The
Gray Wolf’s Daughter.

On a stormy afternoon in October, in the thirtieth year of Queen Victoria’s reign, a young doctor sat before the fire in his new home at the sleepy old Surrey town of Grayling, warming his hands, and thinking, not too cheerfully, of his prospects.

Ernest Netherbridge was not a genius, but he was a thoughtful, intelligent, painstaking, and unselfish man. Grayling had not yet found out his good qualities; the inhabitants, never greatly distinguished for lucidity of vision, had only had time to discover that his “bedside manner” was less soothing than that of his predecessor, and that he had an unpleasant trick of telling them that they ate and drank too much for their health. Young Dr. Netherbridge had also the bad taste to ascribe melancholy to “liver,” fainting fits and ladylike super-sensitiveness to “anæmia,” and hysterics to ill-temper. Consequently he was not popular, and he knew it.

No one, therefore, was more surprised than he when a handsome closed carriage, drawn by two splendid bays, was pulled up before his door, and a footman, after a reverberating rat-tat-tat, delivered a note, emblazoned with an imposing coat of arms, to Dr. Netherbridge’s housekeeper for her master.

On breaking the seal the doctor’s surprise increased. The letter was sent from the Chase, a very large estate, which extended for several miles in the vicinity of Grayling, and which belonged to Sir Philip Cranstoun, the representative of one of the oldest families in Surrey, a man reputed equally wealthy and eccentric, concerning whom wonderful tales were whispered round Grayling tea-tables. The letter was written in a small and cramped man’s handwriting, and ran as follows:

“Sir Philip Cranstoun, having heard that Dr. Netherbridge invariably speaks the truth to his patients, would be glad if he will at once proceed to the Chase in the carriage sent herewith, and give his opinion upon a patient there. Sir Philip wishes to inform Dr. Netherbridge that the abilities of Sir Curtis Clarkson, Sir Percival Hoare, and Dr. Tracey Wentworth have all been exerted in vain over this special case, the drawback in every instance being their inability to speak the truth. This, Sir Philip hopes to hear from Dr. Netherbridge.”

The doctor put down the letter, surprised and interested. Sir Curtis Clarkson and Sir Percival Hoare were names to conjure with, London physicians of great and established reputation, favored by royalty, and believed in unquestioningly by the wealthier middle classes. Dr. Tracey Wentworth was a highly popular practitioner from Guildford, in his profession a triton against a minnow when compared with the struggling young doctor who was now called to supersede him.

Ernest Netherbridge pondered for a few moments. After all, he reflected, although he might well fail over a case which had puzzled better heads than his, at least he could exercise his favorite and unpopular virtue of candor without fear of the consequences. Should he succeed in pleasing so great a local magnate as Sir Philip Cranstoun, a justice of the peace, and one of the largest landowners in the south of England, it would greatly help to establish his position and practice in the town of his adoption. The thing was at least worth trying for. Taking his overcoat and slipping a scarf round his neck, for he was by no means robust, Dr. Netherbridge stepped out of his house, and entering the roomy and comfortable carriage in waiting for him, was soon whirling along a quiet country road toward the great gates leading to the Chase.

The wind whistled through the scantily clad branches of the swaying trees, scattering their yellow and russet leaves, and whirling them in dancing eddies a little way above the moist earth below. Dr. Netherbridge had never been within the precincts of the great park; indeed, since his marriage three years previously, Sir Philip Cranstoun had discouraged visitors, and no one in Grayling appeared to have even seen Lady Cranstoun, concerning whose remarkable beauty, however, reports were freely circulated. Considerable interest and curiosity dominated the young doctor’s mind as he was driven rapidly along the wide avenue of over-arching giant elmtrees, which formed a characteristic feature of the Cranstoun Chase enclosure.

The house itself was a great rambling, gray stone mansion, closely covered with ivy, of ancient origin, and in some of the older portions possessing a thickness of wall suitable for the old ante-gunpowder days. From time to time the original building had been added to by various members of the family, but although numerous additions had been made in the course of the five hundred years since the first Squire Cranstoun erected his fortified hunting seat within the forest, the gray pile was dignified and imposing still, although it resembled more a fortress than a home.

A very broad flight of shallow steps led to the heavy Gothic entrance, on either side of which life-sized wolves in stone supported the Cranstoun arms. For many hundred years the wolf’s head, grasped in a mail-covered hand, had been the device of the family, to whom tradition assigned many of the wolf’s characteristics of treachery and vindictiveness, while the motto, “Cranstoun, Remember!” was said to be derived from a bloodthirsty legend of long delayed vengeance in the days of the Norman Conquest.

As the carriage drew up before the entrance, the heavy oak doors were thrown open and Dr. Netherbridge ascended the steps, and entered the house. The hall was spacious and impressive as the exterior, hung with ancient swords and spears, and guarded by four glistening figures in complete armor, which, as the firelight from a wide hearth below a massive marble mantelpiece struck them, added to the sombre appearance of the house.

A stout, elderly man, evidently the butler, and two footmen stood in the hall. Sir Philip was out, they informed the doctor. He had been absent since the morning, and had caused a message to be conveyed to his house, together with a letter for Dr. Netherbridge, which he had wished to have immediately delivered.

“Has Lady Cranstoun been ill long?” the doctor inquired.

“For some time, sir. But her ladyship’s maid will be able to inform you as to all that, if you will be so kind as to follow me.”

Lady Cranstoun’s apartments were little less gloomy than the hall. No flowers, no dainty knick-knacks relieved their mediæval simplicity. In the bedroom and the adjoining sitting-room the floors were polished and spread with rugs, the walls covered with moth-eaten tapestry, while the massive bed and the chairs were formed of dark oak. An oak settle was drawn before the fire in the sitting-room, which communicated by a recess draped with heavy velvet curtains with the bedroom beyond. On a fur rug thrown across the settle, a figure in white draperies lay with face turned to the firelight. On a chair near, a white-capped nurse sat, holding in her hand a book from which she had been reading, while a dark-complexioned, pleasant-faced woman, evidently a servant, stood at a little distance, with hands tightly clasped, and a look of keen anxiety printed on her features.

“It is the doctor, my lady,” the servant said, approaching the motionless, recumbent figure of her mistress.

Lady Cranstoun uttered a low exclamation of impatience.

“Of what use is a doctor to me?” she murmured. “Send him away, Margaret! What good have they done me yet?”

“But this is a new doctor, my lady. If you would only let him see you.”

The nurse rose at this point and added her entreaties to those of the old servant, before crossing the room to where the doctor stood.

“Lady Cranstoun lies like that hour after hour,” she whispered. “She neither eats nor sleeps, and she can hardly bear to be spoken to.”

Dr. Netherbridge came quietly forward, and placing himself between the oak settle and the fire, looked directly into Lady Cranstoun’s face. The invalid, raising her hollow eyes, perceived a small, slight man of about thirty, with a pale face, a dark mustache and beard, and singularly penetrating and reliable dark blue eyes. He on his part beheld a tall young woman of apparently not more than twenty years of age, and of truly remarkable beauty, even though her face and arms were now slender to emaciation, and her pallor was almost corpselike. Her face was small, her features were delicate, and her hair, of which she possessed a wavy abundance, was the blackest he had ever seen. But her beauty and her fragility, both of which were strongly apparent, were forgotten by the doctor in the effect produced upon him by her eyes, surely the largest, darkest, and most hopelessly sad in expression that ever gazed out of a despairing woman’s face.

Almost mechanically he raised her wrist, and began to feel her quick, feverish pulse. Her hand was extremely cold, although her dry, red lips looked hot and parched. A strong sympathy for her filled his mind as he drew a chair up to the oak settle, and began asking her some questions concerning her illness.

At first she answered in monosyllables and evidently at random, staring into the fire, and speaking in a scarcely audible voice. Gradually, however, she took to watching his face, and at last, sitting up with some show of energy, she asked the nurse to wait in the adjoining room while she described her symptoms to the doctor.

“Seeing you sitting there fidgets me,” she said. “I can’t collect my thoughts.”

She spoke English correctly enough, in a sweet, rich voice, yet something in her manner struck the doctor as rough and unusual in a woman of birth and breeding. As soon as the nurse had moved away, Lady Cranstoun turned impulsively to the dark-complexioned servant.

“Go after her, and prevent her from listening,” she whispered, rapidly, and the woman obeyed.

“Now draw your chair close up,” she said, imperiously, to the doctor. “I have a great deal to say. There is something about your face which makes me think I can trust you. And I do so badly need some one to trust. Stay, though; do you know Sir Philip Cranstoun?”

“I have never seen him in my life.”

“I’m glad of that! How did you come to be sent for?”

Thinking it might help him to gain her confidence, Dr. Netherbridge drew from his pocket Sir Philip’s summons.

Lady Cranstoun read it eagerly. After she had returned it to him, silence reigned for a few seconds. Her next question appeared startlingly irrelevant.

“The sessions are on at Guildford to-day, are they not?”

“I believe so.”

“And Sir Philip’s note was sent here from Guildford ordering the carriage to go for you?”

“No doubt he was very anxious about you,” said the doctor, hardly realizing what he was expected to say.

She stared at him for a few seconds, and then broke into a bitter, mirthless laugh.

“You don’t know, then?” she said. “After all, why should you? Yet I feel sure I can trust you. What is your name?”

“Ernest Netherbridge.”

“Dr. Netherbridge, Sir Philip hates me only a little less than I hate him.”

Silence again. It was obviously impossible to comment upon such an unexpected statement.

She stared at the fire, and then, suddenly clasping her thin white hands, she fixed her great eyes beseechingly upon his face.

“Will you help me?” she asked, in a whisper full of intensity. “I haven’t a friend in the house except Margaret. Every one is against me.”

“Surely your illness makes you fanciful,” he was beginning, when she cut him short impatiently.

“Ah! don’t talk like that—like the others did! Sir Philip so longs for an heir. We had a child, a boy, who died—I am glad, very glad that he is dead—and he wishes me to have every care now, not for my sake, but for the sake of the family name. I have been trying to starve myself; I suppose you can see that; but if you will give me the information I want, I will take your medicines or anything.”

“Tell me what you want me to do, Lady Cranstoun.”

“Find out for me all that took place in court to-day. Sir Philip went to Guildford early—I found out so much—but they will not let me see the papers, they will not let me hear!”

She was quivering from head to foot in fierce, ungovernable excitement, and her eyes were shining with a feverish glitter.

“There is some great anxiety on your mind,” he said, kindly. “Will you not confide in me more fully?”

She glanced nervously about her, and finally thrust her hand among the folds of her dress about her neck, and slipped in his hand a crumpled letter, ill-spelt, and written evidently by an imperfectly educated person.

“My Own Daughter Clare” (it began),

“Your brother Jim sets sail for America on Tuesday next, and we all hope if once he gets out in Canada with Uncle Pete he’ll do well. But you know what the boy always was about you. It was ever Clare first, and the rest of us nowhere. He won’t budge a foot without seeing you, and giving a good-by kiss to his little sister, for all she’s a great lady now. Now, my girl, it’s hard enough to have had never a sight of you for them three years, save now and again as you’ve drove past in your carriage, and that one time you contrived to slip off to the old cottage for half an hour. I’m hungering to speak to my beautiful girl. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve thought I seen a sad look on your face of late. It’s wicked and unnatural for Sir Philip to part flesh and blood, and as to us not being gentlefolks, he should have thought of that afore he took ye. What you say he threatened about shooting as poachers any on us as come within his property, that’s mere tall talk. What harm to anybody will it do for your father and brother to see you for ten minutes or so, and give you a good-by kiss, and tell you how dear you are to us still? So, my girl, to-morrow night, at any time between nine and eleven, do you slip out to the shrubbery at the back of the paddock. If it rains hard we shan’t expect you, but if it’s fine, seeing as the gray wolf is away, we know you’ll come, my pretty, to your loving brother, and your old father.”

Dr. Netherbridge read the letter carefully, and returned it to Lady Cranstoun. He was beginning to understand several things which had puzzled him. One point was very clear—Sir Philip Cranstoun had married beneath him, and had forbidden his young wife from communicating in any way with her relations.

“Did you go?” the doctor asked.

She supported herself on her elbow, and spoke in quick, gasping tones:

“It was a beautifully clear night. I thought Sir Philip was away, but he had returned from London without my knowledge. Somehow, some one—one of the spies who are about me, waking and sleeping—picked up and read this letter. I can only suppose this, for all I know is that as I crept out of the house at about half-past nine I was followed. Just as I reached the shrubbery, and caught sight in the moonlight of my father and brother in waiting under the dark shadow of the trees, I was seized from behind, something was thrust into my mouth and over my eyes, and I was carried back into the house. I fought and struggled, but to no purpose, and I could plainly hear several shots, the sound of a scuffle, and a great cry as of a man in mortal agony. From that day to this I have been able to learn nothing of what happened on that night. But yesterday Margaret overheard Sir Philip telling his steward that he was going to Guildford to-day, where the sessions are held, to appear as a witness against some poachers who were found in his grounds several weeks ago, and who have been in jail ever since. Dr. Netherbridge, I am certain he meant my father and my brother!”

“But how could that be?” he asked, trying to allay her fierce excitement. “Your father and brother are not poachers surely?”

A faint red color stole into her white cheeks.

“My people don’t see that the rich are injured by the loss of a hare or a rabbit now and again,” she muttered with lowered eyelids. “They should belong to the people, wild game like that, and a bird or two—but that’s not what we were talking of. It was no poaching brought out Jim and father that night. Sir Philip knew that right enough. He made me take a solemn oath never to betray to anybody what he called my disgraceful origin. Disgraceful!” she repeated, with burning cheeks. “A Carewe’s as good as a Cranstoun any day, as I’ve told him often enough. I’ve never broken my vow until to-day; not even Margaret knows who my people are. But I’ve told you, because I must and will know what has happened to my father and my brother Jim to-day.”

As he watched her talking, and noted the English nature of her beauty, the intense blue-blackness of her hair, and a certain touch of wildness about her free, graceful gestures and rapid speech, another conviction came home to Ernest Netherbridge’s mind, and this was that Lady Cranstoun, wife of Sir Philip Cranstoun, of the Chase, Surrey, Cranstoun Hall, in Aberdeenshire, and Berkeley Square, London, had in her veins the untamable blood of the true “Egyptian,” those despised wanderers over the face of the earth who are found and hated in all the chief countries of Europe.

In spite of his patient’s beauty, Dr. Netherbridge could not help wondering how so proud a man as Sir Philip was considered had ever been so far carried away by his feelings as to wed a girl of gypsy origin. Lady Cranstoun seemed to divine what was passing in his mind. Raising herself to a sitting position, she tapped one slender well-arched foot upon the ground while she said, as though in answer to his thought:

“Of course, you wonder how Sir Philip came to marry me. I can see that in your face. When I was only eight years old I got blamed for something, as we were on the road going from fair to fair in the summer. So I ran away in a rage, and walked till I was tired and fell asleep under a hedge by the wayside, in Devonshire. A rich lady drove by, the Hon. Mrs. Neville, a widow without children, Sir Philip Cranstoun’s eldest sister. Because I was so pretty, she had me lifted into her carriage, and took me to her beautiful home and had me educated, taught French, and music, and dancing, and drawing, and all that, meaning me to be a governess. Every now and then I broke loose and went tramping through the fields and lanes after my own people, whom I loved the best all along. Often and often, when my fingers ached with practising the piano, and I felt all stiff in tight clothes and shoes, I’d long for the old free life again. But when I saw my people, stealing out at night to them, they begged me to stay where I was. I could help them with money, and times were hard. Before my mother died she made me promise to remain a lady, and Mrs. Neville was kind enough to me by fits and starts, and very proud of what training and education had done. She used to show me off as a sort of successful experiment, too, before people, and that made me mad. She was a hard, capricious woman, like all the Cranstouns in nature, and was all for breaking what she called my absurd pride, and reminding me I’d only been a vagrant after all. But she didn’t do so much of that as she’d have liked, because I told her I’d run away, and that wouldn’t have suited her, as I played and read to her, and amused her, and she couldn’t well do without me. But I never could be reconciled to the notion of being a dependent, and so when Sir Philip Cranstoun came on a visit—he was a handsome enough man of five-and-twenty then, and me only a little bit over sixteen—and he glared at me, and could hardly let me out of his sight, and said he loved me, I got all excited between the notion of being a great lady and being loved and being free from Mrs. Neville’s taunts. But Philip wanted me to run away with him, but I wouldn’t hear of it, and refused to speak to him. I was very pretty then, prettier than you can think just seeing me now, and he was regularly crazy about me. So, early one morning, he made me meet him in a church at Torquay, and we were married. Just three years ago it was yesterday, a day I shall curse as long as I live!”

“Surely,” said the doctor, as she paused, apparently lost in sombre thought, “Sir Philip must have been very deeply attached to you?”

“Yes,” she returned, bitterly, “and for how long? First, nothing was too good for me, but that state lasted only a few weeks, and even then I was afraid of him. Then violent, raging scenes of jealousy if, when we were in Italy, I so much as looked at a waiter and asked him for bread. Then, forever storming at me, and reproaching me, if a gondolier so much as called me the ‘beautiful signora.’ And, after that, scenes constantly. I’ve a temper like fire myself, I own. We Carewes have never been known for meekness, and even when I was a baby child I’d been taught to think myself a princess. All his life Sir Philip had his own way in everything, and all who came in his path had obeyed him, cowed by his masterful temper and sullen fury. But I withstood him. I thought he loved me well enough to let me have my way, and when I found out my mistake I began to hate him, and more than once tried to run away from him. But he followed, and swore he would murder me if I dared, gypsy as I was, to bring disgrace upon his ancient name. Gradually, my will and my health seemed to be breaking down. Our first child pined away and died, because I could not care for it—could not look at it. It was his child, like him, I thought, even at that age, and so I could not love it. When his son died, Sir Philip was mad with anger, but I had grown past caring. It isn’t all my fault, Dr. Netherbridge,” she added, suddenly, while big tears rolled down her cheeks. “I may have been silly when I married, but I tried my utmost for over a year to love Sir Philip, and to please him, but he is more a fiend than a man, I think, and I would rather die than see a child of mine grow up resembling him. It is all these thoughts which, together with my awful anxiety for my father and Jim, are breaking my heart, and ruining my health. It is hate, and terror, and misery, and cruel, cruel anxiety, which make me starve myself and hope to die. But now that I have trusted you, and told you everything, you will befriend me, will you not? Come to-morrow early, and let me know everything—everything, mind—that took place in court to-day, and I will let you cure me, if you choose. Will you promise?”

“I promise,” he said, “to do everything in my power to serve you,” and with that assurance he took his leave.

PROLOGUE.—PART II.

As Dr. Netherbridge left Lady Cranstoun’s apartments, and proceeded down the broad oak staircase to the ground floor, he found a man servant waiting for him in the hall.

“Sir Philip has just arrived, sir, and wishes to see you before you go. Will you kindly come to the library?”

The little doctor followed the man, filled with considerable curiosity as to what manner of man could have inspired so strong a sensation of fear and dislike in the breast of his young wife. Lady Cranstoun’s father had spoken of the son-in-law who would not acknowledge his existence as the “gray wolf.” But then Gypsy Carewe was hardly an unprejudiced person, and Dr. Netherbridge, who always desired to preserve an impartial mind, reminded himself of the fact that a girl of Clare Cranstoun’s undisciplined, keenly emotional nature would necessarily be an extremely trying companion to a man as reserved and proud as Sir Philip was popularly supposed to be.

“Dr. Netherbridge, sir.”

The servant threw open the library door after a deferential tap on its panels, which was followed by a curt “Come in!” The young doctor found himself in a spacious apartment completely lined with oaken book-cases well filled with volumes. Before the fire, in the Englishman’s favorite attitude, his hands behind him, and his feet set rather wide apart on a lion-skin rug, stood a broad-shouldered and deep-chested man, rather below the medium height, with a square pale face, and black hair which, in spite of the fact that he was but eight-and-twenty, was already streaked with gray. In some indefinable way Sir Philip impressed all who saw him with the sense of power, of mental as well as physical force of very exceptional kind. In features he somewhat resembled the first Napoleon Bonaparte, but, if anything, his mouth was even more rigidly compressed and hard in outline than that of the great conqueror. He appeared to be a man of superb health and physique, notwithstanding his exceptional pallor, which contrasted strangely with the inky blackness of his eyebrows, and of the lashes which bordered his deep-set, glittering, steel-gray eyes. He gazed keenly at the doctor, and then with haughty condescension waved his long white hand toward a chair, which the latter did not take, but remained standing.

“You have seen Lady Cranstoun?” Sir Philip began abruptly, in a low-pitched but peculiarly grating voice.

“I have just left her.”

“What is your opinion?”

“She is extremely ill, but more so in mind than in body.”

Sir Philip smothered an exclamation of impatience.

“As I presume your business doesn’t extend to the mind, perhaps you will be good enough to tell me what is wrong with the body?”

“Certainly, Sir Philip. Lady Cranstoun is deliberately starving herself because she does not wish to live.”

Sir Philip’s black eyebrows bent heavily over his eyes, which gleamed with suppressed anger.

“Can’t she be made insensible by drugs, and food be administered to her then?” he asked, harshly.

“Scarcely. But she has promised me to take the medicine which I shall send her as soon as I get back; and there will be no possibility of her death from inanition while she takes that. She seems to me to have naturally a splendid constitution, and there is no doubt that if she can be persuaded to take nourishment, and to cease from worrying, her health will be all that can be desired.”

“You seem to have had exceptional success with your patient,” sneered Sir Philip, with a short and very unpleasant laugh. “Her other doctors couldn’t get a word out of her. Pray what method did you adopt to loosen her tongue?”

Ernest Netherbridge was a quiet tempered man, by no means easily roused to wrath. But there was something in the hard contempt of the Baronet’s manner which seemed to rouse all the latent aggressiveness of his nature. Looking Sir Philip full in the eyes, he answered his question steadily.

“I was extremely sorry for Lady Cranstoun, Sir Philip, and possibly I made up in sympathy for what I lacked in skill.”

A very slight flush passed over Sir Philip’s colorless face.

“I am extremely grateful for your most kind pity for my wife,” he said, with biting sarcasm. “In her name and my own I offer you my hearty thanks for your sympathy. May I ask how she has merited it?”

“Certainly. Lady Cranstoun is very young. I understood her to say she is still under twenty. She appears to be very dull and lonely, and a prey to great depression. Also, she had not, so she told me, been outside the house for two months. Hers is a temperament imperatively demanding fresh air, plenty of exercise and change of scene, and bright and sympathetic society. Had she more of these things, I think it unlikely that she would entertain the idea of suicide, and require such constant watching as she does now.”

“I am deeply obliged to you for your valuable advice as to how my wife should be treated. Perhaps it is a little outside your province as a general country practitioner; but I am none the less sensible of your generosity in conferring it upon me.”

“Sir Philip,” returned the little doctor, taking his hat from the table, “in your letter you requested me to speak the truth. Unfortunately for my success in my profession, I am unable to do otherwise, and I can only regret that it has been unpalatable to you. I wish you good evening.”

“Stop!” Sir Philip called out, imperiously, as Dr. Netherbridge reached the door. “You will please send Lady Cranstoun’s medicine, and call to see her to-morrow. I will send the carriage for you at noon. If she has taken the whim in her head to be cured by you, she must have her way. Oh, by the bye, I may mention to you what you have no doubt found out for yourself. Lady Cranstoun’s father, Mr. Carewe, of Yorkshire, died in a madhouse, and I have often reason to fear my wife has inherited a touch of the complaint. Her statements since her illness began are incoherent in the extreme, and totally unreliable. But you will, of course, make allowance for that. Good-evening.”

“Good-evening, Sir Philip.”

Dr. Netherbridge seemed to breathe more freely when he found himself outside the gray fortress-like walls of the Chase. No patient he had ever yet had could approach in interest that fragile creature with the deathly white face and great dark eyes, whose husband was her worst enemy, and whose servants were her spies.

“You will be my friend, will you not?”

The words and the pathetic look which accompanied them haunted the young man. Especially since he had seen her husband a deep pity for her had taken possession of his mind. In speaking of his wife, Sir Philip’s voice, naturally hard, grew harder still, and the cold gleam of his eyes appeared absolutely diabolical. The whole of the Cranstouns’ miserable married life seemed to be laid bare before the doctor as he made his way thoughtfully toward his bachelor home, borne along the dark roads in the comfortable carriage in which he had come. He pictured to himself the spoiled, impulsive girl, little more than a child, whose strange beauty and proud maidenliness had won Sir Philip Cranstoun’s short-lived but passionate love. Such a union could only end in one way between so ill-matched a pair, and the woman who, with kind and tender but firm treatment, might have proved herself a loving and devoted wife and mother, had been cowed, terrified, sneered at, and repressed, until she had become the miserable nerve-wracked creature whom he had just seen.

It was with some approach to excitement that the little doctor prepared to inquire of his housekeeper—a garrulous, gossiping, stout woman—concerning what had taken place before the Recorder that day. But the initiative was taken by Mrs. Brooks herself, who, as she laid his frugal supper on the table, plunged at once into the subject on her mind:

“Lor’, sir! to think of your going off in the Cranstoun carriage, like that! It’ll make some folks I know that live in a great house outside the town, with a brass plate, and a boy in buttons to carry round the medicine-bottles in a basket, fit to burst themselves of envy. When you’re rested, sir, I’m just longing to know all about the Chase. I’ve always heard tell it’s such a fine place, grand enough for a royal dook. But to think of poor Sir Philip having such things said to him in court to-day, and all along of an impudent poacher fellow, who, I dare say, fully deserves his five years and more if the truth be known.”

The doctor put down his knife and fork.

“What do you mean, Mrs. Brooks?” he asked. “Tell me just what happened.”

“Willingly, sir. If I might make so bold as to take a chair, being rather bad like, with rheumatism in the knees. It was this way, sir. My young sister-in-law, my brother William’s wife, you know, sir, she lives just across the way to the court-house, and William being in the force, she gets in to see the cases, and mostly drops in to tea with me afterward, to tell me about them; well, to-day she says there was a big, dark, young man, and well enough looking for his class of life, as was brought up on a charge of unlawfully wounding one of Sir Philip Cranstoun’s gamekeepers in a plantation near the Chase some few weeks ago. It appears it was about ten or a little before, and two of Sir Philip’s men, one of them with his arm all bandaged up, and a wound in his head, gave evidence as they were on the lookout for poachers, when they caught sight of this young man and another in a plantation near the Chase. Both were well-known poachers, and awful desperate men. The gamekeepers crept silently until they came upon them; but the poachers were very powerfully built and violent, and in the fight Sir Philip’s men were getting the worst of it, and the older ruffian had his knife out to murder the gamekeeper, as he knelt on his chest, pinning him to the ground, when Sir Philip himself, who was in the woods with his gun, hearing the scuffle, came up in the nick of time, and shot the poacher dead.”

Dr. Netherbridge started from his chair.

“Dead, do you say?” he asked. “Be quite sure. Do you really mean that Sir Philip Cranstoun, with his own hand, shot one of the poachers dead?”

“With his own gun, sir, most certainly. The man’s been buried for weeks now. It all came out at the inquest, when Sir Philip and his gamekeeper attended to explain the accident. Didn’t you read of it in the papers?”

“No; or if I did, I did not attach much importance to it then. It is different now, and horrible, most horrible! What was the dead man’s name?”

“Hiram Carewe, sir, a man of forty-one, a gypsy fellow, against whom more than one could bear witness he was a confirmed poacher, as was his precious son, James Carewe, who is now starting his five years. But you never heard anything like the savage way in which he turned upon Sir Philip when he saw him in the witness-box. ‘You murdered my father,’ he shouted out. ‘You, Philip Cranstoun, liar, and coward! Your men are liars and perjurers, too. You know right well what father and I came to the Chase for, and that we never struck a blow but in self-defence. We hadn’t a weapon about us but our clasp-knives, and after you’d murdered my father you were three to one against me, and I had to fight for my life. You’re a perjurer and a villain, but I swear I’ll be even with you yet.’ He was hushed down, of course, and when the doctors had proved how bad the gamekeeper’s wounds were, he being dreadfully hacked about the neck and shoulders by James Carewe’s knife, the jury found him guilty of unlawfully wounding with intent to kill, and gave him five years, as served him right. But, lor’, sir, that wasn’t the end of it, for poor Sir Philip, who in his evidence said all he could to screen the man, I’m sure, as soon as he was leaving the building to get on his horse, as his groom was holding for him, up comes a ragged, wicked-looking, old gray-haired gypsy woman, all yellow and wrinkled, with a pair of eyes like burning coals, so William’s wife told me. ‘Where’s my son’s murderer?’ she yelled. ‘Where’s the man who’s killing my Hiram’s child?’ Up she come close to Sir Philip, before any one could stop her, and flings in his face a handful of mud she picked up in the roadway. Sir Philip he swears, and the witch she shrieks with laughter. Then suddenly she stops, lifts her finger, and rolls out the most awful curse a body ever heard. William’s wife said it made her cold to her bones to listen. The woman cursed his whole life and all that he did. He should lose wife and child, she said, his name should become a scoff and a byword throughout the land; he should be wretched at home and hated abroad; no one should ever love him again; and she would live, if it was for fifty years, to laugh at him, as he lay dying in a miserable hovel, deserted and alone.

“She took such a tone of command, and looked so terrible, that the people about seemed afraid to stop her; and even Sir Philip himself, as he stood wiping the mud from his face, seemed sort of dazed like for the minute. As soon as she’d finished, he was for calling for the police, but not as if he was in much of a hurry for them, and no one meddled with the old woman, who went off muttering and cursing. But there was a sharp stone in the mud she threw, and William’s wife saw the blood running down the side of Sir Philip’s face as he wiped it with his handkerchief. But, poor man! what a day for him, to be insulted like that, and out of court, all on account of a pack of filthy gypsies. And they do say, though, of course, I’m not so silly as to believe it, that those gypsies have the evil eye, and that it’s most awful unlucky to be cursed by one of them. William’s wife said she felt she’d rather have died at once than have such things said to her. The old woman’s eyes looked that dreadful that William’s wife was taken with hysterics as she was telling me about the affair. Lor’, sir, I do hope nothing dreadful will happen in consequence.”

Dr. Netherbridge dismissed Mrs. Brooks presently, and going over to the Boar’s Head Hotel, where the latest local gossip was always to be heard, he found that his housekeeper’s account had been in no way exaggerated. James Carewe’s threats in court occupied a measure of public attention, but the gypsy woman’s curse was the cream of the news, and much solemn head-wagging took place over it. Not one person there, however, had the slightest suspicion of the relationship which existed between these poachers and gypsies and the lovely wife of Sir Philip Cranstoun, and Dr. Netherbridge returned to his home oppressed by the terrible responsibility which developed upon him of imparting the news of her father’s death and her brother’s imprisonment to Lady Cranstoun in her present critical state of health.

As to the chief actor in these scenes, Sir Philip Cranstoun, he was in his secret heart less unmoved by to-day’s events than he made himself appear. Old Mrs. Carewe’s curse lingered in his ears as he sat by his lonely dinner-table, trying vainly to dim his recollection of that unpleasant scene outside the court-house by deep draughts of rare old wine. But no amount of drinking had ever yet clouded his faculties, which to-night seemed abnormally on the alert.

His marriage had been a great, a terrible mistake, he told himself, as he sat in a deep, comfortable arm-chair before the great fire-place. Disdaining women of his own rank as silly, and those of a lower position in life as coarse and vulgar, nature had suddenly revenged herself upon him for his indifference to the other sex by inspiring in him a mad love for his sister’s beautiful gypsy protégée. In the height of this he had married her, and his passion had cooled almost as rapidly as it had grown hot. Instead of a docile and humble tool, he found a proud and self-willed girl, who seemed in no way impressed by his extraordinary condescension and kindness in making her Lady Cranstoun. Very speedily his love turned to a sombre dislike, and he set himself to work to crush all opposition out of her nature. On one point particularly he had insisted from the first. She must utterly and forever renounce her kindred, whose very existence he considered as an insult to him. His last remaining spark of affection for her was extinguished when he discovered that she had disobeyed his strenuous orders on this point, and had contrived to see and speak with her relatives. But his wish for an heir, and his fear lest the estates, which were strictly entailed, should pass to his brother, whom he heartily detested, forced him to tolerate his wife’s presence, and his anger, therefore, knew no bounds when, owing, as he believed to Clare’s indifference and neglect, his infant son’s life faded away. On that unlucky night when Hiram Carewe met his death, Sir Philip, who had been informed of the gypsies’ intention to visit his daughter, set his men on to seize the Carewes as poachers, and drive them out of the grounds. His men, over-zealous in executing their master’s orders, attacked the Carewes so savagely that, the wild gypsy blood of the latter being roused, one of the gamekeepers might well have paid for his obedience with his life but for Sir Philip’s shot. The Baronet had no intention of killing his wife’s father, although he was viciously glad of an opportunity to wound him. He hated Lady Cranstoun’s gypsy kindred most heartily, and wished them all out of the world; but it was a momentary matter of regret with him that his hand had fired the fatal shot which made Clare a orphan. After that point, affairs seemed taken out of his hands. The police interference, the inquest, and James Carewe’s trial, had all taken place without any impetus on his side; the one imperative necessity was that Lady Cranstoun should be, for some time at least, kept in ignorance of the fate of her father and brother.

Even as he thus reasoned, the door of the dining-room was suddenly opened, and Clare Cranstoun, corpse-like in her pallor, her long black hair dishevelled about her shoulders, and her eyes gleaming with what looked like madness, advanced toward him, ghost-like in her loose white dressing-gown, and he knew in an instant that she had learned the truth.

Sir Philip’s groom had, indeed, described to Margaret the scene outside the courthouse that afternoon, and the woman, totally ignorant of the interests at stake, had retailed the story to her mistress as she was brushing her hair for the night.

“My father! My brother!” Lady Cranstoun murmured, with parched lips, as she staggered forward into the room. “What have you done with them?”

Looking at her, he realized that it was impossible to deceive her longer. He pushed a chair toward her, but she impatiently declined it.

“I am sorry to say,” he answered then, in those hard, level tones of his, “that your father and your brother plotted with you to disobey my orders. It is you who are to blame for the consequences.”

“Where are they?” she cried, wildly.

“Your father was mistaken for a poacher, and was accidentally shot in a scuffle——”

“Murdered! Murdered by you!” she shrieked, wringing her hands as one distraught. “My father—my poor father!”

Sir Philip laid his hand on the bell-rope.

“For three years,” he said, coldly, “I have been trying to prove to you that it is worse than useless to try to disobey my orders. This unfortunate accident will, I hope, convince you of your folly. As to the other poaching gypsy, James Carewe, I did what I could to get him off, but he had savagely assaulted one of my keepers, and has got five years for it. In future you will know better than to attempt to hold any communication with your disreputable family.”

She stared at him with distended eyes.

“In future!” she repeated, in a low, altered voice. “What have you to do with my future?”

Her tone was so singular that he looked into her face for the first time during this interview, and read there a burning hate, stronger and deeper than ever he was capable of cherishing. Without a word she turned from him, and left the room as the servant entered it in response to his master’s ring.

That night, in a storm of wind and rain, an old woman and a lad of sixteen waited in the woods outside the Chase, with a horse stolen from Sir Philip’s stables, the bridle of which was held by Brian Carewe. And at one o’clock a figure, in the black cloak, bonnet, and long veil of a nurse, stole from the great oak doors, and over the slippery dead leaves that cumbered the steps, to join them. The old woman helped her on the horse and mounted it behind her, the lad held the bridle; and so by devious ways through the forest, known only to gypsies, Lady Cranstoun, of the Chase, left her husband’s home never to return.

Rather more than a month later, while still the hue and cry over Lady Cranstoun’s disappearance, as it was rumored during an attack of delirium and fever, rang through the countryside, Dr. Ernest Netherbridge, reading a medical work before his study fire at midnight, was disturbed by a late caller.

His housekeeper was in bed, and he himself opened the door upon a tall, handsome, black-browed lad, and a covered cart, drawn by a powerfully-built horse, with flanks steaming in the frosty air.

It was a case of life and death, the lad said, and the patient was his sister. Dr. Netherbridge was an absolutely unselfish man in following his profession, and slipping on his overcoat, he entered the cart, and was driven for over an hour and a half through the dark country roads until the driver, who had been monosyllabic or silent on the way, drew up near a thatched cottage a little back from the road.

“You’ll find my sister and her grandmother within. I’ll wait here to drive you home,” he said.

Dr. Netherbridge tapped at the cottage door, which was opened by an evil-looking old woman, with unkempt hair bound with a bright-colored kerchief. After hearing his name, she conducted him to the invalid’s room, where two women, apparently nurses, were busy, the one in trying to quiet a baby ten days old, the other bending over the still figure of its mother stretched upon the bed.

One glance at the waxen face, the blue-black hair, delicate features and great dark eyes told Dr. Netherbridge that this mysterious patient was none other than the missing Lady Cranstoun, and that the baby girl whose fretful cries filled the room was the child concerning whom the Baronet was so anxious.

The mother was intensely weak, hardly, indeed, alive at all. Dr. Netherbridge administered and prescribed what remedies he could. But before leaving he thought well to inform old Mrs. Carewe, the sick woman’s grandmother, that he had recognized the patient, and should at once communicate the fact to her husband.

“That is just why I sent for you,” said the old woman, while a smile of malevolent cunning lit up her face. “As soon as my Clare is dead, and she won’t live above a few hours now, doctor or no doctor, that child will be sent to her father, Sir Philip Cranstoun. Poor folks like us, with no men to work for us, can’t afford to bring up a Baronet’s daughter properly. And your word will be needed in proof of her identity.”

On the following day, when he called at the Chase with his statement, Dr. Netherbridge learned that a neighboring farmer had been commissioned to bring a basket to the house, within which reposed an infant eleven days old, upon whose gown was pinned a paper with the following words:

“This is Stella Cranstoun, daughter of Sir Philip Cranstoun and Clare his wife, formerly Clare Carewe. She was born on the twelfth of November. Her mother, Lady Cranstoun, died at four o’clock this morning.—Signed, Sarah Carewe; Mary Wrexham, nurse; Julia Tait, nurse;” and dated carefully.

Thus was Sir Philip freed from his matrimonial perplexities, and left with an altogether undesired infant daughter on his hands.

CHAPTER I.
KNIGHTS ERRANT.

Eighteen years had passed since the flight of Clare Lady Cranstoun and the birth of her daughter Stella.

The touch of spring was upon the Surrey meads and Surrey hills, and a tender gray-green veil adorned the boughs laid bare by winter winds.

Before an ideal country-house, low and rambling, with plentiful green lattice-work for the creepers beginning now to bud, and broad terraces sheltered by verandas overlooking a trim tennis-lawn and a flower-garden gay with hyacinths and daffodils, in joyous flower, a comely group was gathered. Two young men, who had been for three days guests, were taking leave of Mr. and Mrs. Braithwaite, the three pretty Misses Braithwaite, their still prettier cousin, and the two young brothers of the family.

A more attractive and typically English group could hardly be imagined. Father and mother, plump, handsome, and well-fed, surveying, with excusable pride, their three fair-haired girls, all of whom possessed wide shoulders, slender waists, fresh complexions, and clear gray eyes. The Misses Braithwaite and their cousin could all ride, drive, play lawn tennis and the newest dance music, and they one and all looked forward to the time when they should marry “well,” and spend every season in London. Between these four young ladies there existed a marked and charming likeness; but the two young men, from one of whom at least they were so regretfully parting, were extremely dissimilar in appearance, voice, and manner.

The elder was a man of seven-and-twenty, fully six feet four inches in height, and of massive build and proud, erect carriage, which made him appear even taller than he really was. His hair, of a golden-brown color, curled closely over his handsome head, which was set upon his broad shoulders like that of a young Hercules. His features were well cut, his brown eyes as clear and beautiful in color as those of a collie-dog, and a drooping yellow mustache shaded the outlines of a mouth which at times, when closely shut, gave a look of hardness to his expression. In a word, he was a superb specimen of young English manhood, and as if nature had never wearied in her gifts, she united to a superb frame and handsome face a particularly rich and mellow voice.

And yet there was but little doubt that if the eyes of the four young ladies occasionally rested upon him with admiration, their serious attentions were all reserved for his companion, who could not, by the grossest flattery, have been termed even ordinarily good-looking.

A short, slight man of five-and-twenty, pale and sallow of skin, with close-cropped black hair, penetrating light gray eyes, set too near together in his head, a long, clean-shaved upper lip, short nose and wide mouth, of which the lower jaw slightly protruded; he was not as directly ugly as this description would suggest, but was fatally plain, insignificant, and uninteresting. His manners, too, in contrast with the easy geniality of his friend, were abrupt and sarcastic, and his voice was far from pleasant. To some men he was attractive by reason of his unusual intelligence and originality; but to the ordinary lawn-tennis-playing young lady there was nothing to recommend his appearance or his manners.

The attention shown to him by the entire Braithwaite family was the more remarkable in that he took very little notice of the girls, scarcely even troubling himself to look at them, and showing clearly his wish to escape from their friendly blandishments. Mrs. Braithwaite was his mother’s second cousin, which accounted somewhat for the favor shown him over and above what was displayed toward his companion; but to his own cynical mind the true reason of the family attentions was that here were four marriageable girls, all in want of a wealthy husband, and that he, Viscount Carthew, only son of the Earl of Northborough, and heir to a splendid rent-roll as well as to the fortune of his mother, who had been an American heiress, was an admirable parti, whereas the handsome young giant beside him possessed little in the world but his muscles and sinews and the big black mare, who stood now pawing the ground, impatient to set off again upon their travels.

When at last the two friends had ridden down the gravel drive, passed out of the gates, and waved a last good-by to Mr. Braithwaite’s pretty niece and daughters, Lord Carthew was not slow in expressing his opinion concerning them.

“Isn’t it truly disgusting, Hilary,” he began, “to see four healthy young women with good looks, for such as admire well-groomed animals without expression, each and every one of them trained to set her cap at an ugly and ill-tempered young man, solely because he will have money and a title? If I were passably good-looking or attractive in manner, I could find it in my heart to make excuses for them. But as it is, they make me long to ‘take some savage woman,’ as the fellow in ‘Locksley Hall’ suggested, and go and live with her in some island where the currency is cowrie shells, and the title of lord means no more than that of chimney sweep.”

Hilary Pritchard laughed with the easy-going good nature characteristic of big young men.

“You talk as if savages were all radicals,” he said. “I’d bet you anything you like that rank and money are quite as much esteemed among them as here with us, and a lady whose husband can hang up fourteen scalps over her front door would think twice before she called on another woman with only six or seven of such trophies. Look at the way in which Africans kow-tow to their chiefs. Rank and titles are visible signs of power, and power will always be reverenced.”

“Yes; but not fallen in love with. Conceive the notion that those nasty girls played at me, sang at me, rode and drove at me for two mortal days, and all in the hope of what? Securing my affection? Not a bit of it. Just with the idea of persuading me that they were in love with me, so that one of them might run a chance of becoming some day Countess of Northborough.”

“How bitter you are against women!” exclaimed his friend, lighting a cigar. “Now I thought them very nice and very pretty girls.”

“You can appreciate them, because you stand on your own merits,” grumbled Lord Carthew. “When you fall in love with a girl, you will know her affection is disinterested. I don’t see how girls can help falling in love with a fellow like you,” he added, glancing with envious admiration at Pritchard’s fine figure.

“My dear Claud, that speech shows how little you understand women’s tastes. Last season I went about a good bit with an aunt who is fond of society, and I never had the ghost of a chance of talking to any specially agreeable women. The little men, writer-chaps, or long-haired, foreign musicians, or else your dapper little, well-oiled and varnished tea-and-scandal-loving exquisites—those are the men who win women’s hearts. I assure you that after remarking with surprise how large I am, they take no more interest in me than if I were so much beef.”

“That’s all your confounded modesty. A man of six feet four can afford to be modest. All this discontent of mine arises from intense self-appreciation. The fact is, I have something of the ridiculous sentimental schoolgirl notion of being ‘loved for myself alone,’ isn’t that the expression? And it chafes me to think, now that my people are forever worrying me to get married, that there is nothing about me but my money and my position to make a girl care for me. Absurd, isn’t it?—and rather bourgeois to cherish these conventional notions about marriage. But I have no doubt I shall live them down, and within the next year or so shall lead to the altar, at St. Paul’s, Knightsbridge, or St. Margaret’s, Westminster, quite the conventional young English lady, fair-haired, gray-eyed, pink-skinned, with a waist squeezed into the smallest possible breathing compass, and a train of brocade carried by two dressed-up little boys, and from six to ten bridesmaids, all equally well-born and well-looking, who would all have been equally ready to marry my name and position if I had asked them, unless any other man with more to offer had made a higher bid for their valuable affections.”

He spoke in hard, level tones, but Hilary, who had been Lord Carthew’s chum at Oxford, and both knew and understood him, realized by the slight nervous twitching of the speaker’s eyes and eyebrows how much of truth and of genuine feeling lay under this pretence of cynical indifference.

Very few people thoroughly understood Claud Viscount Carthew. Great things had been expected of him during his University career, where he had distinguished himself by his brilliant acquirements as much as by his notable eccentricities. In politics he was theoretically a radical of radicals, but Hilary, one of the very few men of his time with whom he was really intimate, understood quite well the intensity of the pride which was masked under an affectation of socialistic doctrines. The Earl of Northborough, a powerful and prominent Conservative peer, trusted to time to cure his only son of his levelling tendencies, and was strongly desirous of seeing him married to some lady in his own rank of life, who might be trusted to tone down Lord Carthew’s idiosyncracies.

Whether owing or not to the sturdy and independent spirit brought into the family on the side of his mother, a Pennsylvania heiress of old Puritan stock, certain it was that Claud Bromley Viscount Carthew was utterly unlike any other heir to an earldom in England. He was singularly free from vices, and unfashionable enough to be strictly honorable in paying his debts. He held the unusual opinion that it was as necessary and important to pay a tailor for a coat as a friend for a gambling debt. He also worked as hard for his exams as though he intended to be a parson or a schoolmaster, or as though a couple of letters after his name could be of any material value to a man who would some day be worth fifty thousand a year. His theories on marriage were also archaic in the extreme, in the opinion of his equals. He was anxious not only to marry a woman he loved, but a woman who loved him, and until she appeared on the scene he had not the slightest desire to amuse himself in the society of less estimable sirens. Music-halls bored him, and he had too much respect for his own intelligence to cloud it by drink. In field sports and out-door exercises he did not shine, but he liked them, and he heartily admired physical courage, strength, and endurance. Hilary Pritchard, the son of a Yorkshire “gentleman farmer” of very moderate means, had first attracted Lord Carthew’s attention by the ease with which he excelled in running, jumping, leaping, and “putting the stone.” Young Pritchard was as bad at study as he was admirable in athletics, and Lord Carthew was filled with enthusiasm by the evidences in him of just those qualities which he himself lacked. The farmer’s son’s disposition was also a happy foil to that of the Earl of Northborough’s heir. Hilary’s was in no sense an introspective, analytical, or self-torturing mind. He enjoyed life thoroughly in a simple and manly fashion, took people in general as he found them, was cautious in his friendships, shrewd in his judgments, strong and rooted in his rare loves and hates, and for the rest, a most cheery and optimistic companion, of untiring physical strength and unfailing good humor.

For five years the two young men had been great friends; but a break was soon to come between them. It had been arranged in the Pritchard family that in the autumn of the year Hilary was to proceed to Canada, there to start farming on his own account on some land left to him by a relative. Almost at the same time the question of Lord Carthew’s marriage had been prominently discussed in the Earl of Northborough’s family circle, and Claud was well aware that his parents hoped to see it take place within the year, if only a suitable bride could be found.

In view of these coming changes, the two college chums had resolved in this springtime of the year to carry out an oft-proposed plan for a journey in Kent, Surrey, and Hampshire, of about three weeks’ duration, on horseback, and unattended, carrying what luggage they required in their knapsacks on their saddles.

Hilary Pritchard on “Black Bess,” and Lord Carthew on a chestnut cob, had therefore started some ten days previously from a country seat in the Isle of Wight, belonging to the latter’s father. They had had lovely weather, and a very enjoyable tour, but so far no adventures worth mentioning, and the only point which had particularly struck Lord Carthew was what he considered as the unnecessary deference and snobbish attentions paid to him by hotel servants and chance strangers, solely because he was a son to Lord Northborough.

After riding on without speaking a short time, Claud suddenly turned in his saddle, and addressed his friend with twinkling eyes, and a look of great satisfaction.

“Look here, Hilary!” he exclaimed, “you won’t believe me on this subject of the disgusting sycophancy shown toward a title? You won’t admit that everybody treats me much better than they do you? Very well. I have a proposal to make. We have planned out about a fortnight longer of wandering. For the remainder of the time we will change rôles. You shall be Lord Carthew, and I will be Hilary Pritchard.”

“Nonsense!”

“No; but I mean it seriously. In the first place, to convince you that I am right; then again for the humor of the thing. My third reason will sound so ridiculous that I can hardly put it into words. One of my favorite theories is that events happen to us, and opportunities come in our way, just when we are ripe for them. Sometimes a premonition warns us beforehand. Often enough we disregard it, and miss the opportunity. There’s more than you think in the old Jewish notion of being ‘warned in a dream.’ My grandmother was a Scotchwoman, you know, Lady Kate Douglas, and great at second sight. Before I could speak plainly, she had communicated some of her beliefs to me.”

“You’re just like the rest of these very clever fellows,” said his friend, indulgently. “When you’ve left off believing in everything else, you’re bound to have faith in some superstitious fad. Well, and what have you been dreaming about now?”

No one had ever yet succeeded in laughing Lord Carthew out of any idea, however erratic.

“I started this tour,” he said, quietly, “in search of adventures, you know, and so far we haven’t had any. But you must remember I am also in search of a wife, and I have a rooted conviction that if I find one to my liking it won’t be in the beaten track, but that I shall have to go out of my way to seek her out.”

“My dear Claud,” Hilary began, in a tone of some alarm, “does this mean that your radicalism is going to land you in the arms of a milkmaid? A rustic countess, with red elbows and a strong dialect?”

“I should never dream of marrying any woman without good breeding and refinement,” the other returned in quiet, decided tones. “But if she be a lady, it will be immaterial to me whether her parents are received at Court or not. Only she must be something unlike the girls I am used to meeting. My sisters, and my sisters’ friends, and girls like the Braithwaites, I cannot tell you how they bore me. I don’t quite know what I do want, but most certainly I don’t want them.”

“Granted. But what has all this to do with your mad proposal to exchange names with me? Of course, I shouldn’t consent. But what possible connection is there between your ideal ladylove, and your last crazy notion?”

“More than you think. If we should meet her—don’t laugh, anything is possible—if we should, as I say, during the next fortnight, happen to light upon just the woman I am waiting for, I am eccentric enough to wish to stand before her on my own poor merits, with my plain face, and insignificant appearance, my bad temper, and all the rest of it—just Mr. Pritchard, going out to Canada to make his fortune in the autumn. Then I should endeavor to gain her interest, and in time her affection.”

“What an extraordinary chap you are for talking nonsense seriously! One would think you expected your ideal young woman to drop from the clouds at the present moment.”

“Perhaps I do. Did I ever tell you of my visit to Kyro, the fashionable fate-reader, in Bond Street, last Christmas?”

“You don’t mean to say, Carthew, that you are going to take on palmistry?”

“I had an hour to fill in before meeting my father,” Lord Carthew continued, quite unmoved by his companion’s raillery, “and as it was too cold to study the shops, and there were no picture-galleries worth seeing open, I dropped into Mlle. Kyro’s. You know what a success she made of it until the police, tired of running in old women for getting sixpences out of servant girls, shut up her entertainment. Well, she was a very charming woman, and didn’t go in for any ‘fee, faw, fum,’ at all. She studied my face and my hands, and after some very happy guessing at what had already happened to me, she proceeded to foretell that in the spring of this year I should meet unexpectedly, while on a journey, a lady with whom I should fall madly in love. Meeting her would, so she declared, alter the whole course of my life. Furthermore, I should marry, and go through a whole sea of trouble, and as far as she would tell me, even worse misfortunes were in store. Kyro, however, with tears in her eyes—very pretty eyes, by the way—begged me to be the arbiter of my own fate. All these troubles could be avoided, so she assured me, if I would be guided by reason and not by passion. I thanked her for her good advice; she gave me a cup of tea and I left the fee on the table, and there is the end of it—or perhaps, the beginning.”

“You are not going to tell me,” exclaimed Hilary, “that a man of your intellectual attainments attaches the slightest importance to such utter nonsense as professional fortune-telling? I shall begin to believe study has turned your brain.”

“Just as you like,” said Lord Carthew, shrugging his shoulders with sudden indifference. “But to return to our former subject, grant me this favor, Hilary. It will certainly be our last outing together for a long time, possibly forever. You are going to settle out there, you will marry——”

“Not exactly,” broke in Hilary, with hearty emphasis. “Marriage isn’t part of my programme, by any means. I’ve got to make my way and to make money, and I don’t want a burden around my neck to start with.”

“Anyhow, our ways will widen apart. It will do you no harm to lend me your name for a few days. I will solemnly vow not to bring it into discredit, and if the trick be found out, it will only be considered as another freak of ‘mad Carthew,’ as they call me at Oxford.”

“I don’t care to go masquerading about the country in borrowed plumes——”

“Still, you must, just for a day or two, until I have made you own I was in the right, about the snobbishness and all that. How can it affect you? We shall probably only meet innkeepers, chance visitors, waiters, and hostlers, and you are just leaving England and not in the least likely to see any of them again.”

He was so persistent in his arguments that Hilary at length agreed, for peace and quiet, to fall in with his views, at least tacitly.

“But you must do all the lying,” he stipulated. “I lie with the most confounded clumsiness. Besides, I don’t like it. I’ll humor your whim so far as to call you Claud only and not Carthew, and to answer to my own name. And on your head be all the complications which may arise from your silly freak.”

The time had passed swiftly by in talk, and the shadows had grown longer in the lanes, where the air was sweet with budding hawthorn, and birds twittered in the hedges. For the past hour their way had led them alongside of a very spacious and thickly-wooded park, and at this point Lord Carthew, curious as to its ownership, questioned a passing field laborer, who looked at him in surprise.

“That’s the Chase, sir, Sir Philip Cranstoun’s place,” he said, with evident compassion for the inquirer’s ignorance as he passed on.

“Cranstoun?” Lord Carthew repeated the name meditatively. “He’s a Baronet, to be sure, and has a capital place, Cranstoun Hall, near Balmoral. Splendid shooting. He’s a distant connection of ours through his wife, who was Lady Gwendolen Douglas, daughter of the Duke of Lanark. She was my grandmother’s niece; consequently, she is some relation to me, but what I can scarcely define.”

“Are you going to look her up, too, on the strength of it?”

“Not exactly. I know other members of the family. The type is unmistakable. Long, lean, fair, with watery blue eyes, sandy hair, high noses, and the most extraordinary amount of pride and narrowness. I wish Sir Philip Cranstoun joy of his bargain.”

“Do you know him?”

“No. But I’ve heard about him from men who have shot at his Scotch place. Hard as nails and proud as Lucifer, that is the character his guests give him. He has some children, I believe, but I don’t know how many. They must be a most unpleasant lot, if there’s anything in heredity. For myself, I can’t imagine a more disagreeable blend than a Cranstoun and a Douglas.”

They had ridden many miles since lunch, and by six o’clock, when they arrived at a little wayside inn, the Cranstoun Arms, they were both hungry enough to be glad of the simple fare provided. The landlord had not been settled there for more than three years. He was a cheerful and garrulous person, and quite ready to chat about Sir Philip, whom, however, he had only seen on two occasions. As to Lady Cranstoun and the young lady, the former was an invalid, and never drove about except in a closed carriage accompanied by her daughter, and the landlord could not personally express an opinion concerning them.

Concerning Sir Philip’s hard, stern character he had much to impart. The Baronet was especially renowned for his rancor against gypsies. If any one of that nomadic tribe was found trespassing upon his land, he would invariably contrive to have them accused of poaching or thieving.

“Sir Philip, he’d go five miles to hang a gypsy, they say about here. It’s wonderful how he do hate them. There’s a story that some twenty odd years ago one of ’em cursed him in the market-place, nigh the court-house. Folks say a gypsy’s curse sticks. But lor’! what won’t people say?”

CHAPTER II.
STELLA.

By half-past six Lord Carthew and Hilary, having finished their improvised meal, strolled down the country road together, smoking, glad to stretch their legs after being so long in the saddle.

The former especially was in high glee because of mine host’s deferential manner toward Hilary when he was told by Claud that his name was Lord Carthew.

“Until that moment, as you saw,” he exclaimed, “the eggs and bacon and cold beef were supposed to be quite good enough for us. But as soon as the good man found that you had what cockneys call ‘a handle to your name,’ he promptly started profuse and tiresome apologies. It’s such a relief to have that sort of rubbish lavished on you instead of on me.”

“I think you make an absurd fuss about trifles,” observed Hilary, calmly.

One great reason for the warm affection cherished by “mad Lord Carthew” for his friend was Hilary’s utter absence of either arrogance or toadyism. The sturdy Yorkshire independence of young Pritchard never degenerated into the roughness which sometimes characterizes Northerners. He was proud of his family in his way. The Pritchards had farmed their own land for over two hundred and fifty years, and their present homestead had been built in the days of Elizabeth. Lord Carthew had had to make the first advances toward friendship, but once he had succeeded in winning Hilary’s respect and liking, the latter was too sensible to withdraw proudly from his companionship because he was not his equal in social position.

“You worry about things, trifles as it seems to me, in such an extraordinary way,” he said. “Now this evening, what can be pleasanter than this scene, the little wood by the roadside, where every tree is budding into leaf, the primroses in yellow patches among the ground ivy, and that fresh, delicious smell of spring in the air? I’m thankful I was sent away from home to Harrow and Oxford, and an accountant’s office in London. I suppose if I’d never left the country I should never have seen any beauty in it.”

“You would have felt it, but would have been unable to put it into words,” returned his friend. “Let’s explore this wood a bit, and see where it leads to.”

They struck in over the moss under the young trees. Straight ahead of them, as they pushed their way through the branches, they saw a high, precipitous bank, crowned by a low stone wall, and beyond more trees.

“That will be Sir Philip Cranstoun’s place again, I suppose,” observed the Viscount. “He’s got a good bit of land enclosed about here.”

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when both men heard the sound of a horse’s hoofs trampling over the dry leaves and young twigs behind them. Pressing a little forward, they came to a point where a passage seemed to have been made through the trees, not much more than four feet wide. Standing within the shadow of the woods so that their figures were hidden, both young men turned their gaze in the direction of the horse’s galloping feet, and through an opening in the trees both saw at the same moment a young girl, mounted on a beautiful little black thoroughbred, flying towards them.

She was making straight for the bank. Her small, half-childish face was pale, her mouth fast shut, while her great dark eyes shone with excitement. Under her soft felt hat her dark hair, tossed by the wind, fluttered in soft ringlets round her face, rebellious of the hairpins which held it in check in a coil at the back of her head. In figure she was very slender and youthful looking, and her plain dark green habit emphasized her lack of superfluous curves. Even though she passed so quickly, both the two friends received the same powerful impression of excitement, intensity, and enjoyment stamped upon her features.

“She can’t be going to jump that wall!”

The same exclamation was on the lips of both. At the foot of the bank rider and steed paused. The girl stooped over her horse’s neck, and murmured something in caressing tones. Then she lifted the reins, the little thoroughbred ran up the bank like a cat, lifted his forefeet, and disappeared with his rider over the wall.

“By Jove!”

“I never saw anything neater!”

Just an interchange of these remarks, and then Claud and Hilary instinctively made their way to the bank, and slowly and laboriously ascended its steep sides. The stone wall was about five feet high, and over the other side the ground shelved again in an awkward dip before what seemed the fringe of a dense wood.

Hilary paused by the wall, but found that Claud had already begun to climb it by means of the uneven stones.

“We can’t go any farther,” said the Yorkshireman, quietly; “this is private property.”

“What does that matter? We are out for adventures. I never saw any one with a seat like that child’s, did you?”

“She rides well, certainly,” Hilary returned, deliberately; “but she isn’t a child.”

“Fifteen, I should say.”

“Or a little more.”

“Anyhow, I am interested, and am going over.”

“I shall have to stand by you, and keep you out of mischief, I suppose.”

A few scrambling steps, a slide, and a roll, brought them to the base of the declivity, and within the precincts of Cranstoun Chase enclosure. The identity of the girl had not suggested itself to either of them; but simultaneously within their hearts the sight of her had aroused a strange feeling of interest and excitement. About that small, pale face, shining dark eyes and lithe, girlish form, there clung a fascination which both men felt powerless to resist. And although he had not yet had time to realize it, Lord Carthew, for his part, had fallen in love at first sight with the beauty and the daring of the thoroughbred’s rider.

Dusk was gathering about them; yet they pressed on, both filled with the overmastering desire to catch another glimpse of that charming vision. After forcing their way in silence through the thick undergrowth, they came upon a wide, grassy avenue ploughed by the recent tramp of horses’ feet. As they emerged from among the trees again, upon their ears came the sound of a horse’s flying feet tearing up the turf. A good way off yet they could see her, and see, too, the antics of the small, black horse, beside himself with excitement, rearing, plunging, and throwing up his heels in a way which would have unseated any but a clever and experienced rider.

Suddenly the thoroughbred paused, raised his head, sniffing the air, and then started off at a mad pace along the turf avenue. It seemed patent to the two spectators that he was running away with his daring rider, the more so as a little feminine shriek reached their ears.

Clearly it was their duty to stop him. The girl would most certainly break her neck if thrown at that rate of progress. Their plans were formed after a second’s deliberation. As the horse neared them, coming like the wind, with clods of earth torn up by his heels flying in the rear, Lord Carthew sprang into the open, waving the animal back, and in the moment’s pause of alarm, Hilary dashed forward and seized the reins, hanging on to them with all his weight.

Snorting, and quivering in every limb, the horse at length came to a standstill, and looked with wide-open, bloodshot eyes at his captor. He for his part had his gaze fixed upon the rider.

For a moment she stared down at his face, which was not so very far below her own, without speaking. Her great clear eyes were distended, like those of her horse, and in the twilight her face seemed to wear an unearthly pallor. His hand was still upon her bridle. She withdrew her eyes from his, and asked, petulantly:

“Why did you stop my horse?”

“He was running away with you.”

She laughed disdainfully as she repeated!

“Running away—with me!”

“I heard you scream.”

“Yes. Because I was enjoying myself.”

“No one ought to ride at such a pace as that,” he said, coolly, still with his brown eyes fixed upon hers. “It is dangerous.”

“Not to me. And who are you, and what right have you to lecture me? Take your hand off my bridle, and let me go.”

As she spoke she gave a sharp cut with her whip on her horse’s shoulder. The animal reared and plunged, and simultaneously the clear, sharp “ping” of a shot rang through the silent woods.

Hilary’s hand dropped from the bridle, and a short exclamation of pain escaped his lips as his arm dropped by his side. Through the sleeve of his shooting-coat near the shoulder the blood oozed out, and began rapidly pouring down his arm. Lord Carthew sprang to his assistance.

“I am shot,” Hilary said. “It serves me right for interfering with a woman. Carthew, let’s get out of this.”

The girl, whose horse had dashed on ahead as soon as Hilary’s restraining hand was withdrawn, returned now, and uttered a little cry of horror as she saw that Hilary was wounded.

“How did it happen?” she asked breathlessly.

“Some one in the woods over there shot him in the shoulder as he was holding your horse,” returned Lord Carthew. “I must get him to the nearest inn as soon as possible.”

“No,” she exclaimed, impulsively. “Look how the blood is pouring from his shoulder! It is all my fault. We have a doctor staying in the house. Your friend must be taken home.”

“Home! Where?”

“To the Chase. I am Miss Cranstoun.”

Even in the hurry of the moment and the anxiety he felt on his friend’s account, for Hilary was very pale and evidently in pain, Lord Carthew could hardly refrain from a look of surprise at the girl’s statement. She was so utterly unlike his ideal of what “the product of a union between a Douglas and a Cranstoun” would be. No “long, limp, watery-eyed fairness” was here, but a small face, eloquent in its every line, a sensitive white skin, mobile red lips whose expression changed constantly, and eyes more wonderful even by this imperfect light than any he had ever seen, eyes strangely luminous, dilated pupils, and a border to the iris of so dark a blue that it seemed almost black. He could not have said at that moment whether she was adorably beautiful or only supremely interesting. She had captured and chained his imagination, and her every movement seemed to him the perfection of grace. Without any assistance she sprang off her horse, and taking his bridle, approached Hilary timidly.

“If you feel faint,” she said, “will you not mount my horse, and let me lead him to the house? Indeed, I don’t think you can walk. And may I try to bind your shoulder?”

Her voice was very sweet, and her gentle, even humble manner of speaking delighted Claud. He was astonished to hear his friend answer so coldly:

“I require no assistance, thank you, Miss Cranstoun. I am only sorry I spoiled your ride. Claud, we must get back to the inn as soon as possible.”

With that he raised his hat with his left hand, and turning his back on the lady, began to make his way through the trees in the direction whence they had come.

“Go after him! Go after him!” the girl whispered to Lord Carthew, clasping her small hands impulsively, while tears sprang to her eyes. “He is not fit to be alone. I can see he is badly hurt.”

Her words were only too true. A few seconds later Claud, hurrying after his friend, found him leaning against a tree, with set, white face, and half-closed eyes.

“I’m all right,” Hilary muttered in response to Carthew’s anxious inquiry. “Let’s—get—on.”

His voice sounded faint and muffled. Under the trees, in the waning light, it was impossible to see his face, but Claud realized that he was in great pain.

Here was a predicament indeed! Hilary weighed nearly fourteen stone. A space of tangled underwood, a bank, a wall, a steep declivity, another wood, and a walk of half a mile, separated the young men from the nearest inn. Even could they contrive to reach it, one wounded and half-insensible man and his slenderly-built companion, the accommodation would be of the poorest, and they were several miles from the nearest town, that of Grayling. Miss Cranstoun had offered the hospitality of her home, but Hilary had refused it, and Claud knew him to be extremely obstinate. Clearly he could not remain where he was, trespassing in the grounds of the Chase, with the night fast approaching, and Lord Carthew tried to rouse him.

“Hilary, old boy,” he said, “remember where we are, and what a distance we have to go. Won’t it be better to accept Miss Cranstoun’s offer and go to her house, to get your wound dressed by the doctor there?”

Hilary suddenly raised his head, and spoke in tones of unexpected emphasis.

“I wish I’d let the little vixen break her neck!” he remarked, viciously. “And I certainly am not going to accept the hospitality of a man who takes snapshots at any stranger who is fool enough to try to oblige his daughter.”

There was a sound of quick footsteps over the dead leaves and twigs. Miss Cranstoun had joined them in time to overhear Hilary’s last words. It was too dark to see her face, but her tone was courteous, if cold.

“It was not my father who fired that shot,” she said, quietly, “but one of the keepers. Stephen!” she called, authoritatively, to some one behind her. “This is the gentleman whom you wounded by your stupid mistake.”

The squarely built figure of a young, black-bearded man, in the dress of a gamekeeper and carrying a gun, appeared in attendance on her.

“I am very sorry, gentlemen,” he said, in a dogged manner, without looking at them, “but in the half light I thought it was a tramp worrying the young mistress, and so I fired my gun off to frighten him. I hadn’t any thought to hit any one.”

“Your confounded carelessness may have very serious results,” said Lord Carthew. “My friend is half-unconscious now from loss of blood. You must help me to get him out of this wood, and to bind up his shoulder roughly until we can get a doctor for him.”

Hilary muttered an impatient protest as the gamekeeper, in obedience to a few hurried words of command from Miss Cranstoun, assisted Hilary back to the spot where they had left the horse, with his bridle fastened to a tree. The young Yorkshireman’s coat was already saturated with blood, and Miss Cranstoun stood by, silent and very white, while Lord Carthew and her father’s servant drew off the wounded man’s coat, and made with their handkerchiefs a temporary bandage for the injured shoulder.

“He must come to the house at once,” burst from her lips at last. “You can see quite well he can hardly walk. Stephen, alter the saddle, and help him on to Zephyr.”

“I can very well walk, Miss Cranstoun. There is not the slightest need for all this fuss and trouble,” said Hilary, still with the same coldness he had before shown in his manner towards her.

“Nonsense, man! Miss Cranstoun is perfectly right, and we are very much obliged to her. Now, help us all you can in getting on this horse, for lifting you is no light matter, I can tell you.”

A feeling of growing faintness did more than his friend’s injunctions in inducing Hilary to comply. Zephyr snorted and fidgeted. The difference between seven stone twelve and thirteen stone twelve was an appreciable one; but Stephen’s strong hand was on the bridle, and Zephyr’s mistress walked alongside, patting and caressing the animal, and reducing his nervous excitement into comparative quiet by the magic of her touch.

Lord Carthew followed in silence until, the short cut between the trees becoming narrow, Miss Cranstoun stepped back, and he found himself beside her.

It had grown too dark for him to see more than the outline of her slight figure and delicate profile as she walked behind the horse, lifting her riding-habit from the ground with the hand in which she carried her workmanlike-looking hunting-crop.

“I cannot tell you how sorry I am about this accident,” she said, addressing Lord Carthew suddenly. “I am sure your friend meant to be kind. But I thought there was no one about, and I screamed in that silly way from sheer enjoyment. It isn’t riding that I care for, but flying. And I did not guess that any one would be in the woods so late, so I was just having a gallop before dinner. I have never been thrown in my life. I am never so happy or so comfortable as when I am on horseback, and unless Zephyr is going as fast as he can, neither he nor I enjoy ourselves. But I can understand that to strangers it might look dangerous. And I am dreadfully sorry about the accident to your friend. Will you tell me his name?”

In this young girl’s whole manner there was something so simple, innocent, and frank that Claud was more than ever enchanted with her. That feeling of fate which had haunted him all through his recent tour was upon him now. Here were all the conditions of Kyro’s prophecy fulfilled. The lady whom he was to meet on a journey, and with whom he was to fall madly in love, was walking by his side, and speaking to him in a voice which went straight to his heart, awakening hitherto unknown chords of sweetness there. All the romance, the sentiment, and the poetry, dormant in the nature of this singular young man, started into life at the proximity of this charming creature, at once so daring as a rider, so maidenly and gentle as a woman. Here was an opportunity of applying his test. He remembered it, and said unhesitatingly, in answer to Miss Cranstoun’s question:

“My friend is Lord Carthew.”

“Oh!”

It must have been fancy, he told himself, but her ejaculation seemed to express disappointment; and he noticed that she did not, when they struck into a wider path, walk as before by the side of the horse, but remained in the rear, much to his own secret satisfaction.

“I am afraid we shall be disturbing your parents,” he said, after a few moments’ silence.

“My father is in London,” she answered; “and mamma is an invalid. Lately she has been more delicate than usual, and an old friend and doctor of hers is happily staying with us, Dr. Morland Graham. I hope he will be able to set your friend right again. I shall never forgive myself if the wound proves to be a serious one.”

The gray wolf's daughter

TheGray Wolf’s Daughter.

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CONTENTS.