasp, and, with a ghastly ejaculation, he sprang from his bed, and was released.

He had no means of lighting a candle; he had nothing for it but to bounce to the window, fling curtains and shutters wide, and admit the full flood of moonlight, which revealed the contents of the room, and showed that no figure but his own was there. But there were the marks of the grasp that had held him still visible. He secured his door, and made search, in a state of horror, but was convinced. There was no visible intruder in the chamber.

Now William got back into his bed. For the first time in his life he had experienced a paroxysm of that wild fear with which it had been so often his delight to trifle. He heard the clock at the stair-head strike hour after hour, and at last, after having experienced every stage in the subsidence of such horrors, fairly overcome by fatigue, he sunk to sleep.

How welcome and how beautiful shone the morning! Slanting by his window, the sunbeam touched the quivering jessamine leaves, and the clustering roses, and in the dewy air he heard the chirp and whistle of the happy birds. He threw up his window and breathed the perfumed air, and welcomed all the pleasant sounds of morning in that pleasant season.

“The cock he crew, Away then flew The fiends from the church-door.”

And so the uncomfortable and odious shadows of the night winged their foul flight before these cheerful influences, and William Maubray, though he felt the want of his accustomed sleep, ran down the well-known stairs, and heard with a happy heart from Winnie Dobbs that his kind old aunt was ever so much better.

Doctor Drake had withdrawn from his uncomfortable bivouac, carrying with him his nightcap and slippers, and hastening to his toilet in the pleasant town of Saxton, where, no doubt, Miss Letty cross-questioned him minutely upon the occurrences of the night.

I have said before that the resources of Gilroyd were nothing very remarkable; still there was the Saxton Cricket Club, who practised zealously, and always welcomed William, whose hit to leg was famous, and even recorded as commendable in the annual volume of the great Mr. Lillywhite; where he was noted, in terms that perplexed Aunt Dinah, as a promising young bat, with a good defence. He fished a little; and he played at fives with young Trevor of Revington, whom nobody very much liked—the squire of Saxton, who assumed territorial and other airs that were oppressive, although Revington was only two thousand five hundred pounds a year; but in that modest neighbourhood, he was a very important person, and knew that fact very well.

He had of late distinguished Violet with a slight admiration, that ought to have been gratifying. Once or twice he paid old Miss Perfect a little neighbourly, condescending visit, and loitered a good deal about the garden, and that acre and a half of shrubbery, which she called “the grounds.” He sometimes joined in the walk home from church, and sometimes in other walks; and Aunt Perfect was pleased and favourable, and many of the Saxton mothers and daughters were moved to envy and malice.

“I played to-day,” said William, giving an account of his hours at tea to the ladies, “two rubbers of fives; with whom do you think?”

He stopped, smiling slily on Violet, who was steadfastly looking down on Miss Perfect’s crest on her tea-spoon.

“Well, I’m sure you know by that unerring instinct which poets speak of,” said William, “but it is hardly fair to ask you to name him.”

Violet looked up, having blushed very prettily, but not very well pleased.

“Of course I mean Trevor—Vane Trevor—of Revington. It sounds very well. Trevor was two years my senior at school; he left at the end of the third half after I came; that makes him nearly twenty-five now. How old are you, Vi?—you’d make a very pretty mistress of Revington; yes, indeed, Vi, or anywhere else. Don’t be vexed, but tell me exactly how old you are.”

He tapped with his pencil on the table to hasten her answer, as he looked at her, smiling a little sadly.

“How old?” she repeated.

“Well?”

“Past seventeen. Why do you want to know?” she added laughing.

“Well, he’s not quite five-and-twenty yet; only twenty-four to your seventeen. Seven years is a very pretty difference.”

“What _are_ you talking about, William? This kind of thing is thought very funny: it is very disagreeable. If people will talk nonsense, do let it be amusing. You used to be sometimes amusing.”

“That was long ago, when I told you ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ and ‘The Romance of the Forest;’ before the romance of the shrubbery commenced.”

“Folly!” exclaimed Violet.

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Chapter IX.

IN WHICH MISS VIOLET SAYS WHAT SHE THINKS OF MR. VANE TREVOR, AND IS VIOLET NO LONGER.

“Now, I tell you,” continued William Maubray, and he glanced at Aunt Dinah; but she was reading, with her gold spectacles on, the second of a series of old letters, which she had in an old stamped leather box beside her, and had forgotten all else. “You really must tell me what you think of Vane Trevor?”

Miss Vi fixed her glowing eyes full upon his for a moment, and then dropped them suddenly. His were full of their old, gentle, good-natured mirth.

There was a little pause, and, suddenly looking up, she said rather petulantly:

“Think of him? Why, I suppose I think what everyone else does. I think him handsome; I think him agreeable; I think he has an estate; I think he looks like a gentleman; and I think he is the only man who appears in this neighbourhood that is not in one way or other a bore. Shall I sing you a song?”

And with heightened colour and bright eyes, this handsome girl sat down to the piano, which had a cracked and ancient voice, like the reedy thrum of a hurdy-gurdy, contrasting quaintly with her own mellow tones, and she sang—nothing to the purpose, nothing with a sly, allegoric satire in it, but the first thing that came into her head—sweet and sad as a song of old times; and ancient Miss Perfect, for a verse or so, lowered her letter, and listened, smiling, with a little sigh; and William, listening also, fell into a brown study, as he looked on the pretty songstress, and her warblings mingled with his dreams.

“Thank you, little Vi,” said he, rising with a sudden smile, and standing beside her as the music ceased. “Very pretty—very sweet.”

“I am glad you like it, William,” she said, kindly.

“_William_, again!” he repeated.

“Well—_yes_.”

“And why not _Willie_, as it used to be?” he persisted.

“Because it sounds foolish, somehow. I’m sure you think so. I do.”

It seemed to him as, with a sad smile, he looked at her, thinking over the words that sounded so like a farewell, so light and cruel, too, that there yet was wisdom—that precocious wisdom with which nature accomplishes the weaker sex—in her decision; and something of approval lighted up his sad smile, and he said, with a little nod:

“I believe the young lady says wisely; yes, you are a wise little woman, and I submit.”

Perhaps she was a little disappointed at his ready acquiescence; at all events she wound up with a loud chord on the piano, and, standing up, said:

“Yes, it sounds foolish, and so, indeed, I think does _William_; and people can’t go on being children always, and talking nonsense; and you know we are no relations—at least that I know of—and I’ll call you—yes I _will_—_Mr. Maubray_. People may be just as friendly, and yet—and yet call one another by their right names. And now, Mr. Maubray, will you have some tea?”

“No, thanks; no more tea to-night. I’m sure it has lost its flavour. It would not taste like tea.”

“What’s the matter with the tea?” asked Miss Perfect, over the edge of her letter. “You don’t like your tea, William? Is not it strong enough?”

“Quite; too much; almost bitter, and a little cold.”

“Fancy, child,” said Aunt Dinah, who apprehended a new attack on her tea-chest, and hated waste. “I think it particularly _good_ this evening,” and she sipped a little in evidence of her liking, and once more relapsed into reading.

“I can add water,” said Violet, touching the little ivory handle of the tea-urn with the tip of her finger, and not choosing to apprehend William’s allegory.

“No, thank you, Vi—Violet, I mean—Miss Darkwell; indeed, I forgot. What shall I read to-night?” and he strode listlessly to the little bookcase, whose polished surface flashed pleasantly to the flicker of the wood fire. “‘Boswell’s Johnson,’ ‘Sir Charles Grandison,’ ‘Bishop Horsley’s Sermons,’ ‘Trimmer’s Works,’ ‘A Simple Story,’ ‘Watts’ Sacred Songs,’ ‘Rasselas,’ ‘Poems, by Alfred Tennyson.’”

His quiet voice as he read the names on the backs of Aunt Dinah’s miscellaneous collection, sounded changed and older, ever so much, in Violet’s ear. All on a sudden for both, a part of their lives had been cut off, and a very pleasant time changed irrevocably to a retrospect.

“I think ‘Tennyson.’ What do you?” he asked, turning a smile that seemed faded now, but kindly as ever, upon her.

As the old name was gone, and the new intolerable, he compounded by calling her by none; and she, likewise, in her answer.

“Oh! yes, Tennyson, Tennyson, by all means; that is, if Miss Perfect wishes.”

“Yes—oh! to be sure; but haven’t you read it before?” acquiesced Miss Perfect.

William smiled at Violet, and said to Miss Dinah, “I think—and don’t you?”—this was to Vi, parenthetically, “that poetry is never heard fairly on a first reading. It resembles music—you must know it a little to enjoy it.”

“That’s just what I think,” said Violet, eagerly.

“Very good, young people,” said my aunt, with a little toss of her head. “For my part, I think there’s but one Book will bear repeated reading, and that is the Bible.”

“Not even ‘Elihu Bung?’” suggested William.

“There—read your poetry,” said Miss Perfect. “I shan’t interrupt; I’m reading these, looking back for the date of a family event.”

This was an exercise not unfrequently imposed on her by Henbane, who now and then made a slip in such matters, and thus perplexed and troubled Aunt Dinah, who had sometimes her secret misgivings about his accuracy and morality.

“What shall I read?” asked William in a lower tone.

“Anything, ‘Mariana,’” she answered.

“The ‘Moated Grange,’” repeated William, and smiled. “‘The poetry of monotony.’ I could fancy, if a few pleasant faces were gone, this Gilroyd Hall, much as I like it, very like the Moated Grange.”

And without more preface he read that exquisite little poem through, and then leaned back in his chair, the book open upon the table; pretty Violet sat opposite, working at her crochet, in a reverie, as was he as he gazed on her.

“Where did she learn all that? How much wiser they are than we. What a jolly ass _I_ was at seventeen, and all the fellows. What fools—weren’t they?—in things like that; and by Jove! she’s quite right, I could not go on _Vi_-ing her all my days, just because when she was a child she used to be here. They are certainly awfully wise in that sort of thing. Pretty head she has—busy, busy—quite a little world within it now, I dare say. What a wonder of wonders, that little casket! Pretty hair, awfully pretty; and the shape of her head, so pretty; yet the oval reminds me, right or wrong, of a serpent’s head; but she has nothing of that in her, only the wisdom; yes, the wisdom, and, perhaps, the fascination. She’ll make some fellow’s heart sore yet; she’ll make some great match, I dare say; but that’s a long way off, eight years; yes, she’ll be twenty-four then; time enough before her.”

“Is there any cricket for to-morrow?” asked Vi on a sudden.

“No match. I’m going up to look at Revington. Trevor said he’d call for me early—eleven o’clock—for _me_, mind; and you know I begin to feel an interest in Revington.”

“Oh! it’s very pretty, great old timber,” she said, “and a handsome place, and a good estate—three thousand a year, only it owes some money. What an ambitious, audacious person I must be. I’m certain you think so, because it is quite plain I covet my neighbour’s house, and his ox, and his ass, and everything that is his; and coveting, Dr. Mainwaring tells us, is the fountain-head of all iniquity, for how could a person so poor as I ever obtain all these fine things without fraud and chicanery?”

Miss Violet was talking a little recklessly and angrily, but she looked unusually handsome, her colour was so beautiful, and there was so strange a fire in her vexed eyes. What was the meaning of this half-suppressed scorn, and who its real object? How enigmatical they grow so soon as the summer hours of fascination, and of passion with its disguises and sorrows, in all their transient glow and beauty, approach—the season of hope, of triumph, and of aching hearts.

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Chapter X.

Vane Trevor Is Discussed And Appears.

It was in this mysterious turbulent frame of mind that old Winnie Dobbs, bearing the Bible and book of family prayers, surprised Miss Violet Darkwell, and recalled Aunt Dinah from the sound and fury of forty years ago, now signifying no more than the discoloured paper on which they were recorded.

“Dear me! can it be a quarter to ten already?” exclaimed Miss Perfect, plucking her watch from her side and inspecting it. “So it is; come in.”

And fat Mrs. Podgers, the cook, and Tom, with his grimmest countenance, and the little girl with a cap on, looking mild and frightened.

So, according to the ancient usage of Gilroyd Hall, to William’s lot fell the reading of the Bible, and to Aunt Dinah’s that of the prayers, and then the little congregation broke up, and away went Vi to her bed-room, with old Winnie.

William was not worse, nor, I dare say, much better than other young Cambridge men of his day and college; but he liked these little “services” in which he officiated, and they entered into his serene and pleasant recollections of that sequestered habitation.

“Well, William dear, I thank God I am spared to be with you a little longer.”

“Amen,” he said, “you dear aunt, dear, dear old Aunt Dinah.”

And they kissed very lovingly, and there was a silence, which Aunt Dinah in a few minutes broke by mentioning the very subject at that moment in his mind.

“You saw Violet a good deal grown—very pretty figure—in fact, I think her lovely; but we must not tell her so, you know. She has been very much admired, and a good, affectionate, amiable little soul she is. There’s young Mr. Trevor. I can tell you people are beginning to talk about it. What do _you_ think?”

William set down his bed-room candle on the tea-table, rubbed the apex of its extinguisher with the tip of his finger, and returned an answer answerless.

“He’s very good-looking; isn’t he? But he thinks a lot of himself; and don’t you think it would be an awful pity little Vi should be married so soon?”

“Then you think he means to ask her?” said Miss Perfect, her silver pencil-case to her chin, her head a little aside, and looking very curiously into her nephew’s eyes.

“I don’t know; I haven’t a notion. He said yesterday he thought her very pretty; but Trevor always talks like no end of a swell, and I really think he fancies a princess, or something of the sort, would hardly be good enough for him.”

“It would, of course, be a very good match for Vi,” said Miss Perfect, dropping her eyes, perhaps a little disappointed, and running her pencil-case back and forward slowly on the edge of William’s plated candlestick, from which they both seemed to look for inspiration; “but a girl so pretty as she may look higher than Mr. Trevor without presumption.”

“Yes, indeed, and there’s no hurry, Heaven knows. I don’t think Trevor half good enough for her,” said William.

“Oh, I don’t say that, but—but more unlikely things have happened.”

“Does he—does he make _love_ to her?” said William, who drew altogether upon the circulating library for his wisdom in those matters.

“He certainly admires her very much; he has been very attentive. I’m sure he likes her, and I can’t hear that he is anything but a straightforward, honourable young man.”

“I suppose he is,” said William; “I’m sure he’s that. And what does Violet—Miss Darkwell—say?”

“Say! Why, of course I can’t ask her to say anything till he speaks. I dare say she likes him, as why should she not? But that’s only conjecture, you know; and you are not to hint it to him, mind, if he should question or poke you on the subject.”

“Oh, no, certainly,” answered William, and there came a long pause. “But indeed, aunt, I don’t think Vane Trevor half good enough for her.”

“Oh! that’s for _them_, my dear, to settle. There’s nothing in point of prudence, against it.”

“No—oh, no. Everything _very_ well. Lucky fellow to be able to marry when he likes.”

“And—but I forgot you don’t mind. You think there’s nothing in it. Still I may tell you I have had—old Winnie and I—some answers.”

“Table-rapping?” said William.

“A little _séance_. We sit down together, Winnie and I; and some responses, in my mind, can hardly refer to anything else, and most sweet and comforting they have been.”

Once on this subject, my aunt was soon deep in it, and told her story of the toad which turned into a hand; whereupon William related his dream, and the evidences afforded by his waking senses of the reality of the visitation. My aunt was at once awe-struck and delighted.

“_Now_, William, you’ll read, I’ve no doubt, the wonderful experiences of others, having had such remarkable ones of your own. Since my hand was held in that spirit-hand—no doubt the same which seized yours—I have become accessible to impressions from the invisible world, such as I had no idea of before. You need not be uncomfortable or nervous. It is all benevolent—or, at worst, just. I’ve never seen or felt that hand but once; the relation is established for ever by a single pressure. I have satisfied Dr. Drake—a very intelligent man, and reasonable—convinced him, he admits. And now, dear William, there is another link between us; and if in the mysterious ways of Providence, you should after all be taken first, I shall have the happiness of communion with you. Good-night, dear, and God bless you, and be careful to put out your candle.”

So William departed, and notwithstanding Miss Perfect’s grisly conversation, he slept soundly, and did not dream of the shadowy giant, nor even of Trevor and Violet.

Pleasant, listless Gilroyd Hall! thought William, as, after breakfast, he loitered up and down before the rich red-brick front of the old gabled house, with its profusion of small windows, with such thick, white sashes, and casings of white stone; and the pointed gables, with stone cornice and glittering weather-vane on the summit. That house, somehow, bore a rude resemblance to the old world dandyism which reigned in its younger days, and reminded William of the crimson coats, the bars of lace and quaint, gable-like cocked hats, which had, no doubt, for many a year passed in and out at its deep-porched door; where I could fancy lovers loitering in a charmed murmur, in summer shade, for an enchanted hour, till old Sir Harry’s voice and whistle, and the pound of his crutch-handled cane, and the scamper and yelp of the dogs, were heard in the oak hall approaching.

Under the old chestnuts, clustered with ivy, Violet joined him.

“Well, how are we to-day? I think we were a little cross last night, weren’t we?” said William, with his old trick of lecturing little Vi.

“We! One of us may have been, but it was not I,” she answered.

“I think my watch is wrong. Did you happen to look at the clock as you passed?”

“Half-past eleven.”

“Ah! so I thought. How many hours long, Miss—” (Vi he was going to say)—“Darkwell, are contained in half an hour’s waiting? The spirit of Mariana has come upon me:

‘She only said, “My life is dreary,” “He cometh not,” she said; She said, “I am a-weary, a-weary, I would that I were dead!”’

Can’t you a little understand it, too?—not, of course, quite like me, but a little?”

Vi was not going to answer, but suddenly she changed her mind and said—

“I don’t know, but I think you were a great deal more agreeable when you were a schoolboy. I assure you, I’m serious. I think you’ve grown so tiresome and conceited. I suppose all young men in the universities are. ‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’ you used to tell me, and I think I can now agree with you—at least it seems to make people vain and disagreeable.”

Maubray answered looking on her gently, but speaking as if in a pensive soliloquy, and wondering as he went along whether he had really turned into a coxcomb; for he was one of those sensitive, because diffident souls on whom the lightest reproof tells, and induces self-examination.

“I don’t know,” he said, “that I’ve even got the little learning that qualifies for danger. I don’t think I am vain—that is, not a bit vainer than I used to be; but I’m sure I’m more disagreeable—that is, to you. My babble and dull jokes are very well for a child, but the child has grown up, and left childish things behind: and a young lady in her teens is more fastidious, and—and, in fact, is a sort of an angel whom I am not formed to talk to with a chance of being anything but a bore. Very unlearned, and yet a book-worm; very young and yet not very merry; not a bad fellow, I think, and yet, with hardly a friend on earth, and—by Jove! here comes Trevor at last.”

And Trevor entered the gate, and approached them.

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Chapter XI.

Under The Chestnuts.

Vane Trevor was rather good-looking; a young gentleman of the slender and delicate type; his dark hair curled, and on his small forehead one of those tresses, twisted, barber-fashion, into a neat little Ionic volute, and his glossy whiskers were curled on each cheek into little rolls like pistol barrels. There was in his toilet something of elaboration and precision which was uncomfortable, and made one fear to shake hands with him, and wish him safely back again in his band-box.

He approached simpering. There was a general air of May Fair—cameo studs, varnished boots, and lavender gloves—that had nothing of the rough and careless country in it.

“How do, Miss Darkwell—charming day, is not it? Everything really so fresh; you can’t imagine—as I came along, and a—this, now really this little—a—_place_, it looks quite charming—quite, really, now—a—as you turn off the road, there’s _every_thing you know to _make_ it charming.”

This latter period was delivered in a low tone, and with a gracious significance.

“How d’ye do, Maubray?”

“Quite well, thank you,” said William, with a smile that had a flicker of unconscious amusement in it. Perhaps without knowing it, he was envying him at that moment. “He’s a worse fool, by Jove! than I thought he was,” was his mental criticism; but he felt more conscious of his clumsy shoes, and careless get-up. “That’s the sort of thing they admire—why should a fellow be vexed—they can’t help it—it’s pure instinct.”

“What delicious ground for croquet; positively I never saw anything so beautiful in my life. Do you play, Miss Darkwell?”

“Sometimes, at the Rectory—not here. The Miss Mainwarings play, and once or twice I’ve joined their party.”

“But they have no ground there,” insisted Mr. Trevor; “it’s all on a slope. I happen to know it very well, because, in fact, it belongs to me. Old Mainwaring pays me a pretty smart rent for it, at least he thinks so. Ha! ha! ha!” and Vane Trevor cackled gaily over his joke, such as it was.

“Do you play?” demanded Violet of William.

“Croquet?—no, not much—just a little—once or twice—I’ll do to fill a place if you want a very bad player.”

“Oh, never mind, we’ll pull you through, or push you—ha, ha, ha!—we will, indeed. You’ll learn it a—in no time, it’s so simple—isn’t it, Miss Darkwell? And then if you can get up one of those Miss Mainwarings—awfully slow girls, I’m told, but they will do to play with _you_, Maubray, just by way of ballast, he’s such a fast fellow—ha, ha, ha! You’ll want a—a slow partner, eh?”

“Yes, and _you’ll_ want a clever one, so I surrender Miss Darkwell, just to balance the game,” answered William, who was a little combative that morning.

“Egad, I should like uncommonly to be balanced that way, I can tell you; much better, I assure you, Miss Darkwell, than the sort of balancing I’ve been at the last two days, with my steward’s books—ha, ha, ha! Awful slow work, figures. A regular dose of arithmetic. Upon my honour you’d pity me if you knew; you really would.”

“You really would,” echoed William, “if you knew how little he knows of it.”

“Come, now, old fellow, none of your chaff, but get the balls and hoops, if Miss Darkwell will allow you, and we will choose the ground.”

“Lots of ground—I’ll choose that if you like—only _you’ll_ just run and get the hoops and balls, for we have none here,” answered Maubray.

“No croquet!” ejaculated Mr. Trevor, expanding his lavender kid fingers, and elevating his eyebrows. “I thought everyone had croquet now—I mean, you know, the mallet-things, and hoops and balls,—and—and those little painted sticks, you know—and what are we to do, Miss Darkwell?”

“I really don’t know. It’s quite true; and besides we have not got Miss Mainwaring, you forget.”

“Oh! you’ll send Maubray, won’t you, to fetch her?”

“Yes,” said Maubray, “I’ll go with great pleasure, if Miss Darkwell wishes; but as I never saw the young lady before, I’m not quite sure that she’ll come away with me.”

“Well no—ha, ha, ha!—I don’t think she’d run away with Maubray at _first sight_.”

“Particularly to come to _you_,” replied Maubray.

“There now, let’s be serious—there’s a little fellow I saw at your gate—yes, there he is, Miss Darkwell. Suppose you let me send him to Revington. I’ve no end of those things there; and I’ll give him a note to Sparks, and we shall have them in no time.”

“A long time, I’m afraid,” objected Violet.

“No, I assure you; a mere nothing; not twenty minutes. Do, pray, allow me.”

And he wrote with a pencil, on the back of a card, an order to Sparks for the croquet apparatus, and away trotted the messenger.

“Three can play, you know, or two for that matter, as well as twenty, and so we can do quite well without troubling Miss Mainwaring.”

There was now a knocking at the drawing-room window, where William had seen dimly through the glass, the form of Aunt Dinah at her knitting, with Psyche in her new collar, seated by her. All looked towards the signal, and Miss Perfect threw up the window and said:

“How do you do, Mr. Trevor? what a sweet morning.”

“Perfectly charming,” responded the master of Revington, with a tender emphasis and smiling toward Miss Perfect with his hat in his hand; and Aunt Dinah smiled and nodded again in return.

“William, I want you for a moment—here, dear, you need not come in.”

The instinct which makes old ladies afford a dole now and then of a few minutes to lovers, is in harmony with the general rule of mercy and mitigation which alleviates every human situation.

As soon as Miss Dinah raised the window, William saw standing in the chiaro-oscuro of the apartment, a tall and rather handsome old clergyman. A little rusty was his black suit—a little dust was on his gaiters. It must have been he whom William had mistaken for the attorney who was to have visited his aunt that morning. He had seen him walk his nag up to the door about an hour ago, and dismount.

The old clergyman was looking observantly and kindly on William; and, nodding to him, and with her thin hand extended toward her nephew, she said, “This is he!” with a proud smile in her old eyes, for she thought William the handsomest fellow alive.

“Happy to make your acquaintance, Sir,” said the cleric stepping forward and shaking William’s hand. “I knew your father, and grandfather, and your aunt and I are very old friends; and I’ve just been telling her how happy I shall be⸺”

“This is Doctor Wagget, my very good and kind old friend; you may have heard me speak of him often, I dare say,” interposed my aunt.

“And your reading, Sir, has been rather desultory, your aunt tells me, like my own, Sir—ha, ha, ha! We had rather give our time than pay it; read what is not exacted of us than what is. But I don’t know, Miss Perfect,” continued the doctor, turning to that lady, as if they were in consultation upon William’s case, “reading—that is in the case of a man who thinks—and I am sure our young friend here thinks for himself—resembles the browsing of cattle: they choose their own herbage, and the particular flowers and grasses that answer their special conditions best, eh? and so they thrive. Instinct directs us creatures, in the one as in the other; and so we read, he and I—ha, ha! what best nourishes, you see—what we can assimilate and enjoy. For plodding fellows, that devour the curriculum set before them—neither more nor less—are, you see, stall-fed, bulkier fellows; higher priced in the market; but they haven’t our flavour and texture. Oh, no—ha, ha!—eh?”

The ecclesiastic was cheery and kindly, and in his manner was a curious mixture of energy and simplicity which William Maubray liked.

The conclusion of this little harangue he had addressed to William Maubray; and I am afraid that Miss Perfect was more interested by the picture on the lawn; for without reference to the doctor’s subject, she desired to know, looking with a pleased inquisitiveness at the young people, whether they were going to take a walk, or _what_? And prolonged her little _tête-à-tête_ with William over the window-stool.

When William Maubray looked up again at Doctor Wagget, that divine had picked up a book, a trick of his, like that of the cattle from whom his illustration was borrowed, and who employ every moment’s pause at the wayside, in a pluck at the nearest foliage or turf of grass; and with the intimation, “you may as well join them,” Miss Perfect dismissed her nephew.

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Chapter XII.

Croquet.

While William Maubray was thus employed, Mr. Trevor agreeably accosted Miss Violet.

“Now we are to choose the ground, you know, Miss Darkwell—you are to choose it, in fact. I think, don’t you, it looks particularly smooth just there. By Jove it does!—really, now, just like a billiard-table, behind those a—those a—what-d’ye-callem’s—the evergreens there.”

“I think it does, really,” said Miss Vi, gliding very contentedly into his ambuscade. “There’s a little shade too.”

“Yes, lots of shade; I hate the sun. I’m afraid my deeds are darkness, as Dr. Mainwaring says. There’s only one sort of light I really like, now, upon my honour—the light—the light you—you know, the light that comes from Miss Darkwell’s eyes—ha, ha! upon my honour.”

The idea was not quite original, perhaps, but Miss Darkwell blushed a little, and smiled, as it were, on the leaves, and wondered how soon the messenger with the croquet things would return. And Mr. Trevor consulted his watch, and said he would allow him a quarter of an hour more, and added that he would willingly allow the poor little beggar an hour, or any time; for his part, the—the time, in fact, went only too fast for him.

Miss Perfect, looking over her spectacles, and then with elevated chin through them, said:

“Where have they gone to? can you see?”

“I don’t know—I suppose sauntering about—they can’t be very far,” answered William, looking a little uneasily. And somehow forgetting that he was in the midst of a dialogue with Aunt Dinah, he strode away, whistling a little air, anxiously, in the direction in which he had left them.

“We have such a charming piece of ground here,” exclaimed Violet, on whose cheeks was a flush, and in whose beautiful eyes a light which Maubray did not like.

“First rate; capital, by Jove! it is,” exclaimed Trevor in corroboration.

“I don’t see anything very wonderful about it. I think the ground on the other side of these trees better, decidedly; and this is out of sight of the windows,” said William, a little drily.

“We don’t want a view of the windows—do we?” asked Mr. Trevor, with an agreeable simplicity, of Miss Darkwell. “The windows? I really did not think of them; but, perhaps, Mr. Maubray wishes to be within call for lunch.”

Mr. Trevor laughed pleasantly at this cruel sally.

“Well, yes, that, of course,” said William, “and, beside, my aunt might want to speak to me again, as she did just now; and I don’t want to be out of sight, in case she should.”

This was very bitter of William; and, perhaps, Miss Violet was a little put out, as she certainly was a little more flushed, and a short silence followed, during which, looking and walking slowly toward the gate, she asked, “Is that the boy with the croquet?”

“Yes—no—_yes_, by Jove, it _is_! What wonderful eyes yours are, Miss Darkwell!”

The latter remark was in a tender undertone, the music of which was accompanied by the long-drawn screak of the iron gate, as the boy entered with a holland bag, mallets, and hoops.

The hoops were hardly placed, when Miss Perfect once more knocked at the window and beckoned.

“Aunt Dinah wants me again,” said William, and he ran to the window, mallet in hand.

The old clergyman had gone away, and I think Aunt Dinah only wanted to give the lovers a few minutes.

“Villikens and his Dinah,” said Mr. Trevor, and exploded in repeated cachinations over his joke. “I vote we call him Villikens—capital name, isn’t it?—I really do. But, by Jove, I hope the old lady won’t go on calling him up from his game every minute. We’d have been a great deal better at the other side of the trees, where we were going to play, don’t you think?”

“He is coming at last,” said Miss Violet.

“Shall we be partners, you and I? Do let us, and give him two balls,” urged Mr. Trevor, graciously, and a little archly.

“Well, I think that’s dull, rather, isn’t it? one playing with two balls,” remonstrated Miss Darkwell.

And before the debate could proceed William Maubray had arrived.

“Everyone for himself, eh?” said Trevor; and so the game set in, Trevor and William Maubray playing rather acrimoniously, and making savage roquets upon one another; and Miss Darkwell—though William dealt tenderly with her—was hard upon him, and, so far as her slender force would go, knocked him about inconveniently.

“Capital roquet, Miss Darkwell,” Trevor would cry, as William’s ball bounded away into perspective, and his heart felt sore, as if her ungrateful mallet had smitten it; and his reprisals on Trevor were terrific.

Thus, amid laughter, a little hypocritical, and honest hard knocks, the game proceeded, and Miss Darkwell, at its close, was the winner.

William Maubray could lose as good-humouredly as any fellow at other games, but he was somehow sore and angry here. He was spited by Violet’s partial dealing. Violet, how unnatural! Little Vi! his bird! his property, it seemed, leagued with that coxcomb to whack him about—to make a butt and a fool of him.

“I’m not going to play any more. I’ll sit down here, if you like, and do”—_gooseberry_, he was on the point of saying, for he was very angry, and young enough, in his wrath, to talk away like a schoolboy—“and do audience, or rather spectator; or, if you choose, Trevor, to take that walk over the Warren you promised me, I’m ready. I’ll do exactly whatever Miss Darkwell prefers. If she wishes to play on with you, I’ll remain, and if she has had enough of us, I’ll go.”

“I can’t play—there is not time for another game,” said Miss Vi, peeping at her watch. “My aunt will want me in a few minutes about that old woman—old Widow Grey. I—I’m afraid I must go. Good-bye.”

“Awfully sorry! But, perhaps you can? Well, I suppose, no help for it,” said Trevor.

And they walked slowly to the door, where Miss Vi pronounced the conventional invitation to enter, which was, however, wistfully declined, and Trevor and William Maubray set out upon their walk, and Miss Vi, in the drawing-room, sat down on the old-fashioned window-seat, and looked out, silent, and a little sulkily after them.

Miss Perfect glanced over her spectacles, with a stealthy and grave inquisitiveness, at the pretty girl.

“Well, dear, they went away?” she said, after a silence.

“Oh! yes; I was tired playing, and, I think, William wanted to go for a walk.”

“There seemed to be a great deal of fun over the game,” said Aunt Dinah, who wanted to hear everything.

“Yes, I believe so; but one tires of it. I do, I know:” and saying this, Violet took up her novel, and Aunt Dinah scrutinised her, from time to time, obliquely, over her crochet needles, and silence reigned in the drawing-room.

“Very pretty Miss Darkwell is. I quite envy you. Your cousin, isn’t she?” said Trevor, graciously. He felt that William would be flattered by the envy, even playful, of Vane Trevor, Esq., of Revington.

“Cousin, or something, someway or other connected or related, I don’t know exactly. Yes, I believe she is very well. She was prettier as a child, though. Isn’t there a short way to the Warren?”

“Yes, I’ll take you right. She looks, I’d say, about seventeen.”

“Yes, I dare say,” answered William. “Do you know those Miss Mainwarings—Doctor Mainwaring’s daughters?”

But it would not do. Vane Trevor would go on talking of Violet Darkwell, in spite of William’s dry answers and repeated divergences, unaccountably to that philosophical young gentleman’s annoyance.

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Chapter XIII.

Unsociable.

At dinner, in the parlour of Gilroyd Hall, there was silence for some time. William looked a little gloomy, Violet rather fierce and stately, and Aunt Dinah eyed her two guests covertly, without remark, but curiously. At last she said to William—

“You took a walk with Mr. Trevor?”

“Yes, a tiresome one,” he answered.

“Where?”

“All about and round that stupid Warren—six or seven miles,” answered William.

“How very fatiguing!” exclaimed Violet, compassionately, as if to herself.

“No, not the exercise; that was the only thing that made it endurable,” answered William, a little crossly. “But the place is uglier than I fancied, and Trevor _is_ such a donkey.”

Aunt Dinah, with her eyes fixed on William’s, made a nod and a frown, to arrest that line of remark, which, she felt, might possibly prejudice Vi, and could do no possible good. And Miss Vi, looking all the time on the wing of the chicken on her plate, said, “The salt, please,” and nothing more.

“Vi, my dear,” said Miss Perfect, endeavouring to be cheery, “he asked my leave last Sunday to send you an Italian greyhound. He has two, he says, at Revington. Did he mention it to-day?”

“Perhaps he did. I really forget,” said Miss Vi, carelessly, laying down her fork, and leaning back, with a languid defiance, for as she raised her eyes, she perceived that William was smiling.

“I know what you mean,” she said, with a sudden directness to William. “You want me—that is, I _think_ you want me to think _you_ think—”

“Oh! do stop one moment. There are so many ‘thinks’ there. I’m quite bewildered among them all. Let’s breathe an instant. You think I want to make you think that I think. Yes, now I have it, I _think_. Pray go on.”

“Polite!” said Miss Vi, and turned toward Aunt Dinah.

“Well, no,” said William, for the first time laughing a little like himself; “it was not polite, but very rude and ill-bred, and I’m very sorry; and I assure you,” he continued more earnestly, “I should be very angry, if any one else had made the stupid speech that I have just made: and, really, I believe it is just this—you have been too patient with me, and allowed me to go on lecturing you like an old tutor—and—and—really, I’m certain I’ve been a horrid bore.”

Vi made no reply, but looked, and, no doubt, thought herself more ill-used for his apologies.

After tea she played industriously, having avowed a little cold, which prevented her singing. William had asked her. He turned over the leaves of a book, as he sat back in an elbow-chair, and Aunt Dinah was once more deep in her old box of letters, with her gold spectacles on.

They were as silent a party as could be fancied; more silent than at dinner. Still, the pleasant light of fire and candle—the handsome young faces and the kindly old one—and the general air of old-fashioned comfort that pervaded the apartment, made the picture pleasant; and the valses and the nigger ditties, with snatches of Verdi, and who knows what composer beside, made the air ring with a merry medley, which supplied the lack of conversation.

To William, with nothing but his book to amuse him, time moved slowly enough. But Violet had many things to think of; and one could see that her eyes saw other scenes and shapes far away, perhaps, from the music, and that she was reading to herself the romance that was unrolled within her pretty girlish head.

So prayers came, and William read the chapter; and I am afraid his thoughts wandered, and he felt a little sore and affronted, he could not tell why, for no one had ill-used him; and, when their devotions were over, Miss Vi took her candle, and bid grannie good-night, with an embrace and a kiss, and William with a nod and a cold little smile, as he stood beside the door, having opened it for her.

He was growing formal in spite of himself, and she quite changed. What heartless, cruel creatures these pretty girls are!

She had quite vanished up the stairs, and he still held the door-handle in his fingers, and stood looking up the vacant steps, and, as it were, listening to distant music. Then, with a little sigh, he suddenly closed the door, and sat down drowsily before the fire, and began to think that he ought to return to his Cambridge chambers, his books, and monastic life: and he thought how fortunate those fellows were, who, like Trevor—what a goose that fellow is!—were born to idleness, respect, and admiration.

“Money!—d—n money—curse it! I wish I had a lot of it!” and William clutched the poker, but the fire did not want poking, and he gave it a rather vicious knock upon the bar, which startled Miss Perfect, and recalled his own thoughts from unprofitable speculations, upon the preposterous injustice of Fate, and some ultimate state of poetical compensation, in which scholars and men of mind, who played all sorts of games excellently, and noodles, who never did anything decently—in fact, he and Trevor—would be dealt with discriminately, and with common fairness.

“Don’t, dear William, pray, make such a clatter. I’m _so_ nervous.”

“I beg a thousand pardons. I’m so stupid.”

“Well, it does not signify—an accident—but don’t mind touching the fire-irons,” said Miss Perfect; “and how did your walk with Mr. Trevor proceed? Did he talk of anything?”

“Oh! didn’t he? Fifty things. He’s a wonderful fellow to talk, is Trevor,” said William, looking with half-closed eyes into the fire.

“Oh, yes,” persisted Aunt Dinah; “but was there anything—anything particular—anything that could interest us?”

“Next to nothing that could interest anyone,” said William, uncommunicatively.

“Well, it would interest _me_, if he talked of Violet,” said Aunt Dinah, coming directly to the point. “_Did_ he?”

“Of Violet? Yes, I believe he did,” answered William, rather reluctantly.

“Well, and why did not you say so? Of course, you knew that’s what I meant,” said Miss Perfect.

“How could I know, auntie?”

“I think, William Maubray, you are a little disagreeable to-night.”

William, at these words, recollected that there was truth in the reproof. His mood was disagreeable to himself, and, therefore, to others.

“My dear auntie, I’m very sorry. I’m sure I have been—not a little, but _very_—and I beg your pardon. What was it? Yes—about Violet. He did, a great deal. In fact he talked about her till he quite tired me.”

“He admires her, evidently. Did he talk of her good looks? She _is_, you know, extremely pretty,” said Aunt Dinah.

“Yes, he thinks her very pretty. She _is_ very pretty. In fact, I don’t think—judging by the women who come to church—there is a good-looking girl, except herself, in this part of the world; and she would be considered pretty anywhere—_very_ pretty.”

“Revington is a very nice place, and the Trevors a good old family. The connection would be a very desirable one: and I—though, of course, not knowing, in the least, whether the young man had any serious intentions—I never alluded to the possibility to Vi herself. Yet, I do think she likes him.”

“I should not wonder,” said William.

“And he talked pretty frankly?” continued Aunt Dinah.

“I suppose so. He did not seem to have anything to conceal; and he always talks a great deal, an enormous quantity;” and William yawned, as it seemed, over the recollection.

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Chapter XIV.

A Sunny Morning

“I suppose, if he likes her, there’s nothing to conceal in that?” challenged Miss Perfect.

“No, of course,” replied William, spiritedly; “I think she’s a thousand times too good for him, _every_ way—that’s what I think; and I wonder, young as she is, Vi can be such a fool. What can she see in him? He has got two thousand a-year, and that’s all you can say for him.”

“I don’t know that—in fact, he strikes me as a very pretty young man, quite apart from his property,” said Aunt Dinah, resolutely; “and I could quite understand a young girl’s falling in love with him.”

William, leaning with his elbow on the chimney-piece, smiled a little bitterly, and said, quietly,

“I dare say.”

“I don’t say, mind, that she _is_. I don’t know the least, whether she cares twopence about him,” said Aunt Dinah.

“I hope she doesn’t,” rejoined William.

“And why so?” asked Aunt Dinah.

“Because, I’m perfectly certain he has not the least notion of ever asking her to marry him. He’s _not_ thinking seriously about her, and never _will_,” replied he.

“Well, it’s nothing to vaunt of. You need not talk as if you wished her to be mortified,” said Aunt Dinah.

“_I!_—I wish no such thing, I assure you; but, even if she admires and adores the fellow all you say, still I can’t wish her his wife—because I’m sure he’s not the least worthy of her. I assure you he’s no better than a goose. You don’t know him—you _can’t_—as the fellows in the same school did—and Violet ought to do fifty times better.”

“You said he does not think seriously about her,” said Miss Perfect. “Remember, we are only talking, you and I together, and I assure you I never asked her whether she liked him or not, nor hinted a possibility of anything, as you say, serious coming of it; but what makes you think the young man disposed to trifle?”

“I didn’t say to trifle,” answered William; “but every fellow will go on like that where there’s a pretty girl, and no one supposes they mean anything. And from what he said to-day, I would gather that he’s thinking of some swell, whenever he marries, which he talks of like a thing so far away as to be nearly out of sight; in fact, nothing could be more contrary to any sign of there being any such notion in his head—and there isn’t. I assure you he has no more idea, at present, of marrying than I have.”

“H’m!” was the only sign of attention which Aunt Dinah emitted, with closed lips, as she looked gloomily into her work-basket, I believe for nothing.

William whistled “Rule Britannia,” in a low key, to the little oval portrait of the Very Rev. Simeon Lewis Perfect, Dean of Crutch Friars, the sainted and ascetic parent of the eccentric old lady, who was poking in her work-basket, his own maternal grandfather; and a silence ensued, and the conversation expired.

Next morning, William, returning from his early saunter in the fields, saw the graceful head of Violet peeping through the open window of the parlour, through the jessamine and roses that clustered round it. Her eyes glanced on him, and she smiled and nodded.

“Uncertain as the weather!” thought he, as he smiled and kissed his hand, approaching, “a lowering evening yesterday, and now so sunny a morning.”

“How do you do, Miss Violet? you said you wanted a water-lily, so I found two in my morning’s ramble, and here they are.”

“How beautiful. Thank you very much. Where did you find them?” said Vi, quite glowing.

“In the Miller’s Tarn,” he answered. “I’m so glad you like them.”

“Quite beautiful! The Miller’s Tarn?”

She remembered that she had mentioned it yesterday as a likely place, but it was two miles away; four miles there and back, for a flower. It deserved her thanks, and she did thank him; and reminded him in tone and look of that little Vi of other years, very pleasantly yet somehow sadly.

“I mean to return to Cambridge to-morrow,” said William, a little regretfully; he had glanced round at the familiar scene; “and I am sorry to leave so soon.”

“And _must_ you go?” asked Violet.

“Not quite _must_, but I think I ought. If I had brought with me some papers I have been transcribing for Doctor Sprague, I might have stayed a little longer, but they are locked up, and he wants the copy on Tuesday, and so I can’t help it.”

“It was hardly worth while coming. Poor grannie will miss you very much.”

“And you, not at all.”

“I? Oh, yes, of course we shall all miss you.”

“Some, but not you, Vi.”

The old “Vi” passed quite unnoticed.

“I, and _why_ not I?”

“Because your time is so pleasantly occupied.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said the young lady coldly, with a little toss of her head. “More riddles, I suppose.”

“Mine are poor riddles; very easily found out. Are we to have croquet to-day?”

“I’m sure I can’t tell,” replied she.

“Did not Trevor tell you he was coming here at eleven?” asked William.

“I don’t recollect that he said anything about coming to-day,” she answered carelessly.

“I did not say _to-day_” said William provokingly.

“You did. I’m nearly certain. At all events I _understood_ it, and really it does not the least signify.”

“Don’t be vexed—but he told me he had settled with you to come here to-day, at eleven, to play as he did yesterday,” said William.

“Ho! then I suppose I have been telling fibs as usual? I remark I never do anything right when _you_ are here. You can’t think how pleasant it is to have some one by you always insinuating that you are about something shabby.”

“You put it in a very inexcusable light,” said William, laughing. “It may have been a vaunt of Trevor’s, for I think he’s addicted to boasting a little; or a misapprehension, or—or an indistinctness; there are fibs logical and fibs ethical, and fibs logical _and_ ethical; but you don’t read logic, nor care for metaphysics.”

“Nor metaphysicians,” she acquiesced.

“Well,” said William, “he says he’s coming at eleven.”

“I think we are going to have prayers,” interrupted Violet, turning coldly from the window, through which William saw the little congregation of Gilroyd Hall assembling at the row of chairs by the parlour door, and Aunt Dinah’s slight figure gliding to the corner of the chimney-piece, to the right of the Very Rev. Simeon Lewis Perfect, sometime Dean of Crutch Friars, where the Bible and Prayer-book lay, and in the shadow her golden spectacles glimmered like a saintly glory round her chaste head.

So William hastened to do his office of deacon, and read the appointed chapter; and their serene devotions over, the little party of three, with the windows open, and the fragrance and twitterings of that summer-like morning entering through those leafy apertures, sat down to breakfast, and William did his best to entertain the ladies with recollections lively and awful of his college life.

“Half-past nine, Miss Violet; don’t forget eleven,” said William, leaning by the window-frame, and looking out upon the bright and beautiful landscape. “I’ll go out just now and put down the hoops.”

“Going to play again to-day,” enquired Miss Perfect briskly; “charming morning for a game—is he coming, William?”

“Yes, at eleven.”

“H’m!” murmured Aunt Dinah, in satisfactory rumination.

And William, not caring to be drawn into another discussion of this interesting situation, jumped from the window upon the sward, and strolled away toward the river.

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Chapter XV.

Dinner At Revington.

Trevor did appear, and was received smilingly; and Aunt Dinah came out and sat a little apart on the rustic seat, and looked on cheerfully, the day was so very charming. Perhaps she fancied it a case for a chaperone, and being a little more in evidence, than a seat in the drawing-room window would make her, and with her work, and with Psyche at her feet, she presided very cheerily.

When, after two or three games, Trevor was taking his leave, Miss Violet Darkwell having, notwithstanding various nods and small frowns from grannie, persisted in announcing that she was tired, and had beside a long letter to write before Tom left for the town, the master of Revington said—(he and Maubray were knocking the balls about at random)—

“I say, Maubray, you must come over to Revington and have a mutton chop, or something. You really must; an old schoolfellow, you know; and I want to talk to you a bit, upon my honour I do. I’m totally alone, you know, at present, and you must come.”

“But I’m going to-morrow, and this is my last evening here,” said William, who felt unaccountably queer and reluctant.

What could Trevor want to talk to him about? There was something in Trevor’s look and manner a little odd and serious—he fancied even embarrassed. Perhaps it is some nonsense about Vi!

“I want him to come and dine with me, Miss Perfect, and he says you can’t spare him,” said Trevor, addressing that lady. “I really do. I’ve no one to talk to. Do tell him to come.”

“Certainly,” said Aunt Dinah, with an imperious little nod to William Maubray. “_Go_, William, my dear, we shall see you to-night, and to-morrow morning. He’ll be very happy I’m sure,” said Aunt Dinah, who, like William Maubray possibly, anticipated a revelation.

So William, having no excuses, did walk over to Revington to dine. There was almost a pain at his heart as he paused for a moment at the stile, only one field away, and saw pretty Vi on the dark green grass, looking at the flowers, with little Psyche frisking beside her, and the kindly old front of Gilroyd Hall, and its lofty chestnuts in the sad evening light, and he sighed, thinking—“Why won’t things stay as they are, as they _were_? What is the drift of this perpetual mutation? Is it really progress? Do we improve? Don’t we” (he would have said Violet?) “grow more selfish and less high-minded? It is all a beautiful decay, and the end is death.”

Violet was plainly intent on her flowers; she had her hoe and her rake, and her movements somehow were so pretty that, unseen, he paused for another moment.

“It is a blessed thing to have so little affection as that pretty creature; old times are nothing for her, and I, like a fool, yearn after them. The future for her no doubt looks all brilliant; for me it is a story, to the end of which I dare not look, and the pleasant past is a volume shut up and over; she is little Vi and Violet no longer, and even Miss Darkwell will very soon be like the song of a dead bird—a note only remembered; and I suppose I shall bring back the news to-night, a message from Mr. Vane Trevor, of Revington, to say that he lays his heart and his title-deeds at her feet. It’s all over; I look on it as all settled.”

Just at these words the edge of the red sun sank behind the hills, and the last level beams of sunset gave place to the tender gray of twilight, except on the uplands of Revington, where they lingered for a few seconds.

“Ay,” said William allegorising; “the shade for William Maubray; the golden light of life for Vane Trevor! Vane Trevor of Revington! William Maubray of⸺nothing at all!⸺charming contrast.”

And looking still on Gilroyd Hall, and the fading image of Violet Darkwell and Psyche frisking about, no longer white, but a moving gray spot on the sloping grass, he said, touching his finger-tips to his lip, and waving them lightly towards her, “Good-bye, little Vi; good-bye, wicked little Vi; good-bye, dear, wicked little Vi, and may God bless you, you darling!”

So with a sigh he turned and walked up to Revington. It is a good ancestral looking place, only a little too large for the estate as it now is. The Trevors had parted from time to time with many acres, and a house upon a scale which would have corresponded with three times their income, was rather a tax upon what remained.

“I never liked this place,” thought William as the iron gate clanged behind him; “I always thought it gloomy, and stingy, and pompous. I wish he had let this dinner alone, I’d have been pleasanter at home, though it’s as well, perhaps, to hear what he has to say. I think he _has_ something to say; but, hang it, why could not he tell it as well at Gilroyd, and to the people it concerns? why need he bring _me_ this stupid walk up his hill?” And William as he talked was switching the laurel leaves at his side with his cane, and leaving here and there half a leaf or a whole one on the gravel, and sometimes half a dozen—not quite unconsciously; there was something of defiance, I am afraid, in this trespass.

William came in; the hall was not lighted; he was received in the dusk by a serious and rather broad gentleman in black, who took his hat and cane with a bow, led him through an anteroom, illuminated dismally by a single lamp, and announced his name at the drawing-room, where Vane Trevor received him, advancing from the hearthrug to the middle of the room, in an unexceptionable evening toilet, and in French boots, and shook hands with just a little inclination which implied something of state, though smilingly performed.

Mr. Trevor was very conscious of the extent of the mansion of Revington, of the scale of the rooms, of the pictures, and in short of everything that was grand about him.

William was a little disgusted and rather uncomfortable, and ate his soup, and cutlets, and kickshaws, gloomily, while Trevor, leaning upon his elbow, talked away with a conscious superiority that was at once depressing and irritating.

They had a jug of claret—not the best even in Trevor’s cellar, I am afraid—after dinner, and sat facing the fire, and sipping that nectar.

“Snug little room this,” said Trevor, looking along the ceiling with his napkin over his knee, and his claret glass in his fingers. “It isn’t the parlour, only a sort of breakfast-room. The parlour, you know, is a—it’s considered a handsome room. Thirty-five feet by twenty.”

“Yes, I know,” said William, with a dry carelessness.

“Ah! well, yes—I dare say. A good many people—it’s an old place, rather—do know something about Revington.”

“Especially those who have lived the greater part of their lives within half a mile of it,” rejoined William.

“Ah, ha!—yes; to be sure; I forgot you have been so constantly at Gilroyd. What a nice little bit of a thing it is. I could fancy growing quite in love with it—isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said William, shortly, and filled his glass, and drank it in a hurry. He fancied that Trevor was about to come to the point.

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Chapter XVI.

Over Their Claret

“Great fun, croquet, isn’t it? Awful fun with pretty girls,” exclaimed Vane Trevor, rising, and standing on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and his glass in his hand, and simpering agreeably with his chin in the air. “_I_ think it capital fun, I know. There’s so much cheating—ha, ha!—isn’t there?—and such lots of—of—whispering and conspiring—and—and—all that sort of thing, you know; and the girls like it awfully. At Torhampton we had capital games, and such glorious ground. Do you know the Torhamptons?”

“The Marquess?—no, of course I don’t; how should I?” said William with a little laugh of disgust.

“Oh! well, I thought a—but Lady Louisa, she is so sweetly pretty; I was told off pretty often to play with her and we _had_ such fun knocking the fellows about. Capital player and awfully clever—they’re all clever—one of the cleverest families in England they’re thought; the old lady is _so_ witty—you can’t imagine—and such a pleasant party staying there. I was almost the only fellow not a swell, by Jove, among them,” and he ran his eye along his handsome cornices, with a sort of smile that seemed to say something different. “I fancy they wish to be civil, however, from something Lady Fanny said—I rather fancy they have an idea of putting up Lord Edward—you know, for the county, but don’t let that go further, and I suppose they thought I might be of use. Won’t you have some more claret?”

“I don’t know them—I don’t understand these things; I don’t care if all the Marquesses in England were up the chimney,” said William, cynically, throwing himself back in his chair, with his hands in his pockets, and looking sulkily into the fire.

“Well—ha, ha!—that need not prevent your filling your glass, eh?” laughed Trevor, graciously and indulgently, as though he belonged himself to that order of Marquesses of whom Maubray spoke so slightly, and forgave him.

“Thanks; I will,” and so he did, and sipped a little; and after a little silence he asked with a surly quietude, “And why don’t you marry that lady—what’s her name—_Louisa_—if she liked you?”

“It doesn’t _follow_ that she likes me, and you know there are difficulties; and even if she did, it does not follow that I like _her_; don’t you see?” and he cackled in gay self-complacency; “that is, of course, I mean liking in the way you mean.”

Again this desultory conversation flagged for a little time, and Trevor, leaning on the chimney-piece, and looking down on William, remarked profoundly—

“It’s odd—isn’t it?—when you come to think of it, how few things follow from one another; I’ve observed it in conversation—almost nothing, by Jove!”

“Nothing from nothing, and nothing remains,” said William drowsily, to the fire, repeating his old arithmetical formula.

“And about marrying and that sort of thing; seriously, you know—your glass is empty again; do have some more.”

So William poured a little into his glass and his heart seemed to stop and listen, although he looked as if he only half heard, and was weary of the subject.

“And as we were saying, about marrying—and, by-the-bye, Maubray, it’s the sort of thing would just answer you, a quiet fellow—why don’t you think about it, old fellow, eh?”

It was a way Trevor had of always forgetting those little differences of circumstance which, in contrast, redounded to his importance, and he asked such questions, of course, quite innocently.

“You know very well I couldn’t,” said William, poking the fire, unbidden, with a few angry stabs. “How the devil can a fellow marry in college, and without a shilling?”

“Ah, ah, it isn’t _quite_ so bad; come! But of course there is a difference, and, as you say, there’s lots of time to look about—only if a fellow is really spooney on a girl—I mean awfully spooney, the big wigs say, don’t they?—the best thing a fellow going to the bar can do is to marry, and have a wife and lots of babbies—it makes them work so hard—doesn’t it? You’re going to the bar, you say, and that is the way to get on, eh?”

“I’m glad there’s any way, but I don’t mean to try that,” murmured William, a little bitterly, and after a pause, during which who knows what a dance his fancy led him? “I know that sort of talk very well; but I never could see what right a fellow has to carry off a poor girl to his den merely that her hunger, and misery, and cries may stimulate him to get on at the bar; and the fact is, some fellows are slaves, and some can do just as they please; and life is damnably bitter for some, and very pleasant for others, and that’s the whole story; you can marry whenever you please, and I can’t.”

“I’m afraid it’s a true bill,” said Trevor, complacently; whereupon there issued a silence, and twice and again was William Maubray moved to break it with a question, and as often his voice seemed to fail him. At last, however, he did say, quite quietly—

“And why don’t you marry, if you think it so good a thing?”

Was it something in William’s tone and air, although he was trying his best to seem quite unconcerned, that elicited the quick, and somewhat cunning glance that Trevor shot on him?

At all events Trevor’s manner became a little diplomatic and reserved.

“Why don’t I? Oh! fifty reasons—a hundred. There are all sorts of difficulties; I don’t mean, of course, anything mysterious—or that sort of bosh: this house and the property, everyone knows, are very well. I’ve been four years in possession, and I’ve no fault to find with Revington—either tenants or _this_,” and he nodded towards the ceiling, indicating that he meant the house.

“But—you know—for a fellow like me; we’ve been here, you know, a long time: there was a Trevor here in Henry the Fifth’s time—but you know more history than I do.”

Trevor considered his family and his domicile as a part of English history, and William, who was in an unpleasant mood just then, said—

“And the estate was larger, wasn’t it?”

“Ah, ha—_yes certainly_—that is, there was another estate,” acquiesced Trevor, eagerly, but looking a little put out. “The Torhamptons, by-the-bye, have got it now; a marriage, or something.”

“A purchase, I thought,” insisted Maubray.

“A _purchase_! very likely. It does not signify sixpence if the thing’s gone, and gone it is. But you see, having been here for a longer time, I’m afraid, than you and I are likely to live; and having a sort of place among the people—you understand—a kind of a—quite undeserved—only because we have been here so long—that sort of an _influence_—or whatever it is—a fellow isn’t as free as you’d fancy. By Jove! he’s tied up, I can tell you; horribly tied up. A poor devil like me. Egad, he’s not like a man with an income out of the funds—there’s that sort of thing, I suppose it is the shadow—don’t you see—of the old feudal thing, but so it is. There’s a sort of rural opinion, a kind of loyalty, in a very small way, of course; but it _is_ that sort of feeling—and there’s no use, you know, in blinking it; and a fellow has to consider, you know, how his tenants and people would receive it; and—ask anyone—you can’t conceive how a fellow’s hampered, really hampered, now.”

“Do you really think they care a farthing?” asked Maubray.

“Care! You’ve no idea,” exclaimed his friend.

“Well, when I make my fortune, I’ll keep it in the funds,” said Maubray.

“I _strongly_ advise you,” said Trevor, with admirable solemnity. “Have some coffee? And—here’s curacoa.”

“When will he talk about Vi?” thought William, as he set down his coffee cup; “he can’t have brought me here to dinner merely to hear that pompous lecture.”

And indeed, it seemed to William that Trevor had something more to say, but did not know how to begin it.

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Chapter XVII.

Moonshine

And now, for they kept early hours at Gilroyd, William, with a peep at his watch, declared he must go, and Trevor popped on his fez and produced his cigars, and he set out with Maubray, in the moonlight, to see his friend out of the grounds.

As they walked down the slope, with the thick chestnuts of Gilroyd Hall and two of its chimneys full in view—the misty lights and impenetrable shadows of moonlight—and all the familiar distances translated into such soft and airy outline—the landscape threw them, I dare say, somewhat into musing, and that sort of sympathy with the pensive moods of nature which has, time out of mind, made moonlight the lamp of lovers. And some special associations of the scenery induced them to smoke on in silence for some time, insensibly slackening their pace, the night scene was so well worth lingering over.

“And your cousin—isn’t she?—down there, how awfully pretty she is,” said Trevor, at last, lowering his cigar between his fingers.

“Cousin? I suppose we’re all cousins in some roundabout way related—I don’t know how. Yes, she is—she’s very pretty.”

“Darkwell: connected, are they, with the Darkwells of Shropshire?” asked Trevor.

“Perhaps—I really don’t know—I never knew there were Darkwells in Shropshire,” said William.

“Oh, dear, yes! I thought everyone knew that. Darkwell’s the name of the place, too. A very old family,” said Trevor.

“I did not know; but her father is a barrister, and lives in London, and has some sons, but I never saw them,” answered William.

Trevor sighed. He was thinking what low fellows these sons might possibly be. A barrister. He remembered “young Boles’s” father visiting Rugby once, a barrister, making fifteen hundred a year, a shabby, lean-looking fellow, with a stoop, and a seedy black frock coat, and grizzled whiskers, who talked in a sharp, dry way, with sometimes a little brow-beating tendency—not a bit like a gentleman. On the other hand, to be sure, there were lots of swells among them; but still there was the image of old Boles’s father intruding into the moonlight, and poking about the old trees of Gilroyd. They had come to a halt under the mighty clump of beech trees that you can see against the sky from the distant road to Audminton, and, after a silence, Trevor said—

“I remember a thing I saw in a play in London, about a fellow that married a mermaid, or something of the sort; and, egad, they got on capitally till their family began to appear, and—and the situation began to grow too, too fishy, in fact for him; so, by Jove, he cut and run, and I forget how the play ends; but it was awfully funny.”

“Yes,” said William, “they ought to come to us like Aphrodite, from the foam of the sea, and have no kindred—in utter isolation.”

“Who?” asked Trevor.

“Our beautiful brides!” exclaimed Maubray, a little mockingly.

“It’s a confounded world we live in,” resumed Trevor, after a little silence. “Look at me, now, for instance, how we are, and all this belongs to me, and has been ours for—goodness knows how many centuries and I assure you I sometimes feel I’d rather be a simple fellow with a few hundreds a-year, and my way to make in the world, and my liberty along with it, than all this.”

“Suppose we exchange,” said William, “I’ll take the estate off your hands, and allow you three hundred a-year, and your liberty, and wish you joy of the pleasant excitement of making your way in the world, and applaud when you get on a bit, and condole when you’re in the mud.”

Trevor only smiled grandly, and shook his head at William’s waggery.

“But seriously, just consider. You know I’m telling you things, old fellow, that I wouldn’t say to everyone, and this won’t, I know, go further.” He resumed after a little interval spent in smoking, “But just think now: here’s everything, as you see; but the estate owes some money; and I give you my honour, it does not bring me in, net, when everything’s paid, three thousand a-year.”

“Oh, no!” said William, in a tone which unconsciously implied, “a great deal less, as we all know.”

“No, not three thousand—I wish it was,” said Trevor, with an eager frankness, that savoured of annoyance. He had not intended to be quite believed. “And there’s the position. You’re expected to take a lead in things, you see, as if you had your six thousand a-year, egad, or whatever it is; and how the devil are you to manage it? Don’t you see? And you tumble in love with a girl; and you find yourself encumbered with a pedigree—a confounded family tree, by Jove! and everyone expects you to marry accordingly. And I don’t say they’re not right, mind, for, by Jove! on the whole, I believe they are. So here I am with all this about me, and not a soul on earth to bully me, and yet I can’t do as I like. I don’t say, by Jove, that I do want to marry. I dare say it would not answer at all, at least for a jolly good number of years, and then I suppose, I must do as the rest of the world does. I must, you see, have some money, and I must have something of, you know, a—a—_family_; and that’s how I stand. Come along, it’s growing awfully late, and it’s very likely—ha—ha—ha!—I may die an old bachelor.”

“Well, you know,” said William, who thought that Trevor had spoken with extraordinary good sense, “there’s no such hurry. Fellows wait, as you say, and look about them: and it’s a very serious thing, by Jove! here we are at the gate; and I’ve had a very pleasant evening—_jolly_! I did not think two fellows, by themselves, could be so jolly, and that capital claret!” Poor William was no great judge, nor, for that matter, indeed, was his great friend, Mr. Trevor, who, however, knew its price, and laying his hand on William’s arm, said—

“Well, old fellow, I’m glad—I really am—you enjoyed yourself; and I hope when next you come, you’ll have another glass or two with me. There’s one thing I say about wine, be it what it may—hang it, let it be real, and get it from a good house; and give my respects to the ladies—don’t forget; and when you come again, we must have more croquet. Let the balls and mallets stay where they are, you know, till then; and God bless you, Maubray, old boy, and if I can give you a lift, you know, any way, tell me, and I dare say my solicitor _can_ give you a lift when you get to the bar. Sends out a lot of briefs, you know. I’ll speak to him, if you wish.”

“A good time before that,” laughed William. “Many thanks, though; I suppose I shall turn up in a few weeks again, and I’m beginning to take to the croquet rather, and we can have lots of play; but, by Jove! I’m keeping you all night—good-bye.”

So they shook hands, each thinking more highly of the other. I’m afraid our mutual estimates are seldom metaphysically justifiable.

“Well,” thought Trevor, as he smoked his way up hill to the house, “no one can say I have not spoken plain enough. I should not like to have to give up that little acquaintance. It’s an awfully slow part of the world. And now they know everything. If the old woman was thinking about anything, this will put it quite out of her head; and I can be careful, poor little thing! It would be a devil of a thing if she did grow to like me.”

And with a lazy smile he let himself in, and had a little sherry and water, and _Bell’s Life_ in the drawing-room.

William Maubray experienced an unaccountable expansion of spirits and sympathies, as he strode along the pathway that debouches close upon the gate of Gilroyd Hall. Everything looked so beautiful, and so interesting, and so serene. He loitered for a moment to gaze on the moon: and recollecting how late it was he rang at the bell fiercely, hoping to find Violet Darkwell still in the drawing-room.

“Well, Tom, my aunt in the drawing-room?” said William, as he confided his coat and hat to that faithful domestic.

“Ay, Sir, she be.”

“And Miss Darkwell?”

“Gone up wi’ Mrs. Winnie some time.”

“Oh, that’s all right, nothing like early sleep for young heads, Tom: it’s rather late,” said William Maubray, disappointed, in a cheerful tone.

So he opened the door, and found Aunt Dinah in the drawing-room.

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Chapter XVIII.

Supper

“Elihu Bung” was open upon the table, also the Bible; and in the latter volume, it is but fair to say, she had been reading as William rang the bell. With her pleasant smile of welcome Miss Perfect greeted him.

“Now, sit down, William, and warm yourself at the fire—you are very cold, I dare say.”

“Oh, no: it’s quite a summer night.”

“And, Thomas, tell Mrs. Podgers to send up something for Master William’s supper.”

Vainly William protested he could eat nothing; but Mrs. Podgers had been kept out of her bed—an allusion which was meant to make him feel, too, his late return—for the express purpose of broiling the bones with which he was to refresh himself; and Aunt Dinah, who had the military qualities strong within her, ordered Tom to obey her promptly.

“Well, dear William, how did you like your dinner? Everything very nice, I dare say. Had he anyone to meet you?”

“No, quite alone; everything very good and very pleasant—a very jolly evening, and Trevor very chatty, chiefly about himself, of course.”

Aunt Dinah looked at him with expectation, and William, who understood her, was not one of those agreeable persons who love to tantalise their neighbours, and force them to put their questions broadly.

“Violet has gone to bed?” said William.

“Oh, yes, some time.”

“Yes, so Tom said,” pursued William. “Well, I’ve no great news about Trevor’s suit; in fact, I’m quite certain there’s nothing in it.”

Aunt Dinah’s countenance fell.

“And why?” she enquired.

“He mentioned her. He admires her—he thinks her very pretty, and all that,” said William.

“I should think so,” interposed Miss Perfect, with the scorn of one who hears that Queen Anne is dead.

“But he made quite a long speech, at the same time—I mean in continuation—and there’s nothing—nothing _serious_—nothing whatever—nothing on earth in it,” concluded he.

“But what did he say? Come, try and remember. You are young, and don’t know how reserved, and how hypocritical—all lovers are; they affect indifference often merely to conceal their feelings.”

“I hope she does not like him,” began William.

“I’m very sure she doesn’t,” interpolated Aunt Dinah rapidly; “no girl likes a man till she first knows that he likes her.”

“Because he took care to make it perfectly clear that he could not think of marrying her,” added William.

“Upon my life,” exclaimed the old lady briskly, “remarkably civil! To invite her cousin to dinner in order to entertain him with such an uncalled-for impertinence. And what did you say, pray?”

“He did not mention her, you see, in connection with all this,” said William.

“Oh! pooh! then I dare say there’s nothing in it,” exclaimed Aunt Dinah, vigorously grasping at this straw.

“Oh! But there is, I assure you. He made a long speech about his circumstances,” commenced William.

“Well, surely he can afford to keep a wife,” interrupted Dinah, again.

“And the upshot of it was just this—that he could not afford to marry without money—a lot of money and rank.”

“Money and rank! Pretty well for a young coxcomb like Mr. Vane Trevor, upon my word.”

This was perhaps a little inconsistent, for Aunt Dinah had of late been in the habit of speaking very highly of the young gentleman.

“Yes, I assure you, and he said it all in a very pointed way. It was, you see, a kind of explanation of his position, and although there was nothing—no actual connecting of it at all with Violet’s name, you know he couldn’t do that; yet there was no mistaking what he meant.”

Aunt Dinah looked with compressed lips on a verse of the Bible which lay open before her.

“Well, and what did he mean?” she resumed defiantly. “That he can’t marry Violet! And pray who ever asked him? I, for one, never encouraged him, and I can answer for Violet. And _you_ always thought it would be a very disadvantageous thing for her, so young, and so extremely beautiful, as she unquestionably is; and I really don’t know anyone here who has the smallest reason to look foolish on the occasion.”

“Well, I thought I’d tell you,” said William, “tell you what he said, I mean.”

“Of course—quite right!” exclaimed she.

“And there could be _no_ mistake as to his intention. I know there isn’t, and really, as it is so, I thought it rather honourable his being so explicit. Don’t you?” said William.

“That’s as it may be,” said Aunt Dinah, oracularly shutting the Bible, and “Elihu Bung,” and putting that volume on the top of the other. “Young people nowadays are fuller a great deal of duplicity and worldliness than old people used to be in my time. That’s my opinion, and home goes his croquet in the morning. I’ve no notion of his coming about here, with his simpering airs and graces, getting my child, I may call her, talked about and sneered at.”

“But,” said William, who instinctively saw humiliation in anything that savoured of resentment, “don’t you think any haste like that might connect in his view with what he said to me this evening?”

“At seven o’clock to-morrow morning, that’s precisely what I wish!” exclaimed Aunt Dinah.

At this moment Tom entered with the bones and other good things, and William, with the accommodating appetite of youth, on second thought accepted and honoured the repast.

“And, Thomas, mind at seven o’clock to-morrow morning, let Billy Willocks bring over those great hammers, and wooden balls, and iron things; they’re horribly in the way in the hall, with my compliments, to Revington, to Mr. Trevor, and don’t fail. He’ll say—Billy Willocks—that they were forgotten at Gilroyd. At seven o’clock, mind, with Miss Perfect’s compliments.”

“I’m very glad, on the whole,” said Miss Perfect, after about a minute had elapsed, “that that matter is quite off my mind.”

William, who was eating his broiled drumstick, with diligence and in a genial mood, was agreeably abstracted, and made no effort to keep the conversation alive.

“He talks very grandly, no doubt, of his family. But he’ll hardly venture his high and mighty airs with you or me. The Maubrays are older than the Trevors; and, for my part, I would not change the name of Perfect with anyone in England. We are Athelstanes, and took the name of Perfect in the civil wars, as I’ve told you. As to family, William, you could not stand higher. You have, thank God, splendid talents, and, as I am satisfied, excellent—indeed, magnificent prospects. Do you see much of your Cousin Winston at Cambridge?”

“Nothing,” said William, who was, it must be confessed, a little surprised at his aunt’s glowing testimony to his genius, and particularly to “his prospects,” which he knew to be of a dismal character, and he conjectured that a supernatural light had been thrown upon both by Henbane.

“Do you mean to say that Winston Maubray has not sought you out or showed you any kindness?”

“I don’t need his kindness, thank goodness. He could not be, in fact, of the least use to me; and I think he’s ashamed of me rather.”

“Ha!” ejaculated Aunt Dinah, with scorn.

“I spoke to him but once in my life—when Sir Richard came to Cambridge, and he and Winston called on Dr. Sprague, who presented me to my uncle,” and William laughed.

“Well?”

“Well, he gave me two fingers to shake, and that sort of thing, and he said, ‘Winston, here’s your cousin,’ and just took my hand, with a sort of slight bow.”

“A bow! Well—a first cousin, and a _bow_!”

“Yes, and he pretended not to know me next day at cricket. I wish he was anywhere else, or that no one knew we were connected.”

“Well, never mind. They’ll be of use—of immense use to you. I’ll tell you how,” said Aunt Dinah, nodding resolutely to William.

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Chapter XIX.

Debate

“I’d rather work my own way, auntie. It would be intolerable to owe them anything,” said William Maubray.

“I don’t say _Winston_, but Sir Richard—_he_ can be of the most immense use to you, and without placing you or me under the slightest obligation.”

This seemed one of Aunt Dinah’s paradoxes, or of her scampish table’s promises, and made a commensurate impression on William’s mind.

“You saw Doctor Wagget here yesterday?”

“I know—yes—the old clergyman, isn’t he, who paid you a visit?”

“Just so: he is a very old friend—_very_—and thinks it a most desirable arrangement.”

“What arrangement?”

“You shall see,” interrupted Aunt Dinah. “One moment’s patience. I must first show you—a paper to read.” She walked over to a little japanned cabinet, and as she fumbled at the lock, continued, “And when you—when you have read it—you—ah! _that’s_ it—when you have read it, I’ll tell you exactly what I mean.”

So saying she presented a large official-looking envelope to William, who found that it contained a letter and a paper, headed “Extract from the will and testament of the late Sir Nathaniel Maubray, of Queen’s Maubray, bearing date ⸺, and proved, &c., on ⸺, 1831.”

The letter was simply a courteous attorney’s intimation that he enclosed herewith a copy, extract of the will, &c., as requested, together with a note of the expenses.

The extract was to the following effect:

“And I bequeath to my said son Richard the advowson of, and right of perpetual presentation to the living and vicarage of St. Maudlen of Caudley, otherwise Maudlin, in the diocese of Shovel-on-Headley, now absolutely vested in me, and to his heirs for ever, but upon the following conditions—namely, that if there be a kinsman, not being a son or stepson, of my said son or of his heir, &c., in possession, then, provided the said kinsman shall bear the name of Maubray, his father’s name having been Maubray, and provided the said kinsman shall be in holy orders at the time of the said living becoming vacant, and shall be a good and religious man, and a proper person to be the incumbent of the said living, he shall appoint and nominate the said kinsman; and if there be two or more kinsmen so qualified, then him that is nearest of kin; and if there be two of equal consanguinity, then the elder of them; and if they be of the same age, then either, at the election of the bishop.”

Then there was a provision that in case there were no such kinsman, the Dean and Chapter of the Cathedral of Dawdle-cum-Drone should elect a cleric, being of the said diocese, but not of the said chapter, or of kin to anyone of the said chapter; and that the said Richard or his heir, should nominate the person so elected. And it was also conditioned that his son Richard should procure, if practicable, a private Act of Parliament to make these conditions permanent.

“He must have been a precious odd old fellow, my grand-uncle,” observed William, as he sheathed the document again in the envelope.

“A conscientious man, anxious—with due regard to his family—to secure a good incumbent, and to prevent simony. The living is fifteen hundred a year, and there is this fact about it, that out of the seven last incumbents, three were made bishops. _Three!_”

“That’s a great many,” said William, with a yawn.

“And _you’ll_ make the fourth,” said Aunt Dinah, spiritedly, and took a pinch of her famous snuff.

“_I?_” repeated William, not quite believing his ears. “I am going to the bar.”

“Into the Church you mean, dear William.”

“But,” remonstrated William, “but, I assure you, I, without a feeling of fitness in fact, I could not think of it.”

“Into the Church, Sir.” Aunt Dinah rose up, and as it were, mounted guard over him, as she sternly spoke these words.

William looked rather puzzled, and very much annoyed.

“Into—the—_Church_!” she repeated, with a terrible deliberation.

“My dear aunt,” William began.

“Yes, the _Church_. Listen to me. I have reason to know you’ll be a bishop. Now mind, William, I’ll hear no nonsense on this subject. _Henbane!_ Is that what you mutter?”

“Well, speak out. _What_ of Henbane? Suppose I have been favoured with a communication; suppose I have tried to learn by that most beautiful and innocent communion, something of the expediency of the course I proposed, and have succeeded. What then?”

William did not answer the challenge, and after a brief pause she continued—

“Come, come, my dear William, you know your poor old aunt loves you; you have been her first, and very nearly her only object, and you won’t begin to vex her now, and after all to break her heart about nothing.”

“But I assure you,” William began.

“A moment’s patience,” broke in Aunt Dinah, “you won’t let me speak. Of course you may argue till doomsday, if you keep all the talk to yourself.