Caught in a Trap

John C. Hutcheson

"Caught in a Trap"

Volume One—Chapter One.

Amongst the Plungers.

“Hullo! Markworth. How lucky! Why you are just the man I want; you’re ubiquitous, who’d have thought of seeing you in town?” said Tom Hartshorne, of the —th Dragoons, cheerily, as he sauntered late one summer afternoon into a private billiard-room in Oxford-street, where a tall, dark-complexioned, and strikingly-handsome man, was knocking the balls about in his shirt-sleeves, and trying all sorts of fancy shots against the cushions—The sole occupant of the room was he, with the exception of the marker, who was looking on in a desultory sort of way at the strokes of the player from his thronelike chair underneath the scoring board.

“Hullo! Tom, by all that’s holy! And what brings you to Babylon? I left Boulogne last week, and ran up to see what the ‘boys’ were after; so here I am, quite at your service. What can I do for you, Tom? Are you hard up, in a row, or run away with your neighbour’s wife? Unbosom yourself, caro mio.”

“No, I’m all right, old chap; but nothing could be better. By Jove! it’s the very thing!”

“Who? Why? What? Enlighten me, Tom.”

“Well, you see, Markworth, I’ve got to go down to-morrow for my annual week to my mother’s place in Sussex. It will be so awfully slow; just fancy, old chap, a whole week in that dreary old country house, with no company, no shooting, no fishing, no anything! Why, it’s enough to kill a fellow!”

“Poor Tom,” observed Markworth, sympathisingly.

“Yes; but that’s not the worst either, old chap. My mother is very cranky, you know, and the house itself is as dull as ditch-water. You have to go to bed and get up by clockwork; and if one should be late at dinner, or in turning in, why, it is thought more of by the ruling powers than the worst sin in the decalogue. Besides, I have to keep straight and humour the old lady—for I am quite dependent on her until I come of age; and, though she’s very fond of me in her sort of way, she cuts up rough sometimes, and would stop supplies in a moment if I should offend her.”

“Dutiful infant! I pity your sorrows, Tom; but what can I do to help you?”

“I’m just coming to that; but we may as well have a game by the way, while we’re talking.”

“Certainly; how many points shall I give you? The usual number, eh? Score up, fifteen to spot, marker,” he said, turning to the little man, who, with a face of dull impassiveness, was sitting bolt upright, like Neptune with his trident, holding the billiard-rest in a perpendicular position, apparently hearing nothing, although his eyes twinkled every now and then. “You lead, Tom, of course.”

“All right, here goes; but, to return to what we were speaking about. You can help me very much, Markworth.”

“Can I? That’s a good cannon, you mustn’t play all through like that, Tom, or you’ll beat me easily; but, go on, and tell me what you want.”

“Ha! yes—you see I’ve got one saving clause in my predicament. My mother says I may bring some one down with me, and I don’t know who the deuce to take—for any of our fellows would ruin me in half a day with the old lady, by talking slang, or flirting with the maids, or something else.”

“And you want me to go and victimise myself for a week? Much obliged, I’m sure.”

“Nonsense, Markworth. By Jove! that’s a ripping hazard in the middle pocket; you’ve got the red in baulk, too, and the game’s all in your hands. You are really the only fellow I’d ask, and it would be a perfect godsend to have you. It won’t be so dull for the two of us together, and I’m sure you’ll be able to pull me out of many a scrape with the old lady, for she’s just your sort, and you can tackle her like one o’clock; only talk to her about the ‘Ologies’ old country families, and the peerage, and you’ll be all right. She never speaks of anything else. Besides, there’s a Miss Kingscott down there—a governess, or companion, or something of the sort to my sister—whom I’ve never yet seen, as she only came there this year. I daresay you can make love to her.”

“Thank you, especially after the warning about the maids!”

“But you’ll come, won’t you?”

“I can’t promise, Tom. There, that stroke ends the game; let’s finish billiards: they’re too slow. What are you going to do to-night, Tom?”

“A lot of us are going to have a quiet little dinner party at Lane’s. The old colonel has been awfully jolly, and let away nearly the whole squad on leave together. Will you come? There’ll be Harrowby, Miles—in fact all the boys. We’ll have lansquenette afterwards, and then you and I can talk over about running down to the country. Do come, there’s a good fellow.”

“Well, I will; what time do you dine?”

“Sharp seven; so don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there. Ta-ta, now, for I’ve got a lot of letters to write. I’m stopping at the ‘Tavistock’ by the way, in case I don’t turn up and you want to find me.”

They had emerged from the billiard-room, and now stood in the street.

“But you must come, I shall expect you and will take no excuse. I’m going to call on some jolly girls whom I met at the Woolwich hop last night. So good-bye till seven—sharp, mind!”

“All right,” answered the other, as Tom Hartshorne hailed a hansom, and was quickly whirled off to his destination in Bruton Street, where the Miss Inskips, two pretty and fast young ladies of the period, dwelt with their mamma, a widowed dame.

Allynne Markworth was not so much a type, as a specimen, of a curious class of men constantly to be met with in London society, and of whom society knows next to nothing. No one knew where he came from, who were his progenitors, or what he did; and yet he suffered in no respect from this self-same ignorance of the world around him, in which he lived and moved and had his being, as any other of its more regular units.

He always dressed well, lived well, and seemed to have a fair share of the loaves and fishes which Providence often so unequally bestows. Having the entrée of good houses, he knew “everybody,” and everybody knew him; but if you asked any of the men who knew him, and were constantly meeting him about, who Markworth was, the general answer you would get would be, “’Pon my soul, I don’t know.” Perhaps Tom Hartshorne knew more about him and was more intimate with him than anyone else, but even he had long ceased to puzzle his budding brains over any analysis of his friend: he was a “good fellow,” and “a clever fellow, by Jove,” and that was enough for him. Tom, however, never dreamt of calling Markworth by his Christian name, and no one else could have approached that phase of intimacy.

To tell the truth Allynne Markworth lived by his wits. He was a Chevalier d’Industrie in a certain sense of the term, although in a slightly more moral degree; and ran the race set before him by preying on the weaknesses, follies, and ignorances of human nature in the abstract, as evinced amongst his fellows in the concrete.

He was a good billiard player, and knew as well when to hide his play as “any other man.” Many a stray sovereign did he pick up in lives after pool at Phillipps’, even when he could not get a bet on, which he was never loth to take. The Hanover Square Club acknowledged his supremacy at whist, and happy was he who was his partner when guinea points were the rule. Being a good judge of horseflesh, he of course kept a book on the principal events of the year: rare in “hedging” he was seldom known to come out a loser.

With all these little strings to his bow, it is no wonder that Markworth managed to get along pretty comfortably; and although he toiled not nor yet did he spin, I much question whether King Solomon if clad en règle to the nineteenth century would have been better dressed, taking Poole as a criterion. Add to this that Allynne Markworth was a well-bred, handsome man of thirty to thirty-five—although his right age would have been rather hard to discover—and had a certain plausibility of manner which prevented one at first from noticing the somewhat sinister expression about his eyes and mouth; and the surprising thing would have been that he did not get on. Generally he had plenty of money; and when he had not he absented himself from society until his coffers were replenished in some secret way or other.

At this time, however, he had been for some months undergoing a run of ill-luck. The year had opened badly by the failure of a bubble company in which he was deeply interested; then, again, men were fighting shy of him at billiards, and it cost him more work for a sovereign than it was worth, and guinea points at whist were becoming rare events even amongst the most reckless habitués of the club; to climax his misfortunes, he had made a very losing book on the Derby, and although he paid it up—for to be a defaulter would have ruined him in his set—he had to leave London early in the season in consequence of not having the wherewithal to prosecute the war.

When he had gone away at the end of May he told Tom Hartshorne that he would be detained away on the continent on business for months; and yet here he was back again before the end of July. The fact was he came back money-hunting, and was so pressed now that he hardly knew where to turn. He had made up his mind that unless he married a fortune, discovered a gold mine, or tumbled into some wonderful luck, that his “little game,” as he expressed it, would be “all up.” He was glad to meet Tom Hartshorne so very opportunely at the present juncture, for he thought that he might be put in the way of some plan for changing events—and at the worst a little good card playing in the evening might place him in the position of being able “to look about him.”

Punctually at seven o’clock he showed himself up at Lane’s Hotel, where some half-a-dozen men of Tom’s regiment were assembled in a cosy little room up-stairs, well lighted, and with snow-white-cloth-covered-table, all duly prepared and laid out for the contemplated feast.

Dragoon officers or “Plungers”—indeed, all cavalry men—are pretty much alike, and unlike the remainder of the Army List. The mild, “gushing” comet, dashing “sub,” and massive captain, full-fledged and silky as to hair and drooping moustache—not forgetting general apathy of expression—of one troop, or regiment, resemble those of another, even as the proverbial “two peas,” and it would sorely tax one’s powers of diagnosis to discriminate between the members of a party like those assembled for the present “quiet little dinner, you know.”

Tom Hartshorne—no one who ever spoke two words with him could call him anything else but “Tom”—was the only exception to this rule; the others were all men of a class, “classy,” without any distinctive individuality. He, however, was of a different stamp. Of middle-height, thick-set, fair-haired, and open face—Saxon all over—his was the native mould, thorough British metal, that makes our strong and plucky athletes of the Isis and the Cam, who struggle each year for aquatic supremacy, like the strong Gyas fortisque Cloanthus of Virgil’s Aenead—that long line of heroes celebrated for every deed of daring, from Richard the “Lion-hearted” down to the last gallant recipient of the Victoria Cross: men of which stamp, thank God, live yet among us!

A thorough gentleman, his nature was as open as the day, which you could readily see for yourself by one glance into his truthful face, and clear blue eyes, although perhaps concealed partly by that slight upper-crust or veneer of egotism and affectation, which generally hides the better qualities of young men on first entering into life, and just released from their “mother’s apron string” and the trammels of home and school.

Tom Hartshorne was little more than nineteen, and it was a wonder, with his bringing up, that he was what he was; but nothing could altogether taint the sterling stuff of which he was composed. He was one who could pass through the lighter follies of military life unscathed, and only wanted some strong impetus, some ardent motive to bring him out in his true colours. Tom Hartshorne had made the acquaintance of Markworth about a year previous to the meeting with which the story opens—in fact just after he had been gazetted to his cornetcy, and had taken to him at once—and Markworth had apparently taken to him, a sort of chemical affinity of opposing forces.

It may be thought strange that natures so dissimilar should agree, but so it was. The Latin proverb is often curiously wrong; instead of similes similibus curantur, the prefix dis should be added, and then the axiom would be complete. When Tom first met Markworth, who had received an invitation to the mess of the —th, he was struck with him, and on introduction came to like him greatly, for he was so clever, so agreeable, so different to the men he had previously met that he could not fail to be impressed; you always find young men take to a man of the world, particularly if he be like such a man as Markworth was.

The little dinner at Lane’s passed off well, and the young Plungers enjoyed themselves to their heart’s core, now that they were not under the jaundiced eye of their stern major, who envied them all their strong digestions and perfect livers; and, it is to be feared, they drank a little more champagne than was good for some of them. At the table Markworth was placed alongside a brother sub of Tom’s, who was most communicative over his wine, talking in a low confidential voice with his elder companion, whom he wished to convince of his “mannishness,” of horses, dogs, and women, as befitted a noble young soldier.

During a pause in the conversation Markworth thought he might gain some information, and having an opportunity of putting in a word, asked—

“By the way, do you know any of Tom’s people?”

“Know them? By Jove! yes. Catch me there again, that’s all!”

“Why—how—what’s the matter?” asked Markworth. “I thought everybody liked Tom?”

“So they do; he’s a brick. But Tom ain’t his mother and his sister.”

“Certainly not,” answered the other, agreeing with the indisputable fact; “but what of them?”

“Well, the fact is Tom asked me down there last Christmas, and I never spent such a time in my life. They are very well connected, but see no people at all. The mother is a regular Tartar. There is also a sort of half idiot sister older than Tom. She has a pile of money left her, by the way; not a bad chance for any one in search of an heiress, who doesn’t care about beauty and brains, and that sort of thing!”

“The devil she has?”

“Yes, by Jove! a regular pot of money; twenty thou’ or more, I’m told. There’s no elder son and nobody else, so Tom will inherit all the property when the old lady hooks it. There you have the family. I stopped with them two days, but it nearly killed me. Men of the world like us, you know, can’t stand that sort of thing. Of course I had to plead regimental business, and get away. I remember the old lady—a regular she cat by Jove!—saying that she hoped my mamma—curse her impudence—would teach me better manners before she let me go out again. Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“Ha! ha! ha! a pleasant old lady, Harrowby; I do not wonder at your dignity being hurt. I must look out for her if I ever tackle her.”

“What, are you thinking of going down? Take my advice, don’t: you’ll be sick of it.”

“Yes, I may. Tom asked me, and perhaps I’ll see some fan,” responded Markworth—and there the conversation dropped.

Later on, when he wished Tom Hartshorne “good-night,” in reply to his repeated invitation, he promised to go.

“And we’ll start on Friday,” said Tom, gleefully; “that will be the day after to-morrow, you know.”

“All right, I’m your man. Call for me at the ‘Tavistock’ at twelve, and we can start as soon after as you like.”

“Done. That will just give us time to catch the 2:30 train. Good-night, old fellow!”

And they parted.

The next morning Mr Allynne Markworth took a solitary walk citywards. After passing through Temple Bar and the then—undesolated—Fleet Street, he ascended the hill of Ludgate; and turning into a thin row of straggling and seedy old buildings, found himself within the precincts of Doctor’s Commons, sacred to the archives of marriage—one cannot always say love—and death!

Here, having previously invested the sum of one shilling in current coin of the realm, he received permission to examine the “Last will and testament of one Roger Hartshorne, deceased, of the county of Sussex, gentleman,” the perusal of which document appeared to give him much internal satisfaction. His task did not take him long, and he was soon retracing his steps.

On the day after he went down to Sussex, as agreed, with Tom Hartshorne.

Volume One—Chapter Two.

The Sussex Dowager.

Only a simple, and yet special name and appellation—

“Mrs Hartshorne,
The Poplars.”

That is all.

Nothing much in the name certainly, at first sight, nor yet such a very extraordinary address, either in the nomenclature of the mansion, or in its surroundings; but the two taken together were something entirely out of the common. Mrs Hartshorne by herself, or the Poplars, considered merely as a residence, were neither of them grand or startling phenomena; but one could not well do without the other, and the dual in unity formed a complete and unique integrity. In other words, “Mrs Hartshorne, of the Poplars,” was an “institution” in the land, to quote an Americanism, although neither a thing of beauty nor a joy for ever. She was a rara avis in terris, a millionaire Hecate, a rich and slightly-over-middle-aged eccentric, a Xantipical Croesus—no less a personage, in fact, than the “Sussex Dowager.”

Far and wide throughout this county—over a considerable portion of which she owned manorial rights of vassalage, and ruled with sovereign sway in the matter of leases and titheholds and rackrents—amongst the lesser farmers and villagers she was known by this title; although, it must be confessed, her more intimate dependents and rustic neighbours dubbed her by far less elegant sobriquets.

Any one meeting her about the country lanes, where she was to be found at all hours, would have taken Mrs Hartshorne to be a shabby little dried-up, poor old woman. She always dressed in dark grey garments of antediluvian cut, somewhat brown and rusty from age and wear. Her bonnet was a marvellous specimen of the hideous old coal-scuttle form used by our grandmothers. She always carried a reticule of similar date, which, by her demeanour when emporting it, might have contained a hundred death-warrants, or keys of dungeons—if she had lived some three centuries or so ago: a bulgy umbrella in all weathers, wet or fine: thick shoes of rough country make: dark woollen gloves; and no veil to disguise the thin sharp features and piercing bead-like black eyes, overhung with bushy grey eyebrows, and the wrinkled forehead above, covered with scanty white locks, braided puritanically on each side, and there you have Mrs Hartshorne.

She was not a handsome old woman, nor a prepossessing old woman, nor would her face impress you as being either benevolent or pious; but shrewdness, cleverness, and hardness of set purpose, were ingrained in every line of its expression; and in truth—she was a hard, shrewd, clever old woman.

A quarter of a century seems a somewhat long time to look back, but twenty-five years ago Mrs Hartshorne was a young and handsome woman. Time had not dealt kindly with her as he does to some: none would dream of calling hers a graceful or a winning old age. She seemed to wrestle with the Destroyer, instead of ignoring his approach as most of us do, and quietly and placidly submitting to his encroachments. The result was not to her advantage. Every line on her face, every crow’s-foot in the corners of her twinkling little eyes, every wrinkle on her careworn brow, every silvery hair on her head, marked the issue of some unsuccessful struggle; and the strong passions of her nature, even as they had embittered her life, seemed now, when her youth was passed, to war with death.

She had a quick way of speaking, running her words and sentences into one another, so that they resembled one of those compound, Dutch jaw-breaking words that occupy several lines in extent, and almost fill up a paragraph. Her temper was not a sweet one. It might suit “namby pamby,” milk-and-water, bread-and-butter girls—“hussies,” she would have called them—to mince their words and moderate their utterances; but she, “thank God, was none of those!” She said what she meant, sharp and straight to the point, and did not care what any one thought about it. Her voice, mode of speech, and general manner, resembled the barking of a wiry little Scotch terrier, and terrified most with whom she had any dealings. “Good Lord!” as old Doctor Jolly, the most hearty, jovial, loud and cheery-voiced of country surgeons—the only visitor who had entrance within her gates, and who used at fixed intervals to beard the lioness in her den—used to say; “but she has a temper. I would not be her husband, or her son, or her daughter for something! God bless my soul! sir, but she could hold a candle to the devil himself.” And so she could, and hold her own, too!

Old Roger Hartshorne—the “squire”—had married her late in life some twenty-five years ago, and brought her home to the Poplars in all state and ceremony as befitted the lady of so great a landowner. The old squire was a very good-natured, liberal sort of man, whose only amusement was in following the harriers—there were no hounds and scarlet-coated foxhunters in those parts—and he was generally liked throughout the county, for he kept a sort of open house, and was hail-fellow-well-met with everyone; but when he married—and no one knew where he picked up his wife, people said that she married him—all this was changed. A new regime was instituted, and the sporting breakfasts, and hunting dinners, and open-house festivities at the Poplars became as a thing of the past. Mrs Hartshorne said she would not have any such “scandalous goings on” in her house: she wasn’t going to be “eaten out of house and home.” Every expense of the ménage was cut down. Instead of some seven or eight grooms and gardeners and domestic servants, only three were retained—an old woman to mind the house, an old butler, whom the squire insisted on keeping, and a groom and gardener, who combined both situations in one. When the children came—a girl and a boy—the squire thought things would be altered; but they were not. Mrs Hartshorne said they must save, and pinch and pinch more now for them—although goodness knows the estate was rich enough; and shortly after the birth of Tom, the old squire died, worn out it was said by the temper and treatment of his wife. It was, perhaps, a happy release to Roger of that Ilk, for the poor old gentleman had been sadly changed since his marriage, and used to look a piteous spectacle when he took his solitary rides around the village lanes on his old cob, the sole relict of his handsome stud which he had been proudly fond of displaying across country.

With the death of the squire, Mrs Hartshorne became more saving and pinching, and miserly than ever. The first thing she did was to dismiss the old butler, who had been in the family for some forty years, saying she “could not afford to support a lazy, useless pauper;” the next was to tell the bailiff and estate agent that their services were no longer required, for “she would have no curious eyes prying into her property, and telling everyone how much she was worth.” The house was almost shut up and buried in seclusion, and no one but Doctor Jolly ever went there. He said he “would not be denied by any woman in creation,” and although the “dowager,” as she now came to be termed, used to put on her most vinegar-like expression for him, and address him in the snappiest and most provoking and insulting manner, he would call at the Poplars at least once a month in obedience to the promise he had given to the old squire on his death-bed to “look after his poor children.” It must be said that Mrs Hartshorne tolerated the doctor in a sort of way—her way; and if she liked anyone, liked him who was a favourite with the whole county round. She had said to him when he first used to come, that she supposed he “came there because he might charge for his visits, and get something by it;” but when she found this was not the case, and that Doctor Jolly had no base intentions towards her money bags, she tolerated him, and allowed him to come and go as he pleased, without bestowing on him more than her customary amount of sweet temper.

When Tom grew old enough he was sent to school, only coming home for one week every year by express stipulation with the proprietor of the school! and when he became eighteen, at his earnest wish, and after continual wranglings with the old lady—who was passionately fond of him, although at the same time possessing an inordinate affection for money—he was allowed to go into the army. His mother said that he would “ruin her” when she gave an order on her banker to the doctor, who was Tom’s guardian, for the sum required for his commission and outfit, but she did not behave illiberally, and gave master Tom a very fair allowance, satisfying her conscience by raising all the rents of her poorer tenants, and grinding down the household expenses more than ever. Of Tom she was not only fond but proud: it was the only one womanly trait in her character; and although she was not a very motherly kind of woman, and did not display her affection in the manner customary to the feminine sex—ruling her household, even Tom, with a rod of iron and a stern sense of duty—yet her son was very much attached to her, notwithstanding he did not exhibit any strong partiality for visiting her. He knew that the less he saw of her the better: they both understood each other well.

The daughter, however, Mrs Hartshorne hated and disliked in the strongest manner possible. She grew up uncared for, except as regarded frequent and summary corrections for childish misdemeanours; and if it had not been for the boy Tom she would have been altogether neglected. Little Susan was an eyesore to her mother in consequence of her being the only one provided for in Roger Hartshorne’s will independently of the mother, to whom all the rest of the property, excepting of course the entail, was bequeathed without reservation. Mrs Hartshorne considered her own child as a species of interloper or invader of her rights, and treated her accordingly with neglect and almost cruelty when the squire was no longer able to look after and protect her. The very fondness of the old man for his little girl had been even an additional incentive for her ill-treatment. When Susan had reached her fifteenth year—she was little more than a year older than Tom—the dislike of her mother culminated in an accident, which indeed might be characterised in worse terms, that somewhat checked the ill-treatment and harshness she had previously suffered. She had done some trifling thing or other one day which had offended her mother to fury, and she consequently, after beating her most unmercifully, had locked her up all one night in a solitary part of the house by herself. The little thing was of a very nervous, tender organisation; and the fright she suffered in the lonely darkness throughout the long hours of the night drove away her poor little wits. When the child was let out the next day she was in a raging fever, and when she recovered from that, thanks to old Doctor Jolly (who was unremitting in his care, after frightening the mother by declaring her to be almost a murderess), she was never herself again. She remained quietly passive under any or every treatment of the mother “half-silly,” as the poor folks say, and half-silly she was now still, although she was almost one-and-twenty. Her mental disorder was of a pathetic description—a sort of melancholia, and although her mother had procured governesses for her, and she knew, like a parrot, as much as most girls of her age in the matter of education, she never exhibited any likes or dislikes, or preferences, except for music, of which she was passionately fond: everything else that was taught her she learnt in a machine-like way. Susan would spend hours each day, particularly in the evening, playing on an old chamber-organ, which occupied one of the disused rooms of the house, wild, weird, melancholy melodies which appeared to soothe her, and give her the only sense of enjoyment she seemed to possess. Tom and Doctor Jolly were the only people she cared to see; her mother she disliked greatly, and had a sort of trembling fit whenever she came across her or passed her in the passages of the house; and the old female domestics she barely tolerated, although she liked old George, a simple, uneducated Sussex countryman (the county is great for its “chawbacons”), who now did all the odd jobs and outdoor work about the house since the establishment had been reduced.

Mrs Hartshorne always had a governess or special person to look after Susan, and she was careful to put down all the expenses of the said individual to be charged against and deducted from the portion which her daughter was to inherit in accordance with the terms of the squire’s will.

These governesses were always being changed, for few persons, even those who have taught themselves to submit, as governesses have to teach themselves, could long bear with the temper of the dowager. A new face was consequently ever coming and going within the narrow range of Susan Hartshorne’s horizon.

Doctor Jolly used to say that perhaps some sudden shock of grief or joy might restore the poor girl to the full possession of her senses.

“But then,” he would remark, “I don’t know how that is going to happen, unless the old lady kicks the bucket.”

Thus was Mrs Hartshorne placed, and it must be owned that a skeleton such as she had in her closet would not tend to sweeten her disposition. Hard and stern she was with all around her. She was her own farm agent, her own bailiff, her own man of business. If she had been entirely alone she would probably have had not a soul in the house with her, not even a domestic. She collected her own rents, and was never forgetful of a farthing owed to her. When the leases granted by the squire expired she would not let them be renewed, but kept her tenants under fear and trembling, with only a year’s certainty of possession of their homes; and she waxed rich, did the dowager, and had by this time a goodly pile of ready money at her bankers’. This was all for Tom, and, faith! the young sir would have a splendid inheritance when the dowager departed for the happy hunting grounds. The squire’s property, before the advent of Mrs Hartshorne, had been worth some ten thousand a year. It was now worth nearly half as much again, and the savings of the yearly income amounted to more than a hundred thousand pounds. “A very comfortable little sum of ready money, sir!” as the doctor would say.

The residence of the dowager was situated about a mile from the picturesque little village of Hartwood, which boasted not only of a special little station to itself on the S.C. Rail, but also of its own little church, quite independent of the sacred episcopal edifice general to the parish under whose jurisdiction it came. The dowager owned the church as well as the village, and the right of presentation being in her gift, she had recently inducted the most extreme Ritualistic divine she could procure into the pulpit of Hartwood, just purely out of opposition to the rector of the district, whom she disliked, and who was supposed to be of strong evangelical principles.

The Poplars—there can be no mistake in saying it—was an extremely ugly house. Its architecture was neither Gothic nor Norman, Elizabethan or Tudor; it was an heterogeneous pile of stones and brickwork, scrambled together without any style or design. Inside it was comfortable enough, and roomy and rambling; without it seemed nothing but a collection of eaves and chimneys, and its sole redeeming point consisted in the lofty and spreading poplar trees which surrounded it on all sides, as well as gave it its name, and concealed its native ugliness from strangers and passers-by.

There you have “The Poplars” and its mistress.

Volume One—Chapter Three.

The Fish and the Hook.

“Het-wood!” shouted the guard vehemently, as the train in which Tom Hartshorne and Markworth had left London drew up at a little wayside station, closely adjoining Hartwood village, the spire of whose church could be seen near at hand, amidst a group of lofty elm trees which surrounded it—and “Het-wood! Het-wood! Het-wood!” burst a tribe of porters and railway men, after that official, chorusing in full cry to a musical accompaniment of door-slammings and steam-escapements.

“Here we are at last,” ejaculated Tom, poking his head out of the window of one of the carriages as soon as they fairly stopped.

“Are we? Then the Lord be praised! Beastly long journey. More than two hours for only sixty or seventy miles!” responded his companion, stepping on to the platform, where they and their luggage were quickly deposited—the only arrivals for the little village—while the iron horse again grunted and puffed on its toilsome way with its string of cattle pens behind it.

“Good day, sir,” said the station-master, touching his hat respectfully to Tom; “do you want a trap, sir?”

“No, thanks, we’ll walk over; but will you send up our things for us, Murphy?”

“Certainly, sir; one of the men shall go at once with them. Here, Peter! shoulder them there bags, and follow Mister Hartshorne up t’ouse.”

“It’s much jollier to walk, Markworth,” remarked Tom, as they left the station, and he led the way over a stile into a little bypath across a field; “it’s a lovely afternoon, and we’ll get there in half the time we should if we drove by the road.”

“All right, my boy, I’m agreeable,” answered Markworth.

So they sauntered on, walking in a narrow foot-wide track, through acres of gleaming green fields of oats and wheat, with their wavy motion, like the sea, and their rustling tops, one of the railway porters following closely behind them, weighed down apparently by two heavy travelling-bags he carried, although, probably, he thought them but a trifle.

A pleasant walk it was on a fine summer day.

Presently Markworth could see a gaunt, grim stone wall in front of them, with a mass of tall, melancholy-looking, waving poplar trees behind it, all in a clump together.

“There’s the place,” said Tom. “We’ll be there in no time. We can go through that side-door,” pointing to a small gateway cut through the wall. “You must not mind, old chap, what my mother says, you know, at first. I told you she was a queer fellow, you know, and she will seem rough to you at first.”

“I sha’n’t mind, bless you, Tom—I oughtn’t to be afraid of any woman at my time of life, my hearty.”

In another minute they had arrived at the small door they had been making for, and Tom rang the bell with a sonorous peal.

After waiting about a quarter of an hour, and ringing some three times, the gate was at length opened by George, the Dowager’s “man of all work,” an honest, tall, beaming-looking countryman, who stood at the entrance with a broad grin of pleasure on his rustic face.

“Whoy! Lor sakes, measter Tummus! It beant you, be it? Well, to be sure!”

“Yes, it’s me, sure enough, George. How are the rheumatics?”

“Och! they be foine, sur?”

“Nice day, George, ain’t it? Good for the crops, eh?”

“Yees, surely! it’s a foine day when the soon shoines! that it be, sur! Ho! ho! ho.” And George laughed a heavy, earthy sort of laugh, which partook of the nature of the clay in which he delved—it was so warm, and yet lumpish, and seemed to stick in his throat and be unable to come out, although his mouth was certainly opened wide enough to permit of its exit. It may be mentioned that this was one of George’s time-honoured jokes about the sun and the weather, indeed the only one he ever knew of; and he would repeat it some twenty times a day, if anyone gave him the cue, each time being as much amused with it, and struck with its novelty and wit as if that were the first time he propounded it.

A sharp, querulous voice, which belonged to somebody evidently not far distant, here suddenly interposed—

“What are you standing jabbering and grinning there like a baboon for, man? Begone to your work man! Do you think I keep your idle carcass and pay your wages for you to be kicking your heels in the air all day and doing nothing? Begone to your work, man, and let my son in; if I ever catch you jabbering away like this again, out you go bag and baggage!”

Here it must be noted that the speaker did not pause a second in the delivery of this harangue—not a stop, such as have been put here for the sake of legibility, occurred between the words—the whole sentence rattled out as one word—a word fiery, hot, strong, and by no means sweet.

“Lor sakes! here’s the missus!” ejaculated George, in sudden terror; and clutching his spade, which he had put down to open the gate, he disappeared amidst the shrubbery much sooner and with a quicker movement than he had evidently acted the part of Janitor.

The Dowager it was, without a doubt—for her presence had quickly followed her words, and she now stood before the pair in all her imposing appearance with an irritated face, and her piercing eyes fixed on them enquiringly.

She was the first to break the short silence that ensued.

“Well, and so you have come at last, Thomas! There, shake hands! that will do. I wonder you have been able to tear yourself away from all your jackanape companions—a lot of reckless spendthrifts and conceited puppies, every one of them—to come and see your ugly old mother at last. I am so old, and, having no airs and graces to receive you like other people—all lies to be sure—that I wonder you do come at all! I suppose it is only because you want money—money, money, money, like the whole tribe of them—bloodsuckers all. But who’s this fellow with you?” she said, abruptly, turning round on Markworth as if she were going to snap him up. “Who is he, and what does he want, shoving himself in?”

Tom hastened to introduce him, saying that he was an old friend, Mr Allynne Markworth, who had been very kind to him, and whom he had ventured to invite down according to the express stipulation of his mother.

“Humph!” she muttered, “oh! that’s it, is it; why did you not say so before instead of letting him stand staring there like an idiot? But you never had a head, Thomas, and never will as long as you live! You are only fit to be a lazy soldier to flaunt about all day in a patchwork uniform and do nothing. The only sense you ever have shown was in selecting your profession! So this is Mr Markworth, is it? Humph! I daresay he’s like the rest of them—all calf’s head and shrimp sauce! How do you do, Mr Markworth?” She now spoke without the former asperity, and curtseyed low in an old-fashioned manner. “Any friend of my son is welcome to my house, poor as it is! Please go on and lead the way, Thomas, with your friend, you will find a room ready prepared for him, and you know your own. We dine at the regular hour, five o’clock, and it only wants half-an-hour to that, so don’t be late. I don’t want any dressing or fal-lalling!” The old lady then turned into the shrubbery, evidently after the recreant George, and she muttered to herself as she ambled along, “He’s taller than Thomas, and a handsome puppy; but I don’t like him—he’s a rogue, or I’ll eat my boots.”

There was no need for such an unusual repast on the part of the Dowager; she might have been wider from the mark in her casual conjecture.

Punctually at five o’clock the tones of some huge clanging old bell clanked through the house, proclaiming the hour; and Tom tapping at Markworth’s door, told him that dinner was ready. The latter at once appeared outside as elaborately dressed as if he were going to attend a Lord Mayor’s banquet.

“By Jove!” exclaimed Tom, turning his companion round and gazing upon him with eyes of wonder; “why, what on earth led you to get yourself up so fearfully?” as he led the way to the dining-parlour—a long, low, dismal room on the ground floor.

“I always mind little things,” replied the other; “I never sacrifice appearances:” in truth he never did.

Tom, on the way down in the train, had explained all about his sister’s infirmity—that she was “Not quite right here, you know,” tapping his forehead significantly; so Markworth was not surprised to see a tall, pale, slim-looking girl seated at the table with her eyes bent down on her plate. She looked up in a sort of painful wonder when they entered, which changed into a pleased, unmeaning smile when she recognised Tom, and immediately again dropped her eyes.

She was dressed in a scarlet dress, made of some stuffy material. Her one weakness—if weakness it were—was for bright colours; she had often told Tom that they made her “feel warm and happy.” Poor child! So she always wore scarlet or light-blue, or orange—the former hue was her favourite one, and she had evidently put on that dress to-day in honour of Tom, to show that she was glad and happy to see him.

Susan Hartshorne looked older perhaps than she really was; she had beautiful features, but her face was without expression, save that Markworth could perceive—for he had been intently watching her—an occasional careworn or agonised look pass across it whenever her mother spoke, which she did every now and then in sharp accents to the old woman servant who waited on them at table. The Dowager had taken no notice of Markworth in a conversational sense, although she eyed him frequently, except to mutter “coxcomb!” in an underbreath (which he however distinctly heard), when he first entered the room, and once to ask him to be helped to some dish before her.

The meal was a good one. The old lady received a portion of her rents “in kind,” and was never at a loss for fresh poultry, fish, or vegetable, not to speak of game; but it was soon over, for the presiding genius evidently looked upon it in the light of a serious business which was not to be trifled with. When the last dish had been brought in and removed, the dowager got up from her seat and stalked majestically out of the room, followed silently by her daughter, who seemed to glide rather than move.

“Rum old party, ain’t she? But she’s good, though, and I like her in my way, you know, the same as she does me,” observed Tom.

“Yes,” said Markworth, neither affirmatively nor in a questioning tone of voice, but with a mixture of both inflections. “Where, however, is that governess you were talking about to me?”

“Oh! Miss Kingscott! ’Pon my soul I don’t know. Let’s go and hunt her up; I have not seen her yet.”

Just then they heard the melancholy notes of an organ in the distance, as they turned into the passage.

“That’s Susan,” observed her brother. “I daresay Miss Kingscott is with her.”

They followed the strains, which grew louder as they penetrated into the back and apparently deserted quarters of the house.

“Here we are,” said Tom, as he opened the door of the room from whence the music proceeded.

A dark, haughty, ladylike girl, clad in rustling black silk, stood up and faced the door as they entered.

“Miss Kingscott, I presume?” Tom asked, bowing politely with his usual frankness.

“Whew! By jingo!” ejaculated Markworth, between his teeth. “I’m blessed if it isn’t Clara!”

Volume One—Chapter Four.

Miss Kingscott.

“Who was Miss Kingscott?”

“Aye, that would be telling, sure,” as a native of the Emerald Isle says when you question him about anything he does not care to disclose. But few persons could give you any satisfactory answer to your enquiry, not even the sharp, shrewd old dowager in whose employ she now was. She might tell you that Miss Kingscott was a governess, a lady’s companion—regarding her in the light of a saleable article of furniture—and that she came to her well recommended, and that she supposed she knew what she professed to teach, and was worth her wages, or she would not be hired; but she personally thought her “a bold hussie,” and that was all. Knowledge has its limits, and there Mrs Hartshorne ceased.

Who was Miss Kingscott? An easy question on the face of it, but one requiring a very complicated answer. Who was she? Why, une fille errante, a nobody’s child, a sort of female Bedouin, whose hand was against every man’s—and woman’s also—as she thought theirs to be against her. A woman young, beautiful, and, beyond all, clever, and not only very clever but heartless, and as devoted to self as she was sans coeur. One who could take her part—aye, and play her part—before the world; a fair face with a devil’s heart—that is if a devil does have a heart—and great keen basilisk eyes. One who might be anything and everything, for you could hardly judge her as to what rôle would suit her best, or rather suit her purpose best. A child yesterday, a woman to-day—nay, she could never have been a child. Only a governess now mayhap, but she might be miladi to-morrow if she plays her cards well. Pshaw! she always played her cards well, for there’s a rare little plotting head on her well-formed shoulders. Miss Kingscott, entendez vous, is a clever woman; one day she may be any character she please, and God knows what the next.

Now to sketch her personal attributes. In the ante-passport abolition days an employé in the Bureau des Passeportes might have put her down as follows: Des yeux—gris; nez—aquilin; teint—pâle; cheveux—noirs; et taille moyenne. In plain English she was a girl—woman that is—of some five feet two in height, of pale—strange the French have no distinction between pale and sallow—complexion, and with black hair and grey eyes. Grey eyes the Gallic officer would call them, but that would not describe them; they were basilisk eyes, eyes that had a depth of cunning, and treachery, and entrancement in them, which no colour term would express.

Ten years ago Clara Joyce—she had lately adopted the name of Kingscott, bequeathed her by a maiden aunt, who left her nothing else but her patronymic, which she could wear or not as she pleased, for there was no one living to question her right to the same—filled the position of English governess at a Pensionat des Filles in the Rue des Courcelles in Paris. The school was a famous one, and is a famous one still, so we must not be too particular about names or dates exactly.

Her previous life had been one of hardship, slavery, and neglect. Her parents had died when she was quite young, and she was placed at school, not to learn merely her education like her mates, but to learn her profession. She was to be a governess, and her earlier years were but a training for what she had afterwards to go through. First, she was a scholar pur et simple; next, she became a sort of general drudge, or female usher, as she grew older; and then her aunt—when the harpy who watched over her budding intellects grew tired of her temper, and declared her to be sufficiently taught to be able to teach others,—told her she could do nothing more for her, having recommended her to a situation, where she was engaged to teach every possible and impossible grace and accomplishment at starvation rate, and ma tante washed her hands metaphorically of her. This aunt of hers, who was the only relative that Clara Joyce ever remembered coming across, was by no means the sort of person to impress anyone with the idea of domestic affection, so houseless, homeless, and friendless, the girl had been all her school life, and houseless, homeless, and friendless she was when turned out into the world.

The very marrow of her nature had been frozen by her surroundings, and the life of a governess was not one to imbue her with any better feelings, although it increased her knowledge of human nature. One situation after another she filled in England until she was fairly sick of her country, and she eagerly accepted the position offered her in the pensionat in Paris, thinking that it might throw her into a fresh field and improve her chances of rising in the social scale. She had been an intriguante early, her experiences of life already had deepened her convictions that in order to succeed she must skilfully manoeuvre the wires, looking upon her fellows as puppets; but even then if she had had a fair chance—good heavens! how many of us are there not crying out for a fair chance—Clara Joyce would have turned out a very different person from the Clara Kingscott, of our story; but it was not to be.

At the time she entered the pensionat she was barely twenty years of age—she was now consequently just thirty—a handsome girl, although somewhat thin and pale, from the hard life and harder living she had gone through; and she now determined more than ever to take advantage of her looks and chances, literally to husband her resources. To endeavour in fact by a wealthy marriage—she had read and was told that eligible partis were much sooner picked up on the continent than in the more calculating Britain—to rid herself for ever of her working life, and be above the danger of want, which, poor intriguante, she had already gone through, and the necessity for drudgery.

She had no romance in her nature, no absurd ideas on the subject of love and happiness which the more benighted of us sometimes imagine to be indissolubly connected with the married state; but, taking her as she was, and putting such thoughts out of consideration, Clara Joyce, if she had had the chance, as has been before suggested, might have made a most exemplary wife for some one, and turned out, perhaps, a highly correct and eminently respectable mother of a family. Consider, now, she was brought up to slave for others, to subdue her own private feelings and wishes, to conceal her own thoughts and opinions, to enact a series of petty deceptions and tell white lies every day. How many are there not of our noble army of British matrons who go through the same parts every day? Fancy how Joan has to wheedle old Darby, and laugh at his stale jokes and “keep up appearances,” and slave for the children, so that her life is one long drudgery, the same as Clara’s. Ma foi! there are slaves and slaves, many whose black skins are hidden by a white mask, and whose chains clank beneath their silk or merino gowns.

French life with its manners and customs pleased our young debutante. Although as a matter of course, mademoiselles les étudiantes were carefully looked after, yet she had plenty of liberty allowed her, for she so “got round” the directrice of the school that she was nearly her own mistress; and she was not slow to employ her spare time in seeing as much as she could of the gay city, its habits, and its visitors. Madame la Directrice would have been shocked if she had known that her timid little modest English teacher, “such a quiet little thing, pauvre enfante!” often went to fêtes by herself, sans chaperone, and had been even seen in one of those monstrous places—a theatre! The gouvernante was a shrewd, cautious little actress, and Madame la Directrice was as blind, bah! as a mole. It was easy enough to make up a little story of relations to be seen, and to show letters of invitation imploring a certain demure English teacher to visit her poor aunt, who was all alone in Paris. And then the pauvre enfante was so regular in coming back. She was always in at the fixed hour every evening she went out—so quiet, so punctual. Madame never dreamt of such things as bribing a concierge!

While Clara Joyce was thus busying herself in investigating human nature, a certain young Englishman came to Paris, and in one of her excursions he made her acquaintance. Monsieur l’Anglais was tall and handsome and rich. He had plenty of money, and was liberal, and was looked upon as a milord at least by those with whom he associated. The young Englishman, however, was as shrewd and clever as the gouvernante. Need it be said that his name was one with which we are already acquainted? It was Allynne Markworth.

Clara Joyce was an elegant, pretty girl, and the way he made her acquaintance was in itself an additional charm. Markworth was attracted by her, and courted her society. He had then a little romance in him, and was to a certain extent in love with her; but the girl was as cautious as he was enamoured. She thought that at last she had succeeded in picking up her eligible parti, not only a wealthy one, but a young and handsome one also, a regular pearl of price. But, like all young players, she underrated her adversary, and let him see her hand too soon. Markworth was not one to be caught so easily. He was one, also, who was marketing on his good looks, and contemplated matrimony only through the diamond light of a fortune. He was not going to sacrifice himself for a pretty English governess, who had only her graces to recommend her, and not a sou of dot! He laughed at her when she spoke of the hymeneal altar; and so poor Clara Joyce—one cannot help pitying a clever woman who lays herself out to win and loses in the end—had made her coup and missed it just by a fluke!

She had staked her all, her petit rouleau of a heart on “black,” and here noir perd et passe le coup, as the gentleman, who presides over a queer looking long table divided into red and black squares as to its surface, at Homburg, says mechanically as he rakes in the little piles of glittering coin and quires of billets de banque, while the unlucky gamesters gaze on him ruefully, and bite their nails in disgust.

The girl was furious against him. She railed at him, she threatened him, she vowed vengeance, but he did not care a jot. He had not committed himself. He was too wary for that, and what did he care? She bored him, he said, and so he took himself off, and left her to her own machinations. But Clara was not one to be insulted or injured with impunity. She had vowed vengeance, and she intended to have it. She interested herself about Markworth. She wrote to England about him. She found out many little things about him which he never thought any one would recollect, or know here in Paris, at all events. By her indefatigable exertions, she discovered after a year’s spying, and seeking, and enquiry, that Markworth was on the eve of marriage with a millionairess—a besotted old widow of a Lyons manufacturer, who adored Englishmen, especially if they were milords, and the young lady communicated with the friends of the devotee. Through information she gave, the match was broken off, and Markworth learnt who had spoiled his little game. He could not do much, however; he could only expose her at the Pension, and then there was a fine blow up with Madame Bonchose, the Directrice. Of course Clara had to leave—such a “little snake in the grass,” as Madame called her. But she had had her revenge. Not that she was satisfied yet. That was only the first of a series of attacks she planned. She intended to be Mr Allynne Markworth’s evil star through life. It was an unlucky day for him, according to the Fates, when he came across her orbit and discovered Clara Joyce.

After leaving the Pensionat des Filles in disgrace, she next became a Femme de Chambre to a Marquise of questionable reputation, with whom she remained some two years, travelling about and increasing her knowledge of the world. But she had not forgotten Markworth, not she, and was ready to lay her hand on him again whenever she had the opportunity.

Time passed, and she came back once more to England. Her aunt died, so she assumed her name; and, as Miss Kingscott now, she took a situation once more in an English family at a cathedral town in the south. She knew he was in London now, and she wanted to be near him. She was so fond of him, you see!

But she had another little game, too, to watch over. One day Doctor Jolly had come to visit at the house where she was employed as a governess, and where she was about leaving, on account of the breaking up of the household. Doctor Jolly was impressed with her, and our heroine, having made enquiries, thought there might be worse lots in life than being a rich doctress: so she made eyes at him, and set her cap coquettishly.

The doctor mentioned that Mrs Hartshorne was in want of a lady companion for her daughter, and said he would recommend her.

Miss Kingscott was agreeable. She had heard there was an only son—Poor Tom!—and who knew what might turn up? Besides, she would be near the doctor, and consequently have him to fall back upon.

And so she came to be domesticated at The Poplars. The old lady squabbled with her, but she gave her as much as she got; and the dowager, pleased with having some one worth quarrelling with, retained her.

Susan, of course, was passive in her hands, and the son of the house she had not yet seen, so she bided her time, and diligently cultivated old Jolly, whose cheery “How-de-do!” to her would be heard afar, echoing through the poplar trees when he came to visit at the house, which he now did much oftener than before.

She was surprised, naturally, to see Markworth at the present juncture, but not so much as he was. He of course had not recognised her new name, which, indeed, he had never heard of before; and would have been as pleased—aye! more so—to have met his Satanic Majesty now than his quondam Parisian love—the little English governess.

“Damn her!” he growled, sotto voce to himself; “what the devil brings her here to spoil my game?”

Volume One—Chapter Five.

Counting the Cost.

“Miss Kingscott, I presume?” said Tom, bowing politely, as the lady gave a Parthian glance, sharp, quick, and incisive, of mingled recognition and command-to-keep-his-own-counsel-until-further-orders at her soi-disant lover Markworth, who stood in the rear of his companion, and who, although he was startled at her appearance, was too much the cool man of the world to give expression aloud to his astonishment. “Humph!” he thought unto himself, as he pulled his wits together. “I’m to keep dark, I suppose,” and he adopted an air of well-bred indifference.

Miss Kingscott smiled bewitchingly on the young squire.

“I am Tom Hartshorne,” continued that gentleman, in a warm, friendly manner. “You have been very kind to my sister, and I hope we shall be friends.”

This was a pleasant little fiction, by the way, on Tom’s part, as he had no previous knowledge whatever of Miss Kingscott’s kindness, or the reverse, but the young officer was of a gallant disposition.

“Oh, indeed!” said the lady, with an air of agreeable surprise. “And so you are Mr Tom. I am sure dear Susan has spoken often enough to me about you. I am only Miss Hartshorne’s governess, you know, but I’ve no doubt we will be good friends as far as our respective positions will allow.”

Humility was one of her cards, you see, but it was thrown away on Tom: he was more shocked than pleased, as others more purse-proud might have been, at the contrast drawn.

“This is my friend Allynne Markworth,” he went on, hurriedly; “we ran down together for a week to dissipate the London dust. He and I are great friends, so I hope that we’ll all be jolly together.”

Both inclined as if they had never seen each other before. Mr Markworth was remarkably deferential, with a concealed sneer on his lips, and the governess sweeping in her condescension.

Some little commonplace expressions and conversation then passed between the party, and you would have thought it the most delightful trio in the world.

All the while Susan Hartshorne was aloof from the party, seated in a corner of the half-furnished and half-lighted room, for the outside shutters were partially closed, and it looked as if it had not been inhabited for years—most probably a fire had not been lighted in its old grate since the squire’s death. She was playing on an antique-looking organ, with its zigzag rows of metal pipes which nearly filled up one end of the apartment, a fitful sort of air which rose and fell every now and then with a shriek like the last despairing moan of one of the lost spirits in Dante’s Inferno. Presently she ceased playing, and coming up to the others touched Tom on the arm.

“Come, brother,” she said, in a low, soft voice, without any inflexion in it; and, taking no notice of either the governess or Markworth, she led him gently towards the door. “You must see my garden,” she continued, speaking to him as if they were alone, just in the same quiet tones.

“I’ll be back presently; pray excuse me,” said Tom, as he went out; and Markworth and Miss Kingscott were left alone.

The former was the first to speak.

“So we’ve changed names, have we? Clara Joyce is dead, and Miss Kingscott reigns in her stead?”

“Mr Allynne Markworth, however, is still flourishing, I see,” she replied, in accents whose sarcasm was bitter enough and apparent enough without glancing at her scornful flashing eyes.

“Yes, small blame to you; but I don’t think you’ll play any more tricks with me again. Well, that’s long ago, and I can ‘forgive and forget;’ I shan’t rake up the past if you won’t. You are here under an assumed name, and—but what’s it to be, Clara, peace or war between us?”

“Or you’ll unmask me, eh? You will tell all about the silly English teacher-girl who was éprise of a swindling vagabond, and the mistress of whose school was so very correct as to discharge her without a character, will you? You’d like to get me turned out from here, the house of your rich country friends, would you?” she spoke rapidly and with intense bitterness. “Bah! I do not fear you, Allynne Markworth, any more than I do that baby-faced, idiot girl who has just left the room!”

“What’s the use of going on like that, Clara? Who said that I was going to injure you, or that you were afraid of me? By Jove! I know to my cost you’re not. Why can’t you be calm and look at things reasonably? You and I may be able to assist each other, and it’s better for us to be friends than enemies.”

“I care as little for your enmity as I do for the valuable friendship you gave me formerly. There can be little in common between us. Besides, even if I had the inclination, I don’t see how either you can help me, or I you.”

“But you can help me very much.”

“Ha! I thought you wanted something! No, there can be no accord between us. You are a man of the world, and I am, myself!” (here she laughed bitterly) “so let us each go our own way in peace or in war, just as you please—it’s indifferent to me.”

“What nonsense!” said Markworth. “It is not indifferent to you. You can assist me here in this very house, and, if you do, it will be to your advantage.”

“Of course, you don’t gain anything by it?”

“If my scheme succeeds, you shall share the profits.”

“You will take the lion’s share, I have no doubt! and if you fail?”

“I alone will bear the loss.”

“How generous you are!”

“Well, do you consent to join forces? is it settled? Am I to tell Mrs Hartshorne—how pleased she’ll be to hear it!—the character of the governess she has got for her daughter, or are we to form an operative alliance!”

“Markworth, you are a villain!”

“Granted,” he said, calmly. “Do you agree?”

“I suppose I must,” she replied. “You are not to interfere with me? and I—”

“Will assist me to the best of your ability. That’s a bargain; I thought you would be reasonable, Clara.”

“But what do you want me to do?” she asked, after a slight pause, fixing her eyes searchingly on his face.

“It is nothing criminal. You will not have to commit yourself in any way. I don’t want you to do anything, in fact; I only want you to keep in the background, and not spoil sport. Will you do it?”

“Agreed,” she answered. “And your grand scheme is—”

“Marriage,” he said, curtly. “Well, it won’t be your first attempt in that way at all events! Of course, there’s a fortune in view, or you would not try that speculation. But who’s the lady—not me, I presume?” she enquired, with another of those short bitter laughs which sounded so strangely from her lips.

“Not exactly!” he sneered; “I don’t think you and I would just suit one another. Listen,” he resumed, quietly, looking towards the door, and drawing closer to her, and sinking his voice as he spoke, “The girl is here—you understand?”

“I confess I do not see your drift,” she said, wishing to draw him on to a full disclosure.

“Pshaw! Clara, you are not a fool; you understand me well enough.”

“Perhaps I do, and perhaps I don’t.”

“Your eyes are not so blind that you cannot see when it is to your own interests. But there’s no use in beating about the bush or mincing matters; you know this girl here.”

“What! Susan Hartshorne—that poor idiot?” she exclaimed with well-acted amazement and horror.

“That same and no other,” replied Markworth, positively blushing at being obliged actually to confess his own villainy. “But she’s not an idiot, she’s only foolish—half-silly; and there’s no harm in it,” he continued, half apologetically.

“And you want to marry her?” said the other.

“I do not want to marry her; I mean to marry her!” answered Markworth, quite himself again, and with his usual coolness and sang froid, “and you must help me. Listen! That girl has a fortune of twenty thousand pounds. I am so hard run for money that unless I get some before the present month is up, I shall be ruined—that girl has money which she does not want, and can never feel the need of—do you follow me?—consequently I mean to marry that girl. Nobody cares for her here; her mother, I daresay, will be glad to get rid of her, and the girl will suffer no loss.”

“You will take care of her, I suppose!” said the governess, in her pleasant biting way.

“Yes, I will take care of her—as good care, I daresay, as she gets now.”

“Well, and supposing I lent myself to your purposes, what am I to get—what is to be my share in the transaction? You don’t suppose I am going to assist you and risk my situation for nothing?”

“I tell you what, Clara, if you help me in the affair I’ll give you two hundred pounds; I can’t give you more now, and I’ll have hard work to get that, for I daresay I will have to go through a long law suit before I can get her fortune, and spend most of it, perhaps, in doing so, even if I do succeed in marrying the girl and getting her off.”

“It’s little enough! but how shall I know that you will pay me?—you have cheated me before, Markworth, and I would not trust your word for sixpence.”

“You need not if you don’t like, but I’ll act fairly in the matter. I will give you a hundred before I get the girl away, and another hundred after I am married to her. There, will that do? If I don’t pay you, you can expose the whole affair; and if you go back on me you will implicate yourself afterwards; so it serves both our purposes to act squarely. Do you know what the girl’s age is?”

“Yes, twenty-one; I saw her age in the old family Bible, which Mrs Hartshorne keeps up-stairs in her own room.”

“Well I wish you would get me a look at it, or find out the exact date of her birthday for me—it’s important.”

“I will let you know either this evening or to-morrow, better say to-morrow.”

“That will do. Then the bargain is concluded between us. All I want you to do now is to help me gain the girl over, she looks tractable enough—and help me to get her away quietly. I’ll give you the hundred before I get her off; then as soon as I marry her you shall get the other century. I can’t help keeping my word to you, for you see it suits my own interest. It’s little enough I want you to do. If all goes well it will run hard if I don’t succeed and get the fortune, and I’ll remember you afterwards. Do you agree—is it a settled thing between us?”

“Yes,” said she, apparently reflecting a moment. “I suppose that will do, for if you don’t pay me I shall then be able to disclose the whole transaction.”

“Precisely,” he answered, complacently, “You can have me indicted for conspiracy and what not! but there’ll be no fear of that. We will not quarrel, Clara; what suits my book will suit yours.”

Besides consulting Roger Hartshorne’s will he had obtained legal advice on his contemplated marriage before coming down to The Poplars.

“Very well, if you are sensible you will play fair in the undertaking, and I shall be satisfied. If you keep your word I shall assist you; at all events I am not going to marry the girl, so I shan’t have anything to complain of if I get my money.”

“I will pay you, never fear! and you must keep to your bargain, and allow me to work my own way with the girl, and assist me in the end to get her off. Don’t forget to let me know to-morrow her right age, and write down the date of her birth—it might be useful to me. But about the girl herself, she is not really mad, is she?”

“I thought you yourself told me just now she was not.”

“Bother! don’t be so aggravating, Clara; you ought to know the girl, and be able to tell me about her.”

“You need not alarm yourself, Mr Allynne Markworth,” replied Miss Kingscott, with a sneer; “on the contrary, allow me to congratulate you. You have tumbled into luck’s way, and appear to have fallen upon your legs as usual. The girl is only, as you said, half-silly, and without being exactly an idiot can be made to do anything you and I please—that is, by judicious management.”

She was going to say something further, but at this moment Tom re-entered the room, and, of course, the conversation was dropped.

“I was just asking Miss Kingscott if she liked croquet, and, Tom, do you know—can you believe it, she has never heard of that flirtative and fascinating game?” said Markworth, in his usual free and elegant manner.

“Really!” said Tom. “Then we must enlighten her. Markworth is the prince of croquetters, you know, Miss Kingscott”—turning to her, and that lady seemed pleased for the information, and transfixed poor Tom with her beautifully expressive eyes.

“Fine girl,” he said presently to Markworth, as they went out of the room to smoke their cigars in the garden.

“Ya-a-s,” he replied, spinning out his answer as if he had not quite made up his mind on the subject; “but she’s no chicken.”

He was right, and he ought to know, at all events. Miss Kingscott was “no chicken,” either in years or in strength of mind.

The evening passed quietly with Tom and his visitor, neither the governess nor Susan being seen again, and the old dowager was especially gracious as bed-time drew nigh. This was fixed at an early hour—ten o’clock.

Markworth was presently in his room, and as he undressed he moralised on the events of the day, and the progress of his plot.

“Rum, wasn’t it?” he soliloquised, “meeting Clara here; but it is a decided pull in my favour. The thing is regularly en train now, and must come off soon. The girl is passable enough, and at all events I don’t care. I must risk Tom’s anger; but I don’t suppose he will mind it much—he’s soft, and I can manage him as I like. There’s only the old lady, and I hardly know how to wheedle her yet, she’s so downright and plain spoken. By Jove! of all the characters I ever met she’s one!”

In the midst of his meditations a loud authoritative rap came to the door.

“Your light?” said a thin, sharp voice, which he instantly recognised as Mrs Hartshorne’s.

He opened the door, and nearly burst out laughing at the odd figure which presented itself. It was the dowager, clothed in a long white garment, and with an immense frilled night-cap on her head, and two or three candlesticks in one hand, and a huge bunch of keys in the other.

“What are you staring like a stuck pig at? Give me your candlestick! All the lights in my house go out at half-past ten o’clock every night. That’s my rule, and I won’t break it for anyone, I don’t care who! Give me your light.”

Markworth handed the candlestick to the old lady, who presently retreated down the passage with her arms outstretched, looking like the Witch of Endor.

“No chance of a cigar here,” he said to himself, as he closed the door once more, and jumped into bed. “She would smell it at once; I’d back her nose against a pointer’s any day. She’s a rum un; of all the characters, by Jove! I ever met, she is one!”

And he turned in his bed and slept the sleep of the just, in which the wicked equally share.

Volume One—Chapter Six.

Concerning Certain Young Persons.

It came to pass on the following Sunday, two days after their arrival, that Tom and his friend went to church along with the dowager, as befitted respectable people, and a family of state in the county. Not to the parish church, where the Rev. Jabez Heavieman preached his ponderous sermons, and warned his congregation of their approaching perdition, and the damnation of their souls, in his customary evangelical style. Oh, no! but to the altogether-of-a-different-sort-of-a-doctrine little edifice in Hartwood village, which specially belonged to the Sussex Dowager. Indeed she regarded not only the church as her own peculiar property, but also its officiating clergyman, clerk, school children, nay, even the very future hopes of salvation of the worshippers who frequented it.

Hartwood Church was as unpretending a building as to its style as The Poplars.

It was a small ungainly-looking, low-roofed structure, oblong with a stone cross at one end, and a short square tower at the other. It was built of rough stone, and had apparently been constructed with a deficient supply of mortar; and a small abutment, which it had on one side for the requirements of the porch and vestry-room, had more the semblance of a shed attached to a farmhouse than anything else. It was an old church, too, probably much older than the one belonging to the parish; and its little churchyard, encircled by rude wooden palings, contained some monuments and tombstones, which were grey with age and as rough as when they were first hewn from the quarry, telling how “John Giles, aetat 95,” and “Richard Chawbacon, aetat 104,” both of whom departed this life Anno Domini 16 hundred and something, were there entombed. All the Hartshorne family, too, from Geoffrey Hartshorne, who founded the race and belonged to the Roundhead party in the days of Cromwell, down to the last old squire, there rested their bones in peace. One peculiarity of the churchyard, however, consisted in the great age to which its inhabitants had attained before shaking off this mortal coil. Ninety years was a comparatively early time for any of the former citizens of Hartwood to dream of sleeping with his fathers; and although you occasionally came across an inscription sacred to the memory of a young man of seventy or thereabouts, the majority of the departed were mostly centenarians.

The interior of the church was very different to what you might have expected from the outside view. The dowager, to do her justice, was not mean in all things; and, although she would screw her tenants down and pinch her household, she could occasionally—very occasionally it must be confessed—be not only liberal but grand in her views, that is when it suited her book. She had had the church newly fitted up some short time before, when her High Church fever and devotion to Ritualism had first begun; and all its columns and crossbeams and rough rafters, which could be seen within, were newly varnished and resplendent in their graining. The chancel, too, was a wonder of blue and gold, and she had also presented a novel reading-desk or lectern, consisting of a brass eagle with outstretched wings, which stood in the centre of the aisle, and presented quite a grand appearance.

The pews were not what one generally calls pews at all: they were a series of high-backed benches, armed at each end, and placed in rows down the middle of the aisle facing the pulpit and chancel, those at the side being arranged at right angles, so that the lateral pews faced each other; this position must be borne in mind, as it accounts for a trifling circumstance which led to the origin of the present chapter.

Slowly and majestically Mrs Hartshorne marched into the church, and slowly and majestically Tom marched after her, carrying her large prayer-book and Bible of the size originally distributed by the Religious Tract Society—a service generally performed by the henchman “Jarge,” as he pronounced his own name—while Markworth brought up the rear of the procession.

The dowager’s pew was immediately opposite the pulpit, and, of course, facing the side pews on the other side behind the reading-desk, the front one of which was devoted to the use of the incumbent for the time being and his family, in case he had any.

Up the aisle in its onward and solemn progress the procession passed, and the dowager was soon ensconced in the extreme upper corner of the pew, with her devotional exercises arranged before her on the prie-Dieu, and her hands folded on her lap, now deprived of their customary woollen envelopes, as prim as you please. “Primness was no name for it, sir,” as Markworth said afterwards to Tom; “her position was—yes, sir, statuesque, by Jove!” The guest sat bodkin between the two, while Tom occupied the corner—by the place where the door should have been if there had been one—from which point he could command a portion of the clerical pew, otherwise obscured from general observation, at least on this side of the house, by the reading-desk.

Tom, I am sorry to say, was not particularly devout in church. He would keep his eyes straying from his book, and yet his attention did not wander over the whole edifice, for he looked straight in front of him, and none but a very curious observer could have detected his lack of devotional zeal. His mother did not notice it, for she was apparently plunged heart and soul into the liturgy, although really making up her mind as to the feasibility of raising Farmer Grigg’s rent upon having seen the daughters of that unfortunate worthy, who were esteemed the belles of the village, come into church with new bonnets and actually silk dresses! “when I can not afford them, the brazen hussies.” As for Markworth he was wondering what a rum lot the Chawbacons were, and how funny they all looked clean washed and scraped, and with their elaborately-braided white smock-frocks on over their black trowsers, looking as if they had donned surplices, or, as he hit upon a better illustration, as if they had put on their night-shirts—I beg pardon, rôbes de chambre—and come out by mistake instead of going to bed. So Tom had it all his own way.

Tom was observant, but it was nothing so very noticeable that attracted his attention. It was only a bonnet! only a little coquettish arrangement of ribbons and lace, and very little crown to it, if any,—only one of those tiny specimens of Madame Charles or Leroux, handiwork which you can see any day in Leicester Square, and which though apparently so trifling are worth far more than their weight in gold—as poor Paterfamilias knew to his cost. It is a dainty, demure little article enough, but nothing in it is there to warrant this wrapt attention on Tom’s part.

Can he be considering how two ribbons can be held together in that artful mode by a mere straw? is he a disciple of the millinery art? No, that would not make the gallant young officer gaze so entrancingly, and cause the ruddy flush of excitement to colour his budding cheek! Master Tom is not so simple as that, although he may be a most ingenuous youth. The bonnet has a wearer who will keep her eyes bent down as earnestly as Tom persists in raising his from his book, and fixing them over the way, except now and then an occasional blushing little look across, and then once more down deep into the service again. It is a pretty little bonnet and has a pretty little owner, as Tom thinks. He “considers it a shame,” but he cannot help letting his enquiring optics travel over the way. Young rogue! how he enjoys seeing the colour which his too-earnest gaze calls up—the pink signal of maidenly reserve, pleasure, coyness, consciousness.

There is no blame attached to Tom, those heavenly violet eyes have done it all. He could not help it even if he would. Tom is hopelessly in love—love at first sight—with pretty Lizzie Pringle, Mrs Hartshorne’s young incumbent’s sister. He is thoroughly in for it, as much as if he had known her for months or years.

It is all very well for you, Monsieur Cynic, or you, Madame Artless, to say that there is no such thing as “love at first sight.” Of course it is foolish, but it is not impossible; Cupid, my dear sir or madam, is a most erratic as well as erotic young gentleman, and plays some strange pranks sometimes. A glance from a pair of bright eyes will some times, one glance, effect a wonderful metamorphosis in even the sternest misogynists, create a revolution, ruin an empire. Look at history, Monsieur Cynic, and answer me if you dare. Nay, my dear sir, it is not impossible, not even improbable. A single word, one look between sympathetic souls, often establishes that cordial affinity which years of intercourse, and dictionaries of words, and oceans of sighs will not create between others who have not met their mental kindred. Philosophy cannot argue against Cupidon; he laughs Plato and his platitudes to scorn. Dixi! I have spoken. Tom has fallen in love, and it was a clear case of love at first sight, with Lizzie Pringle just the girl he was ordained—in a non-clerical sense—to fall in love with.

She was as nice a little thing as you could conceive—slim, petite, with dark brown hair nearly black, such heavenly violet eyes with liquid depths, and the most ravishing little rosebud of a mouth and piquante little nose possible for any one but a fairy to possess; she was so winning, innocent, pretty a specimen of God’s gift to man, that the fact is Master Tom would have deserved being called an eingebornen knarren, adopting the German text for fool, if he had not fallen a victim immediately to her violet eyes. And then she was dressed so bewitchingly—not in gaudy contrasts, or in the extreme of the mode, but so neatly and in such a ladylike manner that she must have attracted even wiser heads than his.

Of course she saw him looking at her—of course she did! “What a rude staring fellow he is to be sure!” she said to herself mentally, and resolved not to look that way again but to fix her attention sternly on the Thirty-nine Articles; still she would have just one peep more.—“There he is again, the great rude creature! What nice blue eyes he has, and such a little love of a moustache! and what on earth can he find to look at so persistently over here?” And down would go the long dark lashes again, and a little conscious blush would rise, and even the tender little ears and supple white neck would be encrimsoned. “It must be Mister Tom,” she determined, “that dark ugly man that went in with Mistress Hartshorne could not be him; but he is a very naughty fellow to be staring at a young lady like that.” Yet she would go on to excuse him to herself. “Perhaps he does not know any better, poor fellow; he’s very young” (she was just seventeen mind you), “and when I know him I will tell him what I think of his rudeness.” And then she would wonder to herself whether she ever would know him, and it sent a pang to her little heart when she thought she might not, and then Master Tom would catch her eye, and the tell-tale blush would hang out its pink flag again, and there would be a little flush of happiness, and so da capo. Just picture to yourself, Corydon, your little flirtation or grande passion with Phyllis, and you can easily fill up all the blanks and imagine the rest.

The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon, who now filled the living at Hartwood, was a very young man; but a very great man in his own estimation, and in that of some others also, as to family, talents, and ritualistic attainments in the church. He was the cousin, twice removed, of Sir Boanerges Todhunter the great anti-taxpayer and member of the Opposition, belonged to the extensive High Church party at Oxford, had gained some celebrity at the Union Debating Club; and here he was now the regular incumbent (for a term of only five years be it known, for the Sussex Dowager liked always to have a hold on her tenants in the matter of leases, and stretched her authority to the livings she had in her gift) of a respectable church in a good county, where he could do as he pleased—at an age when the majority of his compeers would be struggling along perhaps in their first curacies.

He had reason to be proud of himself; and really, putting aside a certain priggishness of manner and affectation of style, he was not such a very bad fellow. Take him out of the church, and he would have been a regular jolly fellow, who would have got along capitally in a mess room or in a hunting county, for he was dearly inclined to horseflesh, and had kept his two hunters at Swain’s before he had “gone in” for the High Church party of “young Oxford.” He was a short, well-built, straw-whiskered man of some eight and twenty, although almost boyish in manner and in face. He had pleased the dowager by the way in which he had officiated as curate during the long illness of the late incumbent, and she had determined to put him in the vacant pulpit, if only out of opposition, as has been observed before, to the Reverend Jabez Heavieman, whom she cordially detested.

Herbert Pringle had therefore tumbled upon a snug thing. “His lines had fallen in pleasant places,” so here he was inducted into the living of Hartwood. His first step was to set up housekeeping, in order to do which he had to bring his favourite little sister Lizzie from school to “keep house” for him, and then he set about making further improvements in his district, for which he had carte blanche from the dowager, who, whenever she heard of some fresh innovation, thought to herself, “I wonder what that old hypocrite”—alluding to the Reverend Jabez—“thinks of that now!”

The restoration of the church was effected at the new incumbent’s especial request; and the brass lectern was given by the old lady because the young divine had munificently presented a huge painted window, the subject of which was a large cross, erected just over the chancel. Then a new harmonium was got in place of a wretched old “spinet,” which had previously done duty for an organ, and a choir was regularly established from amongst the school children that sang the responses in church now every Sunday, its members clad in little dirty white surplices.

He was all in favour of ceremonials, was the Reverend Herbert Pringle; and although he perhaps “meant well” according to his judgment, he was very affected, and “High Church” all through the service—to the intense astonishment of the farmers and poor labourers, who used to wonder at the new style of worship adopted in their old church, and be perplexed with all the bowings and genuflections, and especially with the white-surpliced choir.

To give him his due, however, he did not preach a bad sermon, and had a very effective way of appealing to the pockets of his hearers when any charity required his aid; but he read always in a light, jocular, hurried manner, as if he were under an engagement to get over a certain portion of ground in a fixed time, and he always said, or intoned, “Awe-men” instead of Amen at the end of the prayers.

He had now been in possession of his cure for more than six months, and consequently felt at home in it. His improvements, too, had now been got accustomed to; and although he was thought somewhat queer in his notions by the heavy agriculturists around him, he was pretty well liked on the whole. As for his sister Lizzie, she was idolised by poor and rich around: to tell the truth, it is my opinion that a good deal of her brother’s popularity arose from his connection with the young lady with the violet eyes.

Tom’s bad behaviour continued all through the service, and his eyes were not still even during the eloquent discourse which the young divine afterwards delivered, on the “Vanity of human wishes”—would that Tom could have applied the text! In going out of the church, he allowed his mother and Markworth to go on in front, and hung back in the rear. He could see that his charmer had not yet stirred from her pew, although nearly all the congregation were out, and he wondered what made her linger.

Fortunately, he was not long kept in suspense. He passed our old friend “Jarge” in the porch, and incontinently asked that individual “who was the young lady in the rector’s pew?”

“Lor sakes! Measter Tummus, don’t you know un? Whoi, thet’s the porsun’s seestur; that be Missy Pringle, Measter Tummus!”

“Thank you, George,” answered our hero; and how overjoyed he felt as he walked along after the others. He knew Pringle well, although he was not aware that he had a sister; and “of course I can easily get introduced,” he thought very naturally.

The following Monday, strange to say, Tom begged Markworth to excuse him for some little time, as he had to pay a visit, and he set off alone to the parsonage.

Naturally he was “only going to pay a regular call;” it was only proper that he should pay a visit to his friend Pringle, whom he had not seen “since last year, by Jove!” and to congratulate him on his ecclesiastical preferment. That was all! And so Master Tom rode up to the parsonage on one of the old horses, which the dowager had retained in the stables—probably on account of its not being fit for farm-work—the very next morning after seeing Lizzie.

Pringle was glad to see him, and his sister was introduced to the “young squire,” who tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, but was painfully embarrassed during his entire visit; and yet, before he had gone away, Lizzie thought him “such a nice fellow,” and she was “oh, what a darling” to him.—The two young things were drinking deep draughts of love which were intoxicating them and drawing them nearer and nearer to each other in a sort of rose-coloured Paradise, which the mere presence of the one conjured up to the other. And then he had to go, and it was pleasant to go, merely to have those taper fingers in his, which pressure sent a thrill of sweet electricity through his frame, while even she trembled and blushed—and then came the pang of parting.

On the morrow, he had to come and see “Pringle’s new fishing rod,” and show him his own, for it would be so jolly to fish from the lawn at the back of the parsonage, that ran down to the little river which contained such capital perch! and of course he could not help meeting her again, and she wanted to see the “poor little fish that were caught!”

Bless you, my darling, there were other fish caught that morning besides perch! How hackneyed, and yet how novel are the windings and twistings in the fairy land of Love’s Young Dream!

It was all over with them.

Volume One—Chapter Seven.

“Sowing the Wind.”

The nominal week, which had been mentioned as the duration of Markworth’s stay at The Poplars, passed pleasantly enough for Tom at all events. So pleasantly indeed, that he did not keep count of the days as they glided by, for he was continually dropping in at the parsonage “to see Pringle,” and was, long before the following Friday arrived, over head and ears in the little pit of love which Lizzie’s bright eyes had excavated in his heart. The dowager was still trotting about grinding down her tenants, and laying up riches which she did not know who would gather. Miss Kingscott had made the best use of her opportunities in two short interviews which she had had with the somewhat amorous doctor, and had yet contrived to cast sheep’s eyes on the young squire, whom she had hopes of captivating; while Markworth was steadily trying to gain the confidence of the poor half-demented girl, around whom he had already set his snares. All, all the members in fact of our drama, were recklessly engaged in the vineyard of Aeolus, all were with lavish hand sowing to the wind, never dreaming of the crop they should reap.

Susan Hartshorne’s strong passion for music had early been taken advantage of by Markworth as a means towards the end he had in view.

Music was, strange to say, for such a character, one of his fortes, indeed it was a hobby with him; and he was not only a first-rate player in the mere sense of mechanical dexterity, but was also a thorough musician at heart.

The pathology of the human mind is a wonderful and intricate study, and it is a remarkable fact, with all our spread of knowledge and science, with the vast new fields of thought which are freshly opened every day in the educated world, what trifling advance we have made in the analysis of the mainspring and moving power that sets in motion the train of thought itself! Medical jurisprudence has only of late become a special study, and the psychology of the human mind, one of its most important branches—more than a mere ramification as it is often held—is at best only a dead letter as yet to those who affect any acquaintance with the subject. Mental insanity is one of those topics, like the physiology of dreams, which embraces a large area for research and investigation; and even the best and latest of the physicians who have made this division of medical knowledge their especial field for enquiry, confess to what a very short distance their knowledge carries them. Hence, until very lately, not only was there no remedial treatment pursued, but arbitrary incarceration, strait-waistcoats, and chains, comprised all medical procedure towards our lunatics. Thank goodness, however, the broad light of science, reason, and common sense, has tended to dispel the black ignorance displayed by our forefathers towards our mental as well as bodily ills. Formerly drastics and phlebotomy, adopted alternately, were supposed to cure every disease and ailment of the human body, but that day is past now; and, so as in surgery and physic, a new path has been opened for the treatment of insanity. It is yet in its infancy; but many species of mania now deemed hopeless will before long, probably, succumb before judicious and efficacious ministering.

One of the most hopeless forms of insanity, according to eminent authorities on the subject, is melancholia, but even this gives way under proper treatment. In cases of this kind, patients are but too often neglected, and the cure is left, ignorantly, to work out itself, which generally ends unsuccessfully; whereas, if the patient under treatment were led out of themselves as it were, their affliction ignored, and treated to just the company and influences which appear to affect them most, I believe in nine cases out of ten of so called settled melancholia, the unfortunate sufferer would be turned out cured after a time.

Susan Hartshorne was suffering from this species of mental infliction. Her case certainly was not a very extreme one; and if she had been removed from her home at the time she first lost her wits, and been under gentle treatment and care (as Doctor Jolly recommended) instead of being kept at the place where all her surroundings, and especially her mother’s presence, kept the great fright she had undergone continually before her, she would have been cured long since. Even as it was, she was every month gaining fresh mental stamina from the outside influences at work upon her: now that Markworth specially devoted himself to her, as he did, and gradually caused her budding intellect and intelligence to expand instead of warping them, she changed more and more for the better every day. Markworth told Tom that he was interested in the case—as indeed he was on more accounts than one—and if left to himself he would cure her completely. The mother, too, seemed interested, as she could not but perceive the change in Susan, and thanked Markworth in her way, by dropping some of her brusquerie, and also by avoiding her daughter so as not to frighten her, and make her shrink back within herself by her presence and appearance—Markworth had drawn her attention to the point. As for Miss Kingscott, of course in fulfilment of her compact, she did not interfere with him at all, and allowed him to mould her charge as he pleased, although she watched him narrowly, and bided her time.

Allynne Markworth had now become domesticated to a certain extent at The Poplars. The first week flew away rapidly, even with him, he had so much to plan, and to take such pains to get his plot en train; while with Tom the time had disappeared since he knew Lizzie as one day. Mrs Hartshorne, too, was so glad to have her son at home, although she seemed rather unsympathetic mother, that she tolerated Markworth at first for his sake; and he had played his cards so well, and studied her little weaknesses so fully, and kept himself so much out of the way, that she at length looked upon it as a matter of course that he should remain when Tom hinted at stopping. “It is such nice weather,” explained that young deceiver, “and so jolly down here, Markworth, and the Inskips are coming down this week, that I wish you would stay on—that is, if you are not fearfully bored with us all.” It was very strange, was it not, that Tom had not remembered the fact of the Inskips coming down before?

“Not at all, my dear fellow,” answered Markworth; “I like this place very much; and your mother and I get on very well now, although she did not certainly like me at first;” he could not help laughing over the recollection of his first meeting and introduction to the dowager, Tom sharing in his merriment.

“Well, I am glad you will stop. It is much better here than being in town, and I begin to like a country life,” observed Tom, thinking of violet eyes and pastoral rusticity.