Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

A PERFECT FOOL.

A PERFECT FOOL.

A Novel,

BY

FLORENCE WARDEN,

AUTHOR OF
“A Wild Wooing,” “A Witch of the Hills,”
“The House on the Marsh,” Etc.

IN ONE VOLUME.

LONDON:
F. V. WHITE & CO.,
14, BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.
1896.

PRINTED BY
KELLY AND CO. LIMITED, 182, 183 AND 184, HIGH HOLBORN, W.C.,
AND KINGSTON-ON-THAMES.

CONTENTS.

A PERFECT FOOL.

A PERFECT FOOL.

CHAPTER I. THE GREAT MAN OF A LITTLE TOWN.

“My dear, the girl’s a perfect fool. What her poor mother is going to do with her I don’t know. As for teaching, I don’t believe she knows anything herself. And as for getting married, why, I’m perfectly certain she doesn’t know beef from mutton, and couldn’t tell the difference between a cabbage and a cauliflower. I should be very sorry for the man who took Chris Abercarne for a wife!”

So spoke one of Chris Abercarne’s mother’s friends to another old lady, who was of exactly the same way of thinking, as a pretty girl, with dark-brown hair and merry dark blue eyes, passed the window of a dull house in a dull road in that part of Hammersmith which calls itself West Kensington.

Indeed, matters had come to a serious point with Chris and her mother. The widow of an officer in the army, Mrs. Abercarne, having only the one child, had got on very comfortably for some years, until one of those periodical upheavals of “things in the city” had caused a sudden diminution of her small income, and brought the two ladies face to face with actual instead of conventional, poverty. Poor Mrs. Abercarne felt utterly helpless; and Chris, merry Chris who hitherto had had nothing to do but to laugh and keep her mother and her friends in good spirits, found with surprising suddenness that some aspects of life are no laughing matter.

At first there had been a vague tendency on the ladies’ part to trust to the help of their rich and well-born relations. But this tendency was checked very early by the uncompromising tone of their relations’ letters. It was clear that to get out of their difficulties they had no one but themselves to rely upon. Mrs. Abercarne was a hopeful woman, however, with an enormous belief in her own untried powers. She had an unacknowledged belief that nothing very dreadful ever did, or ever could, happen to the widow of a Colonel, who was also the granddaughter of an Admiral, and first cousin to the son of a Marquis. She would manage, so she said a hundred times, to pull herself and her “little daughter” through their difficulties.

Chris she had always treated as a baby, a very sweet and charming child, but a creature to be tenderly cared for and played with, not to be trusted or confided in. Mrs. Abercarne had old-fashioned notions about the bringing-up of girls, and she would have been reduced to her last crust before consenting to allow her daughter to leave her, except as a wife.

Now Chris, without daring openly to combat her mother’s opinion that she was a mere baby, unfit by reason of her tender years to have a voice in any serious discussion, had her own views as to the wisdom of her adored mother’s behaviour, over which she brooded in secret. She could not help feeling that she was by no means the helpless creature her mother and her mother’s friends imagined, and she set about devising plans whereby she might bring such wits as she possessed to their common aid.

To this end she used to buy The Times, and the other daily papers, and search their columns with a view to finding a rapid and easy way of making a fortune.

According to these same papers, nothing in the world was so simple. You had only to send fourteen stamps to somebody with an address in an obscure street, to learn the golden secret of “realising a competence without hindrance to present employment.”

“As our present employment consists generally in sitting looking at the fire, with our hands clasped, wondering where the next quarter’s rent is to come from,” she remarked to her mother, who looked upon these exercises as trivial, “it wouldn’t matter if we were hindered in it!”

Although Mrs. Abercarne felt convinced that the brilliant prospect was illusory, and the work offered would be something inconsistent with the dignity of a gentlewoman, she was always ready to supply the necessary fourteen stamps, and she waited with quite as much anxiety as her daughter for the answers they received to their applications. These answers were, unfortunately, nearly all of the same kind. The applicant for the fortune was to sell small and, for the most part, useless articles on commission among his or her friends.

“And you know, mamma,” commented Chris, sorrowfully, as she looked at a pair of aluminium studs which had been sent in return for the latest fourteen stamps, “as our commission is only threepence on each pair, if we had forty thousand friends and each friend bought a pair of studs from us, that would be only four hundred and ninety-eight pounds ten shillings! I’ve worked it out, and that isn’t what I should call a fortune, after all!”

Her mother sighed, and then said, rather petulantly, that she had known those advertisements were only nonsense, and she hoped she would not want to waste any more money in that way.

“No, mother,” said Chris gently.

And then the blood rushed up into her face, as her eye caught sight in the columns of the newspaper before her, of an advertisement of a different kind.

“If I only dared!” she thought as she threw a sly glance at her mother’s worried face. But she did not dare, until presently she saw a tear drop suddenly on to her mother’s dark dress.

In a moment Chris was on her knees. Her pretty, round young face was full of eagerness, as well as of sympathy, and in the touch of her arms, as they closed round her mother’s neck, there was the clinging caress of one who entreats.

“Mother—mother!” whispered she breathlessly, “don’t be angry—you mustn’t. Only—only I have something to say—something you must see. Look here!” and she thrust the newspaper into Mrs. Abercarne’s hands, and placed the lady’s white fingers on a certain paragraph. “Read that!”

Drying her eyes hastily, ashamed to have been detected, Mrs. Abercarne did as she was asked to do. But the words she read conveyed no meaning to her, or, at least, she pretended they did not. But a slight tone of acerbity was noticeable in her voice as she answered; and Chris knew that her mother understood.

“Well, my dear,” said the Colonel’s widow, with bland dignity, which she meant to denote unconsciousness, “I see nothing that can possibly interest you or me in the lines you have pointed out. Your finger must have slipped, I think.”

“Read the lines aloud, mother dear,” whispered Chris, caressing her mother’s hand.

Still with the same imperfect assumption of extreme innocence, Mrs. Abercarne read by the light of the fire the following advertisement:

“Wanted, a thoroughly reliable and trustworthy woman, with daughter preferred, as house-keeper in a large establishment, where the owner is often away. Apply by letter only in the first instance, to J. B., Wyngham House, Wyngham-on-Sea.”

“Well, my dear child,” said Mrs. Abercarne, superbly, as she laid down the paper, “surely that is not what you wanted me to read?”

But Chris buried her head in her mother’s shoulder.

“Yes, but it is, though,” she whispered.

Of course, the elder lady had expected this; equally, of course, she had to affect the utmost amazement.

“And is it possible, my dear Christina,” she murmured, gently, “that you can consider the words, ‘a reliable and trustworthy woman,’ applicable to me?”

But here, luckily for the girl, her sense of fun carried her away, and she laughed until she cried. Her tears, however, were not all of merriment.

“Why, certainly, mother,” said she merrily. “I should be very indignant with any person who said they were not! Look here,” she went on with sudden gravity, “what’s the use of pretending any longer that we can live on in the old way, when you know we can’t? What’s the use of keeping up this house, and having servants, whom we don’t see how we shall be able to pay, when we dread every knock of the postman, because it may be more bills? Mother—mother, do let us give it up. Don’t let us play any longer at being anything but dreadfully poor. Let us face it, and make the best of it.”

“What!” exclaimed the poor lady, whose pitiful pride, to do her justice, was much more concerned with her beautiful young daughter’s position than with her own; “and be a housekeeper! Just an upper servant; and, perhaps, have this horrid man asking you to mend the tablecloths and count the clothes for the wash!”

“Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind,” said Chris laughing; “and it’s too bad to call him a horrid man, when the worst thing the poor fellow has been guilty of, so far, is to advertise for a housekeeper for his ‘large establishment.’ Oh! mother, wouldn’t you like to be at the head of a large establishment again, even if it were somebody else’s!”

But Mrs. Abercarne shook her head. Her daughter’s persuasions—perhaps the very novelty of her child’s trying to persuade seriously at all—were taking their effect upon her; but it was an effect which produced in the poor gentlewoman the most acute shame and misery.

“What would Lord Llanfyllin say?” murmured she.

“What could he say except that it was a good deal better to keep somebody else’s house, than to starve in one’s own?” retorted Chris, brightly. “And as he’s never seen me, or taken the slightest notice of you since poor papa died, we really needn’t trouble ourselves about him at all.”

This was self-evident, but Mrs. Abercarne did not like to be reminded of the fact. Her cousin, by a remote cousinship, Lord Llanfyllin, had forgotten her very existence years ago; but in the most sacred recesses of her heart he still sat enthroned, symbol of all that was greatest and noblest in the land and of her connection with it. She liked to think that her actions mattered to him; and to be reminded of the fact that they did not, was eminently distasteful to her.

The postman, soon after this, came to the aid of Chris and her arguments by bringing the usual batch of worrying letters with bills and threats. With a burst of tears Mrs. Abercarne gave way, and with her daughter’s soothing arms around her neck answered the loathsome advertisement with an eager hope in her heart that her letter would remain unnoticed by the advertiser.

Poor lady! she was disappointed. Two days later she received an answer to her letter, written in the neat hand of a man of business, in the following words:

“Dear Madam,—Please state terms and approximate age of self and daughter; also date when able to come.

“Yours faithfully,
“John Bradfield.”

Mrs. Abercarne felt stupefied, almost frightened.

“You said most likely he’d not even answer!” she said, reproachfully, to her daughter.

But Chris, who felt that the honour or the shame of this undertaking would devolve upon her, was full of excitement, and did not rest until she had hurried her mother into an answer intimating that they would be willing to become inmates of his house, and that Mrs. Abercarne would undertake the superintendence of his establishment for an honorarium of sixty pounds a year.

“As for telling him my age, Christina,” went on the lady, haughtily, “that I certainly shall not do. I consider the request most impertinent, and it seems to me to prove conclusively that, however well off he may be, this Mr. John Bradfield is not a gentleman.”

“Very well, mother; you didn’t need tell him your age; you can tell him mine. And then he can guess yours pretty nearly,” she added, with a mischievous laugh. “It looks rather as if we thought we were doing him a great favour by condescending to accept his money and live comfortably in his house, doesn’t it?” she said, when she had glanced through her mother’s letter.

This was exactly Mrs. Abercarne’s view of the transaction, and she was rather shocked to find that it was not also her daughter’s. So she tried hard to impress upon Chris, who listened dutifully and without comment, that when two women of gentle birth and breeding took upon themselves such an appointment, they were indeed conferring upon the individual whose humble duty it was to maintain them in such a position an honour and a priceless boon.

Chris, who was beginning secretly to indulge in the luxury of opinions of her own, grew rather anxious lest her mother’s peculiarities of style should frighten Mr. John Bradfield, and induce him to bestow the “appointment” in question upon some mother and daughter less well-born, perhaps, but at the same time less graciously condescending and more accommodating. She watched eagerly for the postman for the next few days, and when another letter did arrive in the neat, business-like hand, her fingers trembled as she ran with it to her mother. Then Chris noticed that Mrs. Abercarne, while still careful to affect the haughtiest indifference, was really as anxious as she as to the contents of the letter. Indeed, the poor lady had more debts and more difficulties than she let her child know anything about, and she was by this time wondering what would become of them if Mr. Bradfield should decide not to avail himself of her condescending offer.

This was the letter:

“Dear Madam,—Leave Charing Cross to-morrow (Thursday), at 3.30 you will reach Wyngham at 6.5 (if you don’t get into the wrong train when you change at Abbey Marsh), and you will find a conveyance at the station to bring you to the house.—Yours faithfully,

“John Bradfield.”

Mrs. Abercarne drew a long breath.

“To-morrow!” she gasped. “Oh, Chris! we must give the whole thing up. The man is evidently quite mad. I shouldn’t wonder if the place were to turn out to be a private lunatic asylum. To-morrow!”

And the poor lady, bitterly disappointed, although she would not own it, fell to laughing hysterically. Chris threw her arms round her neck; she did not mean the project to fall through now.

“Why not to-morrow, as well as any other day, mother, and get it over?” suggested she. “He isn’t mad, I expect. Only eccentric. You know that people who live in the country always grow eccentric and very self-willed. Don’t give up until you have seen what he is like.”

To the girl’s mind nothing could be more enchanting than the prospect of missing the round of farewell visits, the half-sincere condolences of her mother’s large circle of friends, the dread of facing whom had been haunting her; and in the end Chris had her way, and by a mighty effort everything was packed that night, except a few necessaries which Chris herself unmethodically rammed into the trunks on the following morning, while Mrs. Abercarne made a rapid circuit of such friends as lived near, that she might not quite miss the ceremony and the sympathy of a formal leave-taking.

Mrs. Abercarne had scarcely recovered the breath which Mr. Bradfield’s last letter had taken away, when the train, on a cold but fine November evening, arrived at Wyngham station.

There were few people on the platform, but there was a footman evidently looking out for some one, and Chris suggested that it must be for them, and her guess was correct. The man got their luggage out, under the supervision of Mrs. Abercarne, and as the lady had thought proper to bring a great many more trunks than she really wanted in order to give a sense of her dignity and importance, this was a work of time.

Meanwhile Chris, by her mother’s direction, stood back a little, and to be under her mother’s eye, waited. She was stiff and cold, and she stood first on one leg, and then on the other, weary and impatient at her mother’s lengthy proceedings.

“You can sit down on that bench if you’re tired. There’s no extra charge,” said a harsh voice, ironically, close to her ear.

She turned quickly, and saw a man rather under than over the middle height, of spare figure, and hard-featured face, who was standing by the book-stall, turning over the leaves of a Christmas number. He wore a long frieze overcoat, which enveloped him from his chin to his heels, and a little cap to match, which hid his eyes.

Little as she could see of him, Chris instantly jumped to the conclusion that this was Mr. Bradfield himself.

“He wouldn’t order me about like that if he were not,” she said to herself. And she felt rather frightened, wondering how her mother would receive this style of address, and picturing to herself the “awful row” there would be between the two at or very soon after their very first interview.

She said “Thank you,” rather timidly, and took the suggestion offered, rather to prevent further conversation than because she wished to rest. When her mother had finished with the luggage, Chris ran towards her, to check any verbal indiscretion of the kind she had been indulging in on the way down, concerning the supposed unpleasant idiosyncrasies of the master of Wyngham House.

But she was too late.

“Very bucolic domestics this gentleman seems to have. Let us hope we shall not see their characteristics repeated in the master,” said Mrs. Abercarne, in a voice loud enough for the man at the bookstall to hear, as she and her daughter met.

The man in the frieze overcoat turned round, and regarded the speaker with an amused stare, which that lady chose to consider very offensive. She turned her back upon him sharply, therefore, as she went on speaking to Chris, who looked frightened. The man in the frieze coat walked away.

“What extremely bad manners these rustics have!” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, before he was well out of hearing.

“Sh-sh, mamma! We don’t know who he is,” said Chris, in a terror-struck whisper.

Mrs. Abercarne was going to retort rather sharply, when a thought, a suspicion, perhaps the same that had alarmed her daughter, made her pause, and turn abruptly to the porter who was standing behind her.

“Who is that man?” she asked, quickly.

“Which man, ma’am?”

“The man in the long coat; the man who was standing at the bookstall.”

The porter stared at her. He seemed to think she must be joking to make such an inquiry, and in such a tone.

“The gentleman who has just gone out, ma’am?” ejaculated he, repeating her words with a difference; “why, that gentleman is Mr. Bradfield of the big house!”

And he made the announcement in the tone of one who rebukes a blasphemer.

CHAPTER II. THE GREAT MAN’S HOUSE.

Poor Mrs. Abercarne tried to look as if she didn’t mind, but the attempt was a failure. It was with uneasy hearts and troubled countenances that both she and her daughter went through the station and got into the comfortable carriage which was waiting for them outside.

Then, when they were well on their way, Chris rashly tried to comfort her.

“Never mind, mother,” whispered she, tucking her hand lovingly under her mother’s arm, and speaking in a bright voice which expressed more cheerfulness than she felt. “Perhaps he didn’t hear. And, after all, you didn’t say anything so very dreadful, did you?” she added, trying to ignore those awful last words about the bad manners of rustics. “I daresay he knows himself that his footman looks rather round-faced and rosy.”

“Indeed, Chris, it matters very little to me whether he heard or not,” answered Mrs. Abercarne, quickly “These people must expect to hear the truth of themselves sometimes; and it cannot possibly affect us for as you know, we have only come here, as one may say, for the fun of the thing, and nothing would induce us to stay here permanently in the house of such a barbaric person as you can see for yourself this Mr. Bradfield is.”

And Mrs. Abercarne, having run herself quite out of breath in her haste to persuade Chris that her conduct had been singularly discreet and full of tact, sat back and looked out of the carriage window at the sea.

Chris had the wisdom to murmur, “Yes, mamma,” and then to say nothing more except a few comments on the street through which they were passing. She was dreading the reception they would meet with at the hands of the justly-offended owner of Wyngham House. For the first time she realised the disagreeable nature of their position, the fact that they came, not as visitors, but as hired dependents on the good pleasure of a stranger, who could, if he chose, even send them about their business with the curt intimation that their services would not be wanted.

To dispel these gloomy thoughts, or, at least, to prevent her mother from guessing what troubled her, Chris looked about her as they drove along.

She saw, in the first place, that Wyngham was a garrison town, for the red coats of soldiers made pleasant spots of colour in the straight, narrow old street. This street changed gradually in character, until the shops and inns gave place to houses of a more or less modern type; and, at last, these dwellings came to an abrupt end on one side of the road, and there was nothing but a strip of waste land, and a strip beyond that of sharply shelving beach, between them and the sea.

Chris, straining her eyes in the darkness, could see lights twinkling on the ships as they passed, and she gave a cry of delight. She had lived near the sea at one time, for Mrs. Abercarne had had a house at Southsea in her more prosperous days. But it was some years since that bright period was over, and Chris had grown reconciled to the fogs of London since then. The sight, and the smell of the sea filled her with vivid sensations of pleasure. She remembered the bright sun and the breezy walks, and her heart seemed to rise at a bound, only to sink the next moment with the despairing thought that her mother had made their stay in this delightful place impossible.

The same thought may have crossed her mother’s mind also, for Mrs. Abercarne made no comment on her daughter’s exclamations of pleasure, but sat in silence for the rest of the drive.

Wyngham House was a little way out of the town, and was so close to the sea, that the ocean looked, as Chris afterwards expressed it, like a lake in the grounds. It was approached from the inland side by a short carriage drive, and was surrounded by grounds of some natural beauty, but of no great pretension. The house, which was built in the Italian style, and painted white, was large and rather pretty. It was approached by a porch in which, as the carriage drove up, a man-servant, in livery, was waiting to receive the new arrivals. Chris peeped about anxiously for the master of the house, and even Mrs. Abercarne betrayed to her daughter’s eyes certain signs of nervous apprehension. But there was no one to be seen except the respectful and stolid-looking butler, and a neat housemaid, who was waiting inside the entrance hall to show them upstairs.

“You would like to go straight up to your rooms, ma’am, would you not?” asked the maid, smiling. “There is a fire in the drawing-room, but it’s only just been lit, and it’s rather cold in there.”

Mrs. Abercarne answered that they should like to go to their rooms; and she spoke very graciously, being mollified by the civility of their reception. For the butler had even delivered his master’s apologies for not receiving them in person, pleading a business appointment. The sharp eyes of Chris, however, detected that a door on the left, just inside the inner hall, was ajar, and that a hand, wearing a signet ring, which she recognised as Mr. Bradfield’s, was visible between the door-post and the door. This fact depressed her. Surely, if Mr. Bradfield had overlooked her mother’s indiscretion, he would, instead of spying upon their entrance, have come out and welcomed them himself. She felt sure that before the evening was over there would be a scene which would result in their leaving the place. And this thought, which had caused her a little distress before, caused her a great deal more now.

For Chris perceived, as soon as she stepped inside the house, that she was in a sort of fairy palace, the like of which she had never seen before. Both halls were hung with rich tapestries, whether old or new she did not know, but the effect of which was of luxury, beauty, and romance, which fired her young imagination while it charmed her eyes. From the ceiling hung lamps of various patterns, from the many-coloured Chinese lantern, with its pictures and hanging strings of beads, to the graceful modern Italian lamp of shining silver, with its flying cupids and richly-ornamented chains. Over a beautiful carved marble fireplace hung a priceless picture, a genuine Murillo, the dark colours of which stood out in sombre relief against its massive gilt frame. On each side beautiful and interesting objects claimed the attention of the new-comers. Chris, younger and more impressionable than her mother, lingered behind, and cast admiring looks at Florentine cabinets, rare old china vases, and trophies of ancient armour, which were among the beautiful and curious things with which the inner hall was stored.

Turning to the left they came to the staircase, the balustrade of which was so elaborately carved as to be magnificent to the eye, and particularly uncomfortable to the hand.

“That’s the study,” whispered the housemaid, as she led them past a door on the left, up the first short flight of stairs.

And from the respectful glance and the lowered tone Chris guessed that the master of the house passed most of his time in that apartment, and also that he was held in some awe by his servants.

They passed on, up a second flight of stairs, to the right, noticing as they went a dazzling collection of curious and interesting objects, old hanging clocks and cupboards, rare Oriental plates and bowls, weapons, helmets, and ancient shields. As they proceeded up the second flight of stairs they found themselves surrounded on all sides by pictures, old and new, paintings in oils and drawings in water-colour, with which the walls were so well covered that scarcely a glimpse could be caught of the dark red distemper which was the background to the gilt frames.

At the top of the stairs they came to a corridor which ran the whole length of the main body of the house; and this was a veritable museum of beautiful and curious cabinets, high-backed chairs, the seats of which were covered with ancient tapestry, Dresden clocks, models of Indian temples, canoes, and of curiosities so many and so various that Chris grew confused and walked as if in a dream with only one conscious thought—the fear of falling against some precious rarity, and drawing upon herself eternal disgrace and confusion.

Mrs. Abercarne being, although she would not betray the fact, full of nervous apprehension, as well as of vexation at her altered and degraded position, saw less than her daughter did; but even she, with her additional disadvantage of being short-sighted, began to be aware that her surroundings were of a very exceptional kind.

“Dear me,” she exclaimed, stopping short and raising the gold double eye-glass she carried, as a beautiful porcelain vase caught her eye. “Why, that must be Dresden, old Dresden. Your master has very excellent taste. There are some beautiful things here. It’s quite a museum!”

She spoke in a patronising manner to the maid, glad of an opportunity to show what a very superior person she was. For a taste for old china does not come by nature.

But the housemaid was a superior person also.

“Oh, yes,” she answered with surprise. “Don’t you know that Mr. Bradfield’s collection is famous, and that people write and ask him to see it, quite as if he was royalty! We’ve had a Duke here, looking at those very things, and wishing they were his, and saying so!”

And the maid smiled with a sense of her own share in the glory that the Duke’s visit had cast upon the establishment.

They went the whole length of the corridor, and were shown into a bedroom on the right, the window of which looked inland. It was rather a small room, this fact being emphasised by the quantity of handsome and costly furniture with which it was filled. Before a carved white stone fireplace, fitted with pretty tiles, another housemaid was kneeling. She started up when the ladies came in.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” said she; “the fire will draw up directly, and the room will soon be warm. It was only ten minutes ago master told me you were to have this room, instead of the one in the wing.”

Chris caught a frown from the other housemaid, intimating that this information was not wanted. Then the second housemaid having said she would bring them some hot water, the ladies were left to themselves.

Chris, tired as she was, spent the next ten minutes alternately in an ecstacy of high spirits, and a fit of deep depression; the former the result of her delight in her surroundings, the latter the effect of her belief that she would soon have to leave them.

“I wonder why he ordered our room to be changed?” she whispered to her mother, as she admired in turn the handsome brass bedstead, with its spread of silk and lace, the rosewood furniture, the little lady’s writing-table, the cosy sofa and easy-chair. “Have we been sent up or sent down? If we have been sent up, the bedroom in the wing must have been gorgeous indeed. Mother, this bed is too magnificent to sleep in; and as for the so-called dressing-room next door,” and she peeped through a door which communicated with a second and rather smaller room, “it is a cross between a museum and a palatial boudoir.”

Mrs. Abercarne, of course, took these marvels more quietly. She understood quite well that she was in an exceptionally beautiful and well-fitted house; but she did not care to acknowledge that it was anything out of the common to her. The ingenuous delight of Chris, therefore, rather annoyed her, so that at last the girl had to become apologetic.

“You know, mother,” she whispered humbly, “I have never seen anything so beautiful in all my life as this place and I can’t help noticing it. You see, you were well-off once, and used to beautiful houses. But you know that to me everything seems new and wonderful.”

And Mrs. Abercarne repented of her petulant rebuke, remembering, with tears in her eyes, that Chris had had indeed very little experience of luxury.

They had been told that dinner would be ready in a few minutes, so Chris opened the door a little way, waiting for a further announcement to be made to them. At the opposite side of the corridor, and a little nearer than their door to the very end of it, a maidservant was coming in and out of another door. A few steps further down the maid was met by the footman with a tray. He began to express his feelings in tones which reached the ears of Chris.

“Well, this is a rum start!” he said confidentially to the housemaid as he passed her. “Everything was ready for two in the housekeeper’s room; but now it seems that the basement isn’t good enough, and we’re to dine upstairs like the quality.”

“Hold your tongue,” whispered the girl, laughing. “Be a good boy, and you will see what you will see.”

And she tripped past him, and left him to go on his way along the corridor.

Chris did not repeat to her mother the scrap of conversation she had overheard; but it increased her own feelings of curiosity and bewilderment.

“Do you think Mr. Bradfield will dine with us, mother?” she asked, as she softly closed the door.

The words were hardly out of her mouth when there was a knock at the door, and the footman announced that dinner was ready for them in the Chinese-room. The two ladies were then shown into an apartment so pretty that Chris felt constrained to keep her eyes down, in deference to her mother’s wishes, lest her unseemly delight should be noticed by the servants.

It was indeed a most beautiful room which they now entered. Windows on two sides were at this time covered by the drawn curtains, and these, of dark blue silk, richly embroidered with conventional Chinese figures, gave a striking character to the apartment. The walls were lined with bookcases well filled with books, while in the corner, close to a fireplace beautifully decorated in the modern style, a piano stood temptingly open. A cabinet entirely full of Chinese models and toys carved in ivory filled the remaining space against the walls, while under one window stood a long writing-table, and under the other two low-seated easy-chairs. In the middle of the room a small table had been laid for dinner for two persons; and this again excited the admiration of Chris by the quaint beauty of the old silver, and the magnificence of the Crown Derby dinner-service.

The room was lighted entirely by wax candles, in massive silver candlesticks, and this luxurious light completed the charm which her surroundings had thrown over Chris. The girl had been hungry on her first arrival, but she now found herself too much excited to eat. She felt that in this house of marvels something must surely be going to happen, and each time the door opened she glanced towards it with eager eyes.

When at last the crowning charm of the meal had arrived in the shape of dessert, served on the daintiest of Sèvres china, and the footman had left them to themselves, Chris drew a long breath.

“Mamma!” she said, in a voice in which girlish merriment struggled with a little real awe, “this is too much. It is so mysterious that it frightens me. All this magnificence just for the housekeeper and her daughter! Everything served in the most gorgeous manner, and no master to be seen. Why, it’s just like Beauty and the Beast!”

A short laugh frightened her so much that she started up from her chair. Mr. Bradfield, in a rough shooting-suit, stood just inside the room.

“That’s it, Miss Abernethy, or Miss Apricot, or whatever your name is,” said he grimly. “And I’m the Beast.”

CHAPTER III. THE GREAT MAN’S SMILE.

Chris had jumped up from her chair in an uncontrollable impulse of terror at the sound of Mr. Bradfield’s voice, although he spoke in tones which betrayed more amusement than annoyance. She looked so much alarmed that even her mother smiled, while the great man himself nearly laughed outright.

“Ah—ha!” said he, shaking his head in pretended menace. “You did not think you would so soon hear him roar, did you?”

Chris, still white, and with tears starting to her eyes, stammered some sort of incoherent apology. Mrs. Abercarne, pitying the poor child, who was indeed most miserable at this fresh mishap, addressed the dreaded employer in a stately and dignified fashion.

“You must forgive my daughter, sir,” she began, with a great affectation of deference. Indeed, her humility was so deep, so laboured in expression, as to constitute almost an offence, implying as it did that her natural position was so lofty, that it required a good deal of make-believe to bring herself into a semblance of inferiority to him. “She had no intention of offending you, I can assure you. Her words were merely idle ones, uttered in girlish folly, and without the slightest idea that you were near enough to overhear them.”

Mrs. Abercarne slightly emphasised these last words, just to remind him that in approaching without warning he had committed a breach of what she considered good form.

So far from appearing to be impressed by the gentle rebuke, Mr. Bradfield proceeded to offend more deeply. Merely nodding to the elderly lady, without the formality of a glance in her direction, he kept his eyes fixed upon Chris as he took a step forward, which brought him into the corner by the piano, and in front of the fireplace. Here he stood for a few moments in perfect silence, still looking at the young girl, and rubbing his hands softly, the one over the other, in the warmth of the fire. Chris, who, instead of being pale, was now crimson, looked at the carpet and remained standing, wishing she had never persuaded her mother to take this degrading position, and feeling acutely that if they had come as visitors, and not as dependents, Mr. Bradfield would never have dared to stare at her in this persistent and insulting manner.

Mrs. Abercarne, older and more self-possessed, was able to get a good view of the man on whom so much now depended, and to form some sort of opinion as to their chances of staying in this luxurious home.

Mr. Bradfield was not handsome, neither was he of very distinguished appearance. A little below the middle height, neither stout nor thin, there was nothing more striking about him than his very black whiskers, moustache and eyebrows, and a certain steady stare of his sharp grey eyes, which was rather disconcerting, since it gave the idea that he was always inwardly taking stock of the person on whom his eyes were fixed.

“Girlish folly?” he repeated at last. “Do you plead guilty to that, Miss—Miss——” Here he paused, hunted in his pockets, and producing Mrs. Abercarne’s letter, turned to the signature. “Miss Abercarne. You must excuse me, but I have had a good deal of correspondence the last few days, and I haven’t taken proper note of your name. Now,” he went on, still ignoring the elderly lady altogether, “do you still plead guilty to girlish folly, Miss Abercarne?”

“Yes,” murmured Chris, “and I am very sorry.”

“Not at all, not at all. You were quite right. I am a beast, and you—well, you know best whether the other title applies to you.”

“My daughter would be the last person to think so,” broke in Mrs. Abercarne, with just enough emphasis to show that it was to herself that he ought to be addressing his conversation; “she would no more think of calling herself a beauty, than she would of—of——”

“Calling me a beast?” added Mr. Bradfield, turning upon her so quickly that she drew her breath sharply, as if she had been frightened. “Well, and where would be the harm, when her mother set her the example? Oh, you can’t deny it. What was it I heard you say about me at the station? That I was more of a rustic than my own servants, and that my manners were—I forget what; but you remember, I daresay. Perhaps you will be kind enough to repeat your criticism now that we are both calm, and I will try and profit by it.”

It was Mrs. Abercarne’s turn to be out of countenance, and her daughter’s to glance at her in some amusement. For Chris saw by Mr. Bradfield’s manner that she and her mother would not have to suffer for their verbal indiscretions.

“You must have misunderstood what I said,” said Mrs. Abercarne, regaining her composure again very quickly, and speaking with a bland dignity which made contradiction almost an impossibility.

But Mr. Bradfield was a man used to performing impossibilities, and he laughed in her face.

“Not a bit of it,” said he shortly. “It was the truth of your observation that made it so striking. I am a rustic, and as bucolic-looking as my servants. There’s just the hope, of course, that the influence of your own grand manners may have a good effect upon mine.”

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Abercarne, with spirit, “I should have thought, sir, that if you believe us capable of so much rudeness you would scarcely wish us, or rather wish me,” she corrected, “to enter your—your—your service.”

She got the obnoxious word out at last, with the same deliberate emphasis that she had used on the word “sir.” Mr. Bradfield evidently got impatient.

“I told you I didn’t mind,” he said, shortly. “What does it matter what you please to think of me or my manners? If you had thought my looks or my manners so important you would have made inquiries about them before coming, wouldn’t you? You would have written: ‘Dear Sir,—Please send reference as to your appearance and general behaviour.’ As you didn’t write me like that, I take it for granted you did not care what my manners were, any more than I cared about yours. I take it that our coming together was a matter of mutual convenience, and that as long as we don’t get in each other’s way we need trouble ourselves no more about each other’s personality than if we were in separate hemispheres. Well, then, I can promise you at least that I won’t get in your way any more than I can help.”

Mr. Bradfield delivered this speech with his back to the fire and his hands clasped behind him. From time to time, as he spoke, he cast furtive glances at Chris, but he did not look once at the lady he was addressing. Mrs. Abercarne, however made up her mind to put up with his peculiarities, so she uttered a curious little sound, which passed by courtesy for a laugh of appreciation of his humour, and graciously expressed her own gratitude and her daughter’s for his kind reception of them.

“My only fear is that you are spoiling us by treating us too well, sir,” she concluded.

Again she rolled out the “sir” in the manner of a duchess conversing with a prince. Mr. Bradfield winced perceptibly.

“You needn’t say ‘sir’ if you don’t like it,” said he, drily. “It doesn’t seem to agree with you. Glad you’re pleased. You can have this room to yourselves if you like; I don’t use it much. And anything you want let me know of it at once. You needn’t come to me,” he continued, quickly, “but just send word. I want you to be comfortable, very comfortable. Perkins will give you the keys and all that. And—and I hope you’ll be happy here.”

Again he glanced at the girl as he walked rapidly to the door, nodded “good-night,” and went out.

For a few moments after they were left alone together neither mother nor daughter uttered a single word. They glanced at the door as if determined not to commit further indiscretions by hazarding any comment on Mr. Bradfield, until he had had time to take himself to the remotest part of the house. At last, when each had well considered the countenance of the other, Mrs. Abercarne spoke.

“A very kindly, hospitable man, and very forgiving, too; don’t you think so, my dear?” were her first words.

Chris stared at her mother, and then at the door. Surely Mrs. Abercarne must have an idea that she could be overheard, or she would never perjure herself in this fashion. The elder lady went smoothly on, without appearing to notice her daughter’s hesitation in answering.

“A little brusque, a little unpolished, perhaps, but a thoroughly honest fellow, without hypocrisy and without affectation. The sort of man one instinctively feels that one can trust.”

And Mrs. Abercarne crossed the room to the fireside, and settled herself comfortably in an easy chair, with her feet on the fender-stool.

Then Chris, perceiving that there was some occult meaning in all this, replied discreetly:

“I am glad you think so well of him, mother. But I—I shouldn’t have thought he was the kind of man you would have taken such a fancy to.”

“Ah, my dear, you girls always judge by the exterior,” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, as she took up her knitting, and began counting the stitches. “But I should have thought that at any rate Mr. Bradfield’s talk would have amused you.”

“Why, so it did, mother.”

Chris had grown very quiet, and was pondering the situation. She began to have a faint suspicion of the direction whither these remarks were tending, and some words which presently fell from her mother’s lips confirmed it.

“I wonder, Chris,” she said softly, running her fingers gently up and down one of the steel knitting-pins, “whether Mr. Bradfield is a bachelor, or a widower, or what?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure, mother,” answered the young girl demurely.

Then there was silence for a short space, and when Mrs. Abercarne spoke again it was about something else. By tacit agreement the master of the house was not mentioned again by either of the ladies until they had retired to rest.

Then Mrs. Abercarne heard a voice calling softly, “Mother!” and she perceived by the light of the fire a pair of very wide-awake eyes on the pillow beside hers.

“Yes, dear?”

“Why do people always think that honesty must go with rough manners?”

Mrs. Abercarne could not answer her. So she affected to laugh at the words as if they were a jest. But presently she asked in a rather tentative tone:

“Don’t you like Mr. Bradfield then?”

And the answer came very decidedly indeed:

“No, mother, I don’t like him at all.”

CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT MAN FROWNS.

The next morning Chris was awakened by a stream of bright light coming between the window-curtains and when she looked out of the window, she gave a scream of delight.

“Oh! mother—mother, this can’t be really November, or we can’t be really in foggy England!” she cried in an ecstasy, as she drank in, with greedy eyes, all the loveliness of fresh green grass, and the varied tints of trees in autumn.

Their bed-room was at the front of the house, and looked inland over the flower-garden and the park. The beauty of the place became still more striking to their London eyes, when they went into the Chinese-room, and saw the view southwards over the sea, and westwards along the country road to little Wyngham, a mile away.

But while Chris was chiefly occupied with the outlook from the windows, Mrs. Abercarne’s attention was directed to the interior of the house, and she made some discoveries in the broad daylight which the gracious glamour of candles had concealed from her. Curious lapses of knowledge or taste now betrayed themselves. She perceived a valuable oil-painting hanging on the wall between a chromo and an oleograph. A rare edition of Shakespeare stood in the bookcase, side by side with one which was cheap, worthless and modern. In china the collector’s lack of taste was still more evident; old and new, good and bad, were treated on equal terms.

She made no comment aloud, however, having, after the experience of the previous evening, a discreet fear of being mysteriously overheard.

When they had breakfasted, the head housemaid came up with a message from Mr. Bradfield, to the effect that he hoped they would begin the day by inspecting the house, and particularly his “collection.”

“We shall be delighted,” said Mrs. Abercarne, “and where is the special collection Mr. Bradfield wishes us to see?”

“It isn’t anywhere specially,” answered the woman, a gloomy-eyed and severe person, who had lived “in noblemen’s families,” and felt her own condescension in occupying her present situation most deeply. “The things are all over the place. There are no galleries.”

“A charming arrangement,” murmured Mrs. Abercarne. “So much better than the usual formal disposal of art treasures, as if in a museum.”

So they made the tour of the mansion, which was a singularly ill-arranged building, in the style of a rabbit-warren, full of nooks which were not cosy, and of corners which were well adapted for nothing except dust. Solemnly they passed down the corridor, the gloomy-eyed housemaid giving them as they went a catalogue-like description of the various “objects of interest” as they passed them.

“Model of an ironclad fitted with turret guns, torpedo-catcher, and all the latest improvements. Specimen of pottery taken from an ancient Egyptian tomb. Inlaid cabinet, bought by Mr. Bradfield from a Florentine palace,” chanted the housemaid.

“Beautiful! What a charming design! How very interesting, Chris!” murmured Mrs. Abercarne.

But Chris, whose taste was raw and undeveloped, was paying small attention to ancient pottery and torpedo-catchers. Her attention had been attracted by something which seemed to her to promise more human interest than paintings or old china. The corridor in which they were ran straight through the house, past the head of the front and of the back staircases, into a wing which had been added to the east sea-front. From behind one of the doors in this wing strange noises began to reach the ears of Chris, who presently noticed that the housemaid, while still monotonously chanting her description, glanced alternately at the door in question, and at Chris herself, as if wondering what the young lady thought of the unusual sounds.

It was not until they had passed the head of the principal staircase, by which time the noise had grown louder and more continuous, that Mrs. Abercarne’s attention was also attracted. An unearthly groan made her start and turn to the housemaid, who, taking no apparent notice, proceeded to lead the way downstairs.

“What’s that?” exclaimed Mrs. Abercarne, as she glanced nervously at the door from behind which the noises came. At the same moment the door was shaken violently, and there was a loud crash as if some heavy body had been thrown against it.

“And this,” went on the housemaid calmly, pointing to a picture over her head, “is one of Sir Edwin Landseer’s, while the one on your left is the portrait of a lady by Sir Thomas Lawrence.”

“Oh, indeed!” murmured Mrs. Abercarne, in a rather less enthusiastic voice than before.

They went on through the inner hall, the dining-room, two magnificent drawing-rooms, and a wretched little library, for the smallness of which the housemaid gloomily apologised.

“Mr. Bradfield’s books, like the rest of the things, were scattered in all directions about the house,” she said.

But Mrs. Abercarne was no longer charmed by this arrangement. The poor lady was really alarmed, and even the imposing proportions of the drawing-room, and the display of magnificent old plate in the dining-room, failed to rekindle her admiration. They visited the basement, where the cook and the rest of the household were formally presented to her, and then she herself cut short the inspection and returned upstairs. She lingered, as Chris and the housemaid behind her were forced to linger too, on the staircase. They were opposite a door which the housemaid had not opened; it was Mr. Bradfield’s study, she said. Just as Mrs. Abercarne was about to ask a question about the strange noises, the door from which they had issued was opened quickly, and a man-servant, out of livery, who looked heated, disordered and breathless, ran out and locked it quickly behind him.

In answer to an enquiry not spoken, but looked by the housemaid, the man said, briefly:

“It’s all right. He’s quiet now,” and disappeared quickly down the back staircase.

Mrs. Abercarne drew a long breath which sounded almost like a stifled scream; Chris looked fixedly at the locked door.

“What door is that?” she asked.

The housemaid, after hesitating a moment, and glancing towards the door of the study, answered in a low voice:

“Those are Mr. Richard’s rooms.”

“And who is Mr. Richard?” asked Mrs. Abercarne.

The woman did not immediately answer. During the short pause which succeeded the lady’s question, the study door was opened suddenly, and Mr. Bradfield came out, looking very angry.

“Now, haven’t I told you not to make a mystery about Mr. Richard?” said he sharply to the housemaid. “What do you mean by frightening these poor ladies out of their wits with your mysterious nods and winks? You and Stelfox, the pair of you? Why can’t you answer a simple question straightforwardly, and have done with it?”

The housemaid remained silent, and looked down on the floor.

“I thought, sir—I thought, perhaps, the ladies might be alarmed——” she began.

“Alarmed!” echoed Mr. Bradfield impatiently. “And who knows it better than yourself that there is nothing to be alarmed about?” Dismissing the woman with a wave of the hand, he turned to the ladies. “It is only a poor young lad, the son of an old clerk of mine. He is not quite as bright as he might be, poor fellow! but I can’t bear to send him to a home or an asylum, or anything of that sort. I should never feel sure how they were treating him. But he is harmless, I assure you. Perfectly, entirely harmless.”

Mrs. Abercarne professed herself completely satisfied with this explanation, and affected, out of courtesy, to applaud Mr. Bradfield’s humanity in keeping him under his own roof. But when she and her daughter were alone again, safe in their own room, the elderly lady turned the key hastily, and confided her fears to her daughter in a tremulous whisper.

“It’s all very well for Mr. Bradfield to say this lunatic’s harmless,” she said, close to her daughter’s ear, “but I don’t believe it. If he were harmless, why should he be kept in rooms by himself, and be locked in? No, Chris; depend upon it, he’s a dangerous lunatic, and that man who rushed out is his keeper. He had been struggling with him; we heard him. And I don’t intend to remain under the same roof with a raving madman for another night.”

CHAPTER V. MASTER AND MAN.

To have a raving lunatic under the same roof with you is an experience which appeals differently to different minds. To the middle-aged it is a fact calculated to send a “cold shiver down the back,” while to the very young it suggests untold possibilities of danger and excitement.

It is not surprising, therefore, that while Mrs. Abercarne made up her mind to go as soon as she heard of the existence of Mr. Richard, to Chris this was only another inducement to stay. It was a hard matter, however, to bring her mother to her way of thinking; and when Mrs. Abercarne insisted on replacing in her trunks the things which she had begun to unpack, the young girl almost gave up hoping to change her determination.

“Now I shall go downstairs and knock at the door of the study, and explain to Mr. Bradfield how impossible it is that we should remain here under the circumstances,” said the elder lady decidedly, as she straightened the lace she wore round her neck, preparatory to making an imposing entrance into her employer’s presence.

“But, mother, you told him just now that you were not a bit frightened, and he will think you are very changeable to have altered your mind so soon.”

“I have had time to think it over,” explained her mother, rather weakly. “One does not see everything in the first minute. And it is not for myself I care. But a young girl like you must not be exposed to the vagaries of a madman, nor live in a house that is talked about.”

Chris was silent. Against those mysterious conventions which bound her mother down more tightly than prison walls, she knew that all her arguments, all her persuasions, would be powerless. With sorrowful eyes she watched her mother finish repacking, shut down the lid of the last portmanteau, and leave the room with the firm steps of a woman who had finally and firmly made up her mind.

Then Chris went into the beautiful Chinese-room, and looked lovingly round the walls, and longingly out of the window. She had never been inside a house half so nice as this, she thought, and she had not yet got over the first ecstasy of joy on finding what a beautiful place they were to have for a home. Now they would have to go back to London, she supposed; and as their own house had been given up, and the furniture sold, they would have to take cheap and dreary lodgings until they could find some other engagement. And when would they be so lucky as to find another together?

Chris was not more inclined to tears than other girls of her age, but the weight of the woes upon her gradually grew too heavy to be borne without some outward demonstration. So that, when at last the door opened to admit, as she supposed, her mother, Chris was curled up in one of the low arm-chairs by the window and could not for shame exhibit her tear-stained face.

“Oh, mother,” she sobbed, without looking up, “how can you have the heart to leave this lovely place to go back to that hateful London? We should have been so happy here; I’m sure we should!”

“There!” exclaimed a man’s gruff voice loudly, and Mr. Bradfield, for he was the intruder, burst into a loud, ironical laugh.

Chris sprang up and dried her eyes hastily, overwhelmed with confusion.

Her mother, not so fleet of foot as the man, was only just entering the room. Her face wore an expression of great vexation.

“There!” repeated Mr. Bradfield, as soon as he could speak. “Did you hear that, madam? You should have coached your daughter up better. You come and tell me that you would be glad to stay in my house, but that your daughter is so much frightened that she insists on leaving immediately; and I come up here, take the young lady unawares, and hear her beg not to be taken away! How do you reconcile the two things, Mrs. Abercarne? Answer me that, madam.”

Even Mrs. Abercarne had no answer ready. Chris came to her mother’s rescue.

“My mother is quite right,” she said. “I should not care to stay here, although it is such a beautiful place, now that I know there is a person shut up here. I should always be afraid of his getting out.”

Mr. Bradfield stamped his foot impatiently. Since he had been a rich man he had been used to finding a way out of every difficulty, a way to indulge every whim.

“I have told you both that there is no danger; that this unfortunate young man is absolutely harmless and inoffensive. You shall hear what his attendant says.”

Mr. Bradfield rang the bell sharply, and told the servant, who quickly appeared at the summons, to send Stelfox to him. In the meantime, without any further remarks either to mother or daughter, he strode up and down the room with his hands behind him, and his eyes on the carpet.

In a few minutes there was a knock at the door, and the man who had told the housemaid that Mr. Richard “was quiet now” came in.

Jim Stelfox was a man about forty-five years of age, rather above the medium height, with an open, honest, and withal resolute-looking face, and a straightforward look of the eyes which spoke of obstinacy as well as honesty. His hair, which was still thick, was iron-grey; so were his trim whiskers. His eyes were grey also, hard and keen; his mouth was straight, and shut very firmly.

He waited, with his eyes fixed upon his master, respectfully, to be interrogated.

“How many years have you been in my employment, Stelfox?” asked Mr. Bradfield.

“Seventeen years, sir.”

“And how many years is it now since you’ve had charge of Mr. Richard?”

“Ten years, sir, on and off; and seven years altogether,” answered Stelfox.

Mr. Bradfield’s manner grew harsher, more dictatorial with every succeeding question, almost as if each answer of the man’s had been a fresh offence. But Stelfox’s manner never changed; it was always respectful, stolid and studiously monotonous. The next question Mr. Bradfield put in a louder, angrier voice than ever.

“And have you ever, in the course of all that time, known Mr. Richard do any harm to man, woman or child?”

For about two seconds the man did not answer; two seconds in which Chris, rendered curious by something in the manner of master and man towards each other, awaited quite eagerly some astonishing reply. She was disappointed. The answer came as smoothly and quietly as ever:

“Never, sir.”

Mr. Bradfield turned impatiently to the two ladies.

“You hear,” he said triumphantly. “Here is the testimony of a man who has been in constant attendance upon him for seven years, and in partial attendance upon him for three more. Can you have stronger evidence than that?”

“It is quite satisfactory, I am sure,” murmured Mrs. Abercarne, who had not the courage to face this overbearing man with questions and doubts.

But Chris was different. Although she longed to stay, although the lunatic, harmless or otherwise, caused her no fears, she “wanted to know, you know.” There was some mystery, trivial, no doubt, about Mr. Richard and his guardian and his keeper.

The manner of the two men towards each other, the furtive, yet impatient glances with which the master regarded the man, the studiously monotonous and mechanical tone in which the man replied to the master, showed that they were not quite honest either towards the other, or else towards her mother and herself. At least, this was what Chris thought, and without pausing to consider how her question might be received, she broke out:

“But, Mr. Bradfield, if he is harmless, why do you shut him up?”

Mrs. Abercarne, although she had not dared to put this question herself, looked gratefully at her daughter, and curiously at her employer. He hesitated a moment, and Chris saw Stelfox glance at his master with an expression of some amusement.

“Well,” said Mr. Bradfield at last, rather impatiently, “I am afraid we should none of us find the poor fellow a very desirable companion. He is very noisy, for one thing.”

Now both the ladies had had occasion to find out that this latter statement was true, at any rate, so they were silent for a minute. Then Chris, not yet satisfied, spoke again.

“You know,” and she turned to Stelfox, “that my mother and I heard you struggling with him, and when you came out we heard you say he was quiet now, as if you had had some trouble with him. How was that if he was so harmless?”

Again Stelfox glanced at his master, and Chris, following his look, noticed that Mr. Bradfield had become deadly white. He stamped impatiently on the floor as he caught his servant’s eye.

“Oh,” said Stelfox, after a few seconds’ pause, “that was only his rough play.”

“Then I don’t wonder you keep him shut up,” said Chris, drily.

Mr. Bradfield stared at her with a frown on his face. But Chris did not care. They were going away, so she could speak out her mind. There was a pause for some moments, and then Mrs. Abercarne began to fidget a little, being anxious to get away. Mr. Bradfield’s frown cleared away as he watched Chris, and at last he said, quite good-humouredly:

“You’re an impudent little piece of goods. And so you are going to let my madman frighten you away?”

Chris glanced at her mother. Then she turned boldly, with her hands behind her, and faced him.

“Not if it rested with me, Mr. Bradfield.”

He was evidently delighted by her answer, and began to chuckle good-humouredly as he signed to Stelfox to leave the room.

“So you would brave the bogies, would you? And it is only this haughty mother of yours who stands in the way of our all being happy together. Now, come, Mrs. Abercarne, can you resist the appeal of youth and beauty? I couldn’t.”