SONS OF FIRE

A Novel

By Mary Elizabeth Braddon

THE AUTHOR OF

"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," "VIXEN,"
"ISHMAEL," ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES

VOL. II.

LONDON
SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LIMITED
STATIONERS' HALL COURT

[All rights reserved]

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

CONTENTS OF VOL. II.

SONS OF FIRE.

CHAPTER I.

FATE INTERVENES.

The return of Geoffrey Wornock made no essential difference in the lives of the lovers. Suzette continued her organ practice; Allan continued his visits to the Manor House; and Suzette and Allan were much oftener Mrs. Wornock's companions than her son, whose restless temper did not allow of his remaining long in any one place, and for whom monotony of any kind was intolerable.

He stayed in London for a week buying horses, and having brought home a string of four, every one supposed to be matchless, he began hunting with the vigour of a man whose appetite for that British sport had only been sharpened by paper-chases and polo in the tropics. Not content with the South Sarum, he travelled up and down the line, hunted with the Vine from Basingstoke, and with the H. H. from Winchester. He was up and away in the grey November mornings after a seven-o'clock breakfast, and seldom home in time for an eight-o'clock dinner.

On the days when there was no hunting to be had, he flung himself into the delights of the music-room with all the ardour of a musical fanatic, and Allan and Suzette were content to listen in meek astonishment to performances which were far above the drawing-room amateur, although marked by certain imperfections and carelessnesses which seemed inevitable in a player whose ardour was too fitful for the drudgery of daily practice.

These musical days were the bright spots in Mrs. Wornock's existence, the chief bond of union between mother and son; as if music were the only spell which could hold this volatile spirit within the circle of domestic love.

"I like my mother to accompany me," said Geoffrey. "I have played with some prodigious swells, but not one of them has had her sympathetic touch, her instantaneous comprehension of my spontaneities. They expected me to be faultily faultless, instead of which I play de Beriot as Chopin used to play Chopin, indulging every caprice as to time."

Geoffrey was occasionally present when one of the organ lessons was in progress. He was interested, but not so much so as to sit still and listen. He carried Allan off to the billiard-room, or the stable, before the lesson was half over.

"What a happy little family we are," he said laughingly one day, as he and Allan were strolling stablewards. "My mother is almost as fond of your fiancée as if she were her daughter."

"Your mother is a very amiable woman, as well as a gifted woman."

"Gifted? yes, that's the word. She is all enthusiasm. There have been no spiritualists or supernatural people here lately, I suppose?"

"No."

"I'm glad of that. My poor mother loses her head when that kind of people are in the way. She is ready to believe in their nonsense. She wants to believe. She wants to see visions and dream dreams. She has secluded herself from the world of the living, and she would give half her fortune if she could bring the dead into her drawing-room. Poor dear mother! How many weary hours she has spent waiting for materializations that have never materialized! I have never been able to convince her that all her spiritualistic friends are pretenders and comedians. She tells me she knows that some are charlatans; but she believes that their theories are based upon eternal truths. She rebukes my scepticism with an appeal to the Witch of Endor. I dare not shock her by confessing that I have my doubts even about the Witch of Endor."

He had a way of making light of his mother's fancies and eccentricities which had in its gaiety no touch of disrespect. Gaiety was the chief characteristic of his temperament, as it was with Suzette. He brought a new element of mirthfulness into the life at Discombe Manor; but with this happy temperament there was the drawback of an eager desire for change and movement which disturbed the atmosphere of a house whose chief charm to Allan's mind had been its sober quiet, its atmosphere of old-world peace.

Allan studied this young man's character closely, studied him and thought of him much more than he wanted to think of him, and vainly struggled against an uneasy feeling that in every superiority of this new acquaintance there lurked a danger to his own happiness.

"He is handsomer than I am," mused Allan, in one of his despondent moods. "He has a gayer temper—Suzette's own temper—which sees all things in the happiest light. I sit and watch them, listen to them, and feel myself worlds away from them both; and yet if she were free to-morrow he could never love her as I love her. There, at least, I am the superior. He has no such power of concentration as I have. To his frivolous nature no woman could ever be all in all."

These despondent moods were luckily not of long duration. On Suzette's part there had not been the faintest sign of wavering; and Allan felt ashamed of the jealous fears which fell ever and anon like a black cloud across the sunny prospect of his life. However valiantly he might struggle against that lurking jealousy, there were occasions upon which he could not master it, and his darkest hours were those during which he sat in the music-room at Discombe, and heard Suzette and Geoffrey playing concertante duets for violin and piano. It seemed to him as the violinist bent over the pretty dark head, to turn a leaf, or to explain a passage in the piano score, that for these two there was a language which he knew not, a language in which mind spoke to mind, and perhaps heart to heart. Who could keep the heart altogether out of the question when that most eloquent of all languages was making its impassioned appeal? Every long-drawn legato chord upon the Strad, every delicate diminuendo of the sighing strings, the tremulous bow so lightly held in the long lissom fingers, sounded like an avowal.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," sobbed the violin; "how can you care for that dumb brute yonder, while I am telling my love in heavenliest sounds, in strains that thrill along every nerve, and tremble at the door of your heart? How can you care for that dumb dog, or care how you hurt him by your inconstancy?"

Possessed by these evil fancies, Allan started up from his seat in a remote window, and began to pace the room in the midst of a de Beriot sonata, to which Suzette had been promoted after a good deal of practice in less brilliant music.

"What's the matter, old fellow?" asked Geoffrey, noting that impatient promenade; "was I out of tune?"

"No, you were only too much in tune."

"How do you mean? I don't understand——"

"Is it likely you can understand me—or I you?" cried Allan, impetuously. "You have a language which I have not, a sense which is lacking in me. You and Suzette are in a paradise whose gate I can't open. Don't think me an envious, churlish kind of fellow, if I sometimes grudge you your happiness."

"But, my dear Allan, you are fond of music—you like listening——"

"No, I don't. I have had too much listening, too much of being out of it. Put on your hat, Suzette, and come for a walk. I am tired to death of your de Beriot."

Mrs. Wornock was sitting a little way from the piano, reading. She looked up wonderingly at this outburst. Never before had Allan been guilty of such rough speech in her presence. Never before had he spoken with such rude authority to Suzette.

"If our music has not the good fortune to please you, I would suggest that there are several rooms in this house where you would not hear it," said Geoffrey, laying down his fiddle.

All the brightness had faded from his countenance, leaving it very pale. Suzette looked from one to the other with an expression of piteous distress. The two young men stood looking at each other, Allan flushed and fiery, Geoffrey's pallid face fixed and stern, with an anger which was stronger than the occasion warranted. They were sufficiently alike to make any ill-will between them seem like a brother's quarrel.

"You are very good, but I would rather be out-of-doors. Are you coming, Suzette?"

"Not till I have finished the sonata," she answered quietly, with a look which reproved his rudeness, and then began to play.

Geoffrey took up his fiddle, and the performance was resumed as if nothing had happened.

Mrs. Wornock rose and went to Allan.

"Will you come for a stroll with me, Allan?" she asked, taking up the warm Indian shawl which lay on a chair near the window. "It is not too cold for the garden."

He could not refuse such an invitation as this, though it tortured him to leave those two alone at the piano. He opened the window, wrapped Mrs. Wornock in her shawl, and followed her to the lawn.

"Allan, why were you angry just now?" she asked.

"Why? Perhaps I had better tell you the truth. I am miserable when I see the woman I love interested and enthralled by an art in which your son is a master—and of which I know hardly the A, B, C. I ask myself if she can care for a creature so inferior as I am—if she can fail to perceive his superiority."

"Jealous, Allan! Oh, I am so sorry. It was I who proposed that they should play duets. It was not Geoffrey's idea. I thought it would encourage Suzette to go on practising. You don't know the delight a pianist feels in accompanying a violin——"

"I think I can imagine it. Suzette takes very kindly to the concertante practice."

"She has improved so much since I first knew her. She has such a talent for music. It never occurred to me that you could object."

"It never occurred to you that I could be a jealous fool. You might just as well say that, for no doubt you think it."

"Yes, I think you are foolish to be jealous. Suzette is as true as steel; and I don't believe Geoffrey has the slightest inclination to fall in love with her."

"Not at this moment, perhaps; but who knows what tender feelings those dulcet strains may bring? However, Suzette will be leaving the neighbourhood, I hope, in a few days."

"Leaving us, you hope!"

"Yes. My mother has written to invite her to Fendyke. She is to see the White Farm, and get acquainted with all our Suffolk neighbours, who declare themselves dying to see her, while I am shooting my father's pheasants."

"You are both going away then? I shall miss you sadly."

"You will have Geoffrey."

"One day out of six, perhaps. He will be hunting or shooting all the rest of the week."

"We shall not be away very long. I don't suppose General Vincent will spare us his daughter for more than a fortnight or three weeks."

"Suzette told me nothing about the invitation."

"She has not received the letter yet. The post had not come in when she left home. I met the postman on my way here, and read my letters as I came along. De Beriot has been too absorbing to allow of my telling Suzette about my mother's letter to me. Shall we go back? Unless that sonata is interminable, it must have come to an end before now."

Mrs. Wornock turned immediately. She saw Allan's uneasiness, and sympathized with him. They went back to the music-room, where there was only silence. Suzette had left the piano, and had put on her hat and jacket. Geoffrey was still standing in front of the music-stand, turning the leaves of the offending sonata.

"Good-bye, dear Mrs. Wornock," said Suzette, kissing her friend. "Now, Allan, I am quite ready."

Allan and Geoffrey shook hands at parting, but not with the usual smiling friendliness.

"How could you be so dreadfully rude, Allan?" Suzette said with a pained voice, as they walked away from the house. "You were quite hateful."

"I know that. I am astounded at my own capacity for hatefulness."

"I shall play no more concertante duets, though I have enjoyed them more than anything in the way of music. It was only the most advanced pupils at the Sacré Cœur who ever had accompanying lessons—and such happiness never fell to my share."

"I should be very sorry to interfere with your—happiness; but I think, Suzette, if you cared for me half as much as I care for you, you would understand how it hurts me to see you so completely in sympathy with another man, and happy with a happiness which I cannot share."

"Why should you not share our happiness, Allan? You are fond of music, I know."

"Fond of music—yes; but I am not a musician. I cannot make music as that young man can. I cannot speak to you as he speaks to you, in that language which is his and yours, and not mine. I am standing outside your world. I feel myself thrust far off from you, while he is so near."

"Allan!" cried Suzette, with a smile that was a pale shadow of her old sportiveness, "can you actually be jealous?"

"I'm afraid I can."

"Jealous about a man who is nothing to me except my dear friend's son. You know how fond I am of Mrs. Wornock—the only real friend I have made since I left the convent—and you ought to understand that I like her son for her sake. And I have been pleased to take my part in the music they both love. But that is all over now. I will not allow myself to be misconstrued by you, Allan. There shall be no more duets."

They were still in Mrs. Wornock's domain, in a wooded drive where the leafless branches overarched the way; and the scene was lonely enough and sheltered enough to allow of Allan taking his sweetheart to his breast and kissing her in a rapture of penitent love.

"My darling, forgive me! If I did not know the pricelessness of my treasure, I should not be so full of unworthy fears. We won't stop the duets for ever, Susie. I must get accustomed to the idea of a gifted wife, who has many talents which I have not. But I hope your musical studies at Discombe may be suspended for a month or so. When you go home, you will find a letter from my mother inviting you to Fendyke. She loves you already, and she wants to know more of you, so that you may really be to her the daughter she has been wishing for ever since I was born. You will go, won't you, Suzette, if the good General will spare you; and I think he will?"

"Are you to be there too?"

"Yes, I am to be there; but you shall not see too much of me. Ours is a shooting county, and I shall be expected to be tramping with my gun nearly every day. I think you will like Fendyke. The house is a fine old house, and the neighbourhood is pretty after a fashion, just as some parts of Holland and Belgium are pretty—sleepy, contented, prosperous, useful."

He walked home with her and stayed to luncheon, so as to secure General Vincent's consent upon the spot. This was obtained without difficulty. The General, having had to dispense with his daughter for at least three-fourths of her existence, was not dependent upon her for society, though he liked to see the bright young face smiling at him across the table at his luncheon and his dinner, and he liked to be played to sleep after dinner, or to have Suzette as a listener when he was in the mood for talking. The greater part of his life was spent out-of-doors—hunting, shooting, fishing, golfing—so that he could afford to be amiable upon this occasion.

"Yes, yes, Suzette, accept the invitation, by all means. The change will do you good. Lady Emily is a most estimable person, and it is only right that you should become better acquainted with her."

"I am very fond of her already," said Suzette. "Then I am really to go, Allan? Lady Emily suggests Saturday—three days from now."

"Well, you are ready, I suppose," said her father. "You have the frocks and things that are necessary."

"Yes, father, I think I have frocks enough; unless you are dreadfully fashionable in Suffolk, Allan."

"The less said about our fashion the better. If you have a stout cloth skirt short enough to keep clear of our mud, that is all you need trouble about. I suppose I shall be allowed to escort Suzette, General?"

"Well, yes, I don't see any objection to your taking care of her on the journey; but I have very lax notions of etiquette. I must ask my sister. Suzie will take her maid, of course; and Suzie's maid is a regular dragon."

Allan walked homeward with a light step and a light heart. The idea of having Suzette as a visitor in his own home, growing every day nearer and dearer to his parents, was rapture. No more concertante duets, no more long-drawn sobbings and sighings on the Stradivarius! He would have his sweetheart all to himself, to pace the level meadow paths, and saunter by the modest river, and loiter by rustic mills and bridges, which Constable may have painted. And in that atmosphere of homely peacefulness he might draw his sweetheart closer to his heart, win her more completely than he had won her yet, and persuade her to consent to a nearer date for their marriage than that far-off summer of the coming year. He counted much on home influences, on his mother's warmhearted affection for the newly adopted daughter.

"A telegram, sir," said the servant who opened the door, startling him from a happy day-dream. "It came nearly an hour ago."

Allan tore open the envelope and glanced carelessly at the message, expecting some trivial communication.

"Your father is dangerously ill. Come at once. I am writing to postpone Miss Vincent's visit.—Emily Carew."

CHAPTER II.

"BEFORE THE NIGHT BE FALLEN ACROSS THY WAY."

A sudden end to a happy day-dream. A hurried preparation and a swift departure. Allan had just time to write to Suzette while his servant was packing a portmanteau and the dog-cart horse was being harnessed for the drive to the station.

He loved his father too well to have room for any selfish thoughts about his own disappointment; but he tried to be hopeful and to think that his mother's alarm had exaggerated the evil, and that the word "dangerously" was rather the expression of her own panic than of the doctor's opinion. It was only natural that she should summon him, the only son, to his father's sick-bed. The illness must be appalling in its suddenness; for in her letter, written on the previous day, she had described him as in his usual health. The suddenness of the attack was in itself enough to scare a woman of Lady Emily's temperament.

Allan telegraphed from Liverpool Street, and was met at the quiet little terminus, where the tiny branch line came to an end on the edge of a meadow, and a hundred yards from a rustic road. The journey to Cambridge had been one of the swiftest, the twenty miles on the branch line of the slowest; a heart-breaking journey for a man whose mind was racked with fears.

It was dark when he arrived; but out of the darkness which surrounded the terminus there came the friendly voice of a groom and the glare of carriage-lamps.

"Ah, is that you, Moyle? Is my father any better?"

His heart sank as he asked the question, with agonizing dread of the reply.

"No, sir; I'm afraid he ain't no better. The doctor from Abbeytown is coming again to-night. Will you drive, sir?"

"No. Get me home as fast as you can, for God's sake!"

"Yes, sir. I brought your old bay mare. She's the fastest we've got."

"Poor old Kitty! Good to the last, is she? Get on."

They were bowling along the level road behind bay Kitty, the first hunter Allan had bought on his own account in his old college days, when his liberal allowance enabled him to indulge his taste in horseflesh. Kitty had distinguished herself in a small way as a steeplechaser before Allan picked her up at Tattersall's, and she was an elderly person when he came into his fortune; so he had left her in the home stables as a general utility horse.

Kitty carried him along the road at a splendid pace, and hardly justified impatience even in the most anxious heart.

His mother was waiting in the porch when he alighted.

"Dear mother," he said, as he kissed and soothed her and led her into the house, "why do you stand out in the cold? You are shivering."

"Not with cold, Allan."

"Poor mother! Is he very ill? Is it really so serious?"

"It could not be more serious, Allan. They thought this morning that he was dying. They told me—to be prepared—for the worst."

The sentence was broken by sobs. She hid her face on her son's breast and sobbed out her grief unchecked by him, only soothed by the gentle pressure of his arm surrounding and, as it were, protecting her from the invincible enemy.

"Doctors are such alarmists, mother; they often take fright too soon."

"Not in this case, Allan; I was with him all through his sufferings. I saw him struggling with death. I knew how near death was in those dreadful hours. It is his heart, Allan. You remember Dr. Arnold's death—how we have cried over the story in Stanley's book. It was like that—sudden, intense suffering. Yesterday he was sitting in his library, placid and at ease among his books. We dined together last night. He was cheerful and full of interesting talk. And this morning at daybreak he was fighting for his life. It was terrible."

"But the danger is past, mother. The struggle is over, please God, and he will be well again."

"Never, never again, Allan. The doctors hold out little hope of that. The awful agony may return at any hour. The mischief is deep seated. We have been living in a fool's paradise. Oh, my dear son, I never knew how fondly I have loved your father till to-day. I thought we should grow old together, go down to the grave hand-in-hand."

"Dear mother, hope for the best. I cannot think—remembering how young a man he seemed the other day at Beechhurst—I cannot think that we are to lose him."

Tears were streaming down Allan's cheeks, tears of which he was unconscious. He dearly loved the father whose mild affection had made his childhood and youth so smooth and easy, the father who had understood every youthful desire, every unexpressed feeling, who in his tenderness and forethought had been as sympathetic as a loving woman.

"Oh, Allan, you will find him aged by ten years since those happy days at Beechhurst. One day of suffering has altered him. It seems as if some invisible writing—the lines of disease and death—had come suddenly out upon his face—lines I never saw till this day."

"Mother, we won't despair. We are passing through the valley of the shadow of death, perhaps—but only passing through. The fight may be hard and bitter; but we shall conquer the enemy; we shall carry our dearest safely over the dark valley. May I see him? I will be very calm and quiet. I am so longing to see him, to hold his dear hand."

"We ought to wait for the doctors, Allan. They both warned me that he must be kept as quiet as possible. He is terribly exhausted. They will be here at eleven o'clock. It might be safer to wait till then."

"Yes, I will wait. Who is with him now?"

"A nurse from the Abbeytown hospital."

"And he is out of pain, and at rest?"

"He was sleeping when I left him—sleeping heavily, worn out with pain, and under the influence of opium."

"Well, we must wait. There is nothing to be done."

Mother and son waited patiently, almost silently, through the slow hours between eight and eleven. They sat together in Lady Emily's morning-room, which was next to the sick man's bedroom. There was a door of communication, and though this was shut, they could hear if there were much movement in the adjoining room.

Lady Emily mooted the question of dinner for the traveller. She urged him to go down to the dining-room and take some kind of meal after his journey; but he shook his head with the first touch of impatience he had shown since his arrival.

"You will wear yourself out, Allan?" she remonstrated.

"No, mother—there is plenty of wear in me. I almost hate myself for being so strong and so full of life while he is lying there——"

Tears ended the sentence.

At last the hands of the clock, which mother and son had both been watching, pointed to eleven, and the hour struck with slow and silvery sound. Then came ten minutes of expectancy, and then the cautious tread of the family practitioner and the consulting physician coming upstairs together.

Allan and his mother went out to the corridor to see them. A few murmured words only, and the two dark figures vanished through the door of the sick-room, and mother and son were alone once more, waiting, waiting with aching hearts and strained ears, that listened for every sound on the other side of the closed door.

The doctors were some time with the patient, and then they went downstairs, and were closeted together in the library for a time that seemed very long to those who waited for the result of their consultation. Those anxious watchers had followed them downstairs, and were standing beside the expiring fire in the hall, waiting as for the voice of fate. The dining-room door was open. A table laid for supper, with glass and silver shining under the lamplight, and the glow of a blazing fire, suggested comfort and good cheer—and seemed to accentuate the gloom in the hearts of the watchers.

What were they talking about, those two in the closed room yonder, Allan wondered. Was their talk all of the sufferer upstairs, and the means of alleviating pain and staving off the inevitable end? or did they wander from that question of life and death to the futilities of everyday conversation—and so lengthen out the agony of those who were waiting for their verdict? At last the door opened, and the two doctors came out into the hall, very grave still, but less gloomy than they had looked in the morning, Lady Emily thought.

"He is better—decidedly better than he was twelve hours ago," said the physician. "We have tided over the immediate peril."

"And he is out of danger?" questioned Allan, eagerly.

"He is out of danger for the moment. He may go on for some time without a recurrence of this morning's attack; but I am bound to tell you that the danger may recur at any time. What has happened must be regarded—I am sorry to be obliged to say it—as the beginning of the end."

There was a silence, broken only by the wife's stifled sobs.

"My God, how sudden it is! and you say it is hopeless?" said Allan, stunned by the sentence of doom.

"To you the thing is sudden; but the mischief is a work of many years. The evil has been there, suspected by your father, but never fully realized. He consulted me ten years ago, and I gave him the best advice the case allowed—prescribed a regimen which I believe he carefully followed—a regimen which consisted chiefly in quietness and careful living. I told him as much as it was absolutely necessary to tell, taking care not to frighten him."

"You did not tell me that he was a doomed man," Lady Emily said reproachfully.

"My dear lady, to have done that would have been to lessen his chance of cheerful surroundings, to run the risk of sad looks where it was most needful he should find hopefulness. Besides, at that stage of the disease, one might hope for the best—even for a long life, under favourable conditions."

"And now—what is the limit of your hope?" asked Allan.

"I cannot measure the sands in the glass. Another attack like that of to-day would, I fear, be fatal. It is a wonder to me that he survived the agony of this morning."

"And you have told us—that agony may return at any hour. Nothing you can do can prevent its recurrence?"

"I fear not; but we shall do the uttermost."

"May I see him?"

"Not till to-morrow. He is still under the influence of an opiate. Let him rest for to-night undisturbed by one agitating thought. His frame is exhausted by suffering. Mr. Travers will be here again early to-morrow; and if he find his patient as I hope he will find him, then you and Lady Emily can see him for a few minutes. But I must beg that there may be no emotional talk, and that he may be kept very quiet all to-morrow. I will come again early on Saturday."

Mother and son hung upon the physician's words. He was a man whom both trusted, and even in this great strait the idea of other help hardly occurred to either. Yet in the desire to do the uttermost, Allan ventured to say—

"If you would like another opinion, I would telegraph for any one you might suggest—among London specialists."

"A specialist could do nothing more than we have done. The battle is fought and won so far—and when the fight begins again the same weapons will have to be used. The whole college of physicians could do nothing to help us."

And then the doctors went into the dining-room, the physician to fortify himself for a ten-mile drive, the family practitioner to prepare himself for the possibilities of the night. Allan went in with them, at his mother's urgent request, and tried to eat some supper; but his heart was heavy as lead.

He thought of Mrs. Wornock—remembering that pale face looking out of the autumn night, so intense in its searching gaze, the dark grey eyes seeming to devour the face they looked upon—his father sitting unconscious all the while—knowing not how near love was—the romantic love of his younger years, the love which still held all the elements of poetry, the love which had never been vulgarized or out-worn by the fret and jar of daily life.

He would die, perhaps, without ever having seen the face of his early love, without ever having heard the end of her history—die, perhaps, believing that she had given him up easily because she had never really cared for him. The son had felt it in somewise his duty to keep those two apart for his mother's sake; but now at the idea that his father might die without having seen his early love or heard her story from her own lips, it seemed to him that he had acted cruelly and treacherously towards the parent he loved.

There was a further improvement in the patient next morning, and Allan spent the greater part of the day beside his father's bed. There was to be very little conversation; but Allan was told he might read aloud, provided the literature was of an unemotional character. So at his father's request Allan read Chaucer, and the quaint old English verse, with every line of which the patient was familiar, had a soothing and a cheering influence on the tired nerves and brain. There was progress again the day after, and the physician and local watch-dog expressed themselves more than satisfied. The patient might come downstairs on Sunday—might have an airing on the sunniest side of the garden, should there be any sunshine on Monday; but everything was to be done with precautions that too plainly indicated his precarious condition.

"Do you take a more hopeful view than you did the other night?" Allan asked the physician, after the consultation.

"Alas! no. The improvement is greater than I expected; but the substantial facts remain the same. There is deep-seated mischief, which may culminate fatally at any time. I should do wrong to conceal the nature of the case—or its worst possibilities—from you. It is best you should be prepared for the end—for Lady Emily's sake especially, in order that you may lighten the blow for her."

"And the end is likely to come suddenly?"

"Most likely—better perhaps that it should so come. Your father is prepared for death. He is quite conscious of his danger. Better that the end should be sudden—if it spare him pain?"

"Yes, better so. But it is a hard thing. My father is not forty-eight years of age—in the prime of life, with a fine intellect. It is a hard thing."

"Yes, it is hard, very hard. It seems hard even to me, who have seen so many partings. I think you ought to spare your mother as much as you can. Spare her the agony of apprehension; let her have her husband's last days of sunshine and peace. But it is best that you should know. You are a man, and you can suffer and be strong."

"Yes, I can suffer. He seemed so much better this morning. Might he not go on for years, with the care which we shall take of him?"

"He might—but it is scarcely probable."

"We were to have had a young lady visitor here to-day," said Allan, with some hesitation, "the lady who is to be my wife. Her visit has been postponed on account of my father's illness; but I am very anxious that she should know more of my father and mother, and I have been wondering if next week we might venture to have her here. She is very gentle and sympathetic, and I know her society would be pleasant to my father."

"I would not risk it, Mr. Carew, if I were you."

"You think it might be bad for my father?"

"I think it might be hazardous for the young lady. Were a fatal end to come suddenly, you would not like the girl you love to be subjected to the horror of the scene, to be haunted perhaps for years by the memory of that one tragic hour. There is no necessity for her presence here. You can go and see her."

"Yes, and risk being absent in my father's dying hours."

"Better that risk than the risk of her unhappiness, should the end come while she were in the house."

"Yes, I suppose that is so; but I can't help hoping that the end may be far off."

The doctor pressed his hand in silence, and nodded good-bye as he stepped into his carriage. It was not for him to forbid hope, even if he knew that it was a delusive hope.

CHAPTER III.

WHILE LEAVES WERE FALLING.

Fondly as he loved his betrothed wife, Allan felt that affection and duty alike forbade him to leave his father while the shadow of doom hung over the threshold, while there could be no assurance from day to day that the end would not come before sundown. There had been enough in the physician's manner to crush hopefulness even in the most sanguine breast; and it was in vain that Allan tried to argue within himself against the verdict of learning and experience. He knew in his inmost heart that the physician was right. The ordeal through which George Carew had passed had changed him with the change that too palpably foreshadows the last change of all. In the hollow eyes, the blue-veined forehead and pale lips, in the inert and semi-transparent hands, in the far-off look of the man whose race is run and who has nothing more to do with active life, Allan saw the sign manual of the destroyer. He had need to cherish and garner these quiet days in his father's company, to hang fondly on every word from those pale lips, to treasure each thought as a memory to be hereafter dear and sacred. Whatever other love there might be for him upon this earth—even the love of her whom he had made his second self, upon whom he depended for all future gladness—no claim could prevail against the duty that held him here, by the side of the father whose days were numbered.

"I am so glad to have you with me, Allan," Mr. Carew said, in the grave voice which had lost none of its music, though it had lost much of its power. "It seems selfish on my part to keep you here, away from that nice girl, your sweetheart; but though you are making a sacrifice now——"

"No, no, no," interrupted Allan, "it is no sacrifice. I had rather be here than anywhere in the world. Thank God that I am here, that no accident of distance has kept me from you."

"Dear boy, you are so good and true—but it is a sacrifice all the same. This is the spring-time of your life, and you ought to be with the girl who makes your sunshine. It is hard for you two to be parted; and I should like her to be here; only this is a house of gloom. God knows what might happen to chill that young heart. It is better that you and I should be alone together, prepared for the worst: and in the days to come, in the far-off days, you will be glad to remember how your love lightened every burden for your dying father."

"Father, my dear father!"

The son uttered words of hope, declared his belief that Heaven would grant the dear patient renewed strength; but the voice in which he spoke the words of cheerfulness was broken by sobs.

"My dear Allan, don't be down-hearted. I am resigned to the worst that can happen. I won't say I am glad that the end is near. That would be base ingratitude to the best of wives, to the dearest of sons, and to Providence which has given me so many good things. This world and this life have been pleasant to me, Allan; and it does seem hard to be called away from such peaceful surroundings, from the home where love is, even though through all that life there has run a dark thread. I think you have known that, Allan. I think that sensitive nature of yours has been conscious of the shadow on my days."

"Yes, I have known that there was a shadow."

"A stronger character would have risen superior to the sorrow that has clouded my life, Allan. I have no doubt that some of the greatest and many of the most useful men the world has known have suffered just such a disappointment as I suffered in my early manhood, and have risen superior to their sorrow. You remember how Austin Caxton counsels his son to live down a disappointed love—how he appeals to the lives of men who have conquered sorrow? 'You thought the wing was broken. Tut, tut, 'twas but a bruised feather.' But in my own case, Allan, the wing was broken. I had not the mental stamina, I had not the power of rebound which enables a man to rise superior to the sorrow of his youth. I could not forget my first love. I gave up a year of my life to the search for the girl I loved—who had forsaken me in a foolish spirit of self-sacrifice because she had been told that my marriage with her would be social ruin. She was little more than a child in years—quite a child in ignorance of the world, and of the weight and measure of worldly things. We were both cruelly used, Allan. My mother was a good woman, and a woman who would do nothing which she could not reconcile to her conscience and her own ideas of piety. She acted conscientiously, after her own narrow notions, in bringing about the parting which blighted my youth, and she thought me a wicked son because for two years of my life I held myself aloof from her."

"And in all that time could you find no trace of your lost love?"

"None. I advertised in English and Continental newspapers, veiling my appeal in language which would mean little to the outside world though it would speak plainly to her. I wandered about the Continent—Italy, Switzerland—all along the Rhine, and the Danube, to every place that seemed to offer a chance of success. I had reason to believe that she had been sent abroad, and I thought that her exile would be fixed in some remote district, out of the beaten track. It may be that my research was conducted feebly. I was out of health for the greater part of my wanderings, and I had no one to help me. Another man in my position might have employed a private detective, and might have succeeded where I failed. I was summoned home by the news of my mother's dangerous illness, and I returned remorseful and unhappy. At the thought that she might die unforgiving and unforgiven, my resentment vanished. I recalled all that my mother had been to my childhood and boyhood, and I felt myself an ungrateful son. Thank God, I was home in time to cheer her sick-bed, and to help towards her recovery by the assurance of my unaltered affection. I found that she too had suffered, and I discovered the strength of maternal love under that outward hardness, and allied with those narrow views which had wrecked my happiness. In my gladness at her recovery from a long and dangerous illness, I began to think that the old heart-wound was cured; and when she suggested my marriage with Emily Darnleigh, my amiable playfellow of old, I cheerfully fell in with her views. The union was in every respect suitable, and for me in every respect advantageous. Your mother has been a good and dear wife to me, and never had man less reason to complain against Fate. But there has been the lingering shadow of that old memory, Allan, and you have seen and understood; so it is well you should know all."

Allan tearfully acknowledged the trust confided in him.

"When I am gone, if you care to know the story of my first love, you will find it fully recorded in a manuscript which was written some years ago. Heaven knows what inspired me to go over that old ground, to write of myself almost as I might have written of another man. It was the whim of an idle brain. I felt a strange sad pleasure in recalling every detail of my brief love-story—in conjuring up looks and tones, the very atmosphere of the commonplace surroundings through which my sweet girl and I moved. No touch of romance, no splendour of scenery, no gaiety of racecourse or public garden made the background of our love. A dull London street, a dull London parlour were all we had for a paradise, and God knows we needed no more. You will smile at a middle-aged man's folly in lingering fondly over the record of his own love-story, instead of projecting himself into the ideal world and weaving a romance of shadows. If I had been a woman, I might have found a diversion for my empty days in writing novels, in every one of which my sweetheart and I would have lived again, and loved and parted again, under various disguises. But I had not the feminine capacity for fiction. It pleased me to write of myself and my love in sober truthfulness. You will read with a mind in touch with mine, Allan; and though you may smile at your father's folly, there will be no scornfulness in your smile."

"My dear, dear father, God knows there will be no smile on these lips of mine if I am to read the story—after our parting. God grant the day for that reading may be far off."

"I will do nothing to hasten it, Allan. Your companionship has renewed my pleasure in life. You can never know how I missed you when this house ceased to be your home. It was different when you were at the University—the short terms, the short distance between here and Cambridge, made parting seem less than parting. But when you transferred yourself to a home of your own, and half a dozen counties divided us, I began to feel that I had lost my only son."

"You had but to summon me."

"I know, I know. But I could not be so selfish as to bring you away from your pleasant surroundings, the prettier country, the more genial climate, your hunting, your falconry, your golf, and your new neighbours. A sick man is a privileged egotist; but even now I feel I am wrong in letting you stay here and lose the best part of the hunting season—to say nothing of that other loss, which, no doubt, you feel more keenly, the loss of your sweetheart's society."

"You need not think about it, father, for I mean to stay. Please regard me as a fixture. If you keep as well next week as you are to-day, I may take a run to Wilts, just to see how Suzette and her father are getting on, and to look round my stable; but I shall be away at most one night."

"Go to-morrow, Allan. I know you are dying to see her."

"Then, perhaps, to-morrow. You really are wonderfully well, are you not?"

"So well that I feel myself an impostor when I am treated as an invalid."

"I may go then; but it will only be to hurry back," said Allan.

His heart beat faster at the thought of an hour with Suzette—an hour in which to look into the frank bright face, to see the truthful eyes looking up at him in all confidence and love, to be assured that three weeks' absence had made no difference, that not the faintest cloud had come between them in their first parting. Yes, he longed to see her, with a lover's heart-sickness. Deeply, tenderly as he treasured every hour of his father's society, he felt that he must steal just as much time from his home duty as would give him one hour with Suzette.

He pored over time-tables, and so planned his journey as to leave Fendyke in the afternoon of one day, and to return in time for luncheon the day after. This was only to be effected by leaving Matcham at daybreak; but a young man who was in the habit of leaving home in the half-light of a September dawn to ride ten miles to a six-o'clock meet was not afraid of an early train.

He caught a fast evening train for Salisbury, and was at Matcham soon after eight. He had written to General Vincent to announce his intention of looking in after dinner, apologizing in advance for so late a visit. His intention was to take a hasty meal, dress, and drive to Marsh House; but at Beechhurst he found a note from the General inviting him to dinner, postponed till nine o'clock on his account; so he made his toilet in the happiest mood, and arrived at Marsh House ten minutes before the hour.

He found Suzette alone in the drawing-room, and had her all to himself for just those ten minutes which he had gained by extra swiftness at his toilet. For half those minutes he had the gentle fluttering creature in his arms, the dark eyes full of tears, the innocent heart all tenderness and sympathy.

"Why would not you let me go to you, Allan?" she remonstrated. "I wanted to be with you and Lady Emily in your trouble. I hope you don't think I am afraid of sickness or sorrow, where those I love are concerned."

"Indeed, dearest, I give you credit for all unselfishness. But I was advised against your visit. The hazard was too awful."

"What hazard, Allan?"

"The possibility of my father's sudden death."

"Oh, Allan, my poor, poor boy! Is it really as bad as that? How sad for you! And you love him so dearly, I know."

"I hardly knew how dearly till this great terror fell upon me. Nothing less than my love for a father whom I must lose too soon—whom I may lose very soon—would have kept me from you so long, Suzette. And now I am only here for a few hours, to see you, to hear you, to hold you in my arms, and to assure myself that there is such a person; to make quite sure that the Suzette who is in my thoughts by day and in all my dreams by night is not a brilliant hallucination—the creature of my mind and fancy."

"I am very real, I assure you—full of human faults."

"I hope you have a stray failing or two lurking somewhere amongst your perfections; but I have not discovered one yet."

"Ah, Allan, Love would not be Love if he could see."

"Tell me all your news, Suzie. What have you been doing with yourself? Your letters have told me a good deal—dear bright letters, coming like a burst of sunshine into my sad life—but they could not tell me enough. I suppose you have been often at Discombe?"

"Yes, I have been there nearly every day. Mrs. Wornock has been ill and depressed. She will not own to being ill, and I could not persuade her to send for the doctor. But I don't think she could be in such low spirits if she were not ill."

"Poor soul!"

"She is so sympathetic, Allan. She has been as keenly interested in your poor father's illness as if he were her dearest friend. She has been so eager to hear about his progress, and has begged me to read the passages in your letters which refer to him. She is so tender-hearted, and enters so fully into other people's sorrows."

"And you have been much with her, and have done all in your power to cheer her, no doubt."

"I have done what I could. We have made music together; but she has not taken her old delight in playing, or in listening to me. She has become dreamy and self-absorbed. I am sure she is out of health."

"And her son, for whose company she was pining all the summer? Has not he been able to cheer her spirits?"

"I hardly know about that. Mr. Wornock is out hunting all day and every day. He has increased his stud since you left, and hunts with three packs of hounds. He comes home after dark, sometimes late for dinner. He and his mother spend the evening together, and no doubt that is her golden hour."

"And has Wornock given up his violin practice?"

"He plays for an hour after dinner sometimes, when he is not too tired?"

"And your musical mornings? Have there been no more of those—no more concertante duets?"

"Allan, I told you that there should be no more such duets for me."

"You might have changed your mind."

"Not after having promised. I considered that a promise."

"Conscientious soul! And you think me a jealous brute, no doubt?"

"I don't think you a brute."

"But a jealous idiot. My dearest, I don't think I am altogether wrong. A wife—or a betrothed wife—should have no absorbing interest outside her husband's or her sweetheart's life; and music is an absorbing interest, a chain of potent strength between two minds. When I heard those impassioned strains on the fiddle, and your tender imitations on the piano, question and answer, question and answer, for ever repeating themselves, and breathing only love——"

"Oh, Allan, what an ignoramus you are! Do you suppose musical people ever think of anything but the music they are playing?"

"They may not think, but they must feel. They can't help being borne along on that strong current."

"No, no; they have no time to be vapourish or sentimental. They have to be cool and business-like; every iota of one's brain-power is wanted for the notes one is playing, the transitions from key to key—so subtle as to take one by surprise—the changes of time, the syncopated passages which almost take one's breath away——Hark! there is my aunt. Father asked her in to support me. Uncle Mornington is in London, and she is alone at the Grove."

"I think we could have done without her, Suzie."

Mrs. Mornington's resonant voice was heard in the hall while she was taking off her fur cloak, and the lady appeared a minute later, in a serviceable black-velvet gown, with diamonds twinkling and trembling in her honiton cap, jovial and hearty as usual.

"You poor fellow! I'm very glad to see you," she said, shaking hands with Allan. "I hope your father is better. Of course he is, though, or you wouldn't be here. It's five minutes past nine, Suzie, and as I am accustomed to get my dinner at half-past seven, I hope your cook means to be punctual. Oh, here's my brother, and dinner is announced. Thank goodness!"

General Vincent welcomed his future son-in-law, and the little party went into the cosy dining-room, where Suzette looked her prettiest in the glow of crimson shaded lamps, which flecked her soft white gown and her pretty white neck with rosy lights. Conversation was so bright and cheerful among these four that Allan's thoughts reverted apprehensively now and again to the quiet home in Suffolk and the dark shadow hanging over it. He felt as if there were a kind of treason against family affection in this interlude of happiness, and yet he could not help being happy with Suzette. To-morrow, in the early grey of a winter morning, he would be on his way back to his father.

After dinner Mrs. Mornington established herself in an armchair close to the drawing-room fire, and had so much to say to her brother about Matcham sociology that Allan and his sweetheart, seated by the piano at the other end of the room, were as much alone as if they had been in one of the Discombe copses. No better friend than a piano to lovers who want to be quiet and confidential. Suzette sat before the keyboard and played a few bars now and then, like a running commentary on the conversation.

"You will say all that is kind and nice to Mrs. Wornock for me?" Allan said, after a good deal of other and tenderer talk.

"Yes, I will tell her how kindly you spoke of her; but the best thing I can tell her is that your father is better. She has been so intensely interested about him. I have felt very sorry for her since you went away, Allan."

"Why?"

"Because I cannot help seeing that her son's return has not brought her the happiness she expected. She has been thinking of him and hoping for his coming for years—empty, desolate years, for until she attached herself to you and me she had really no one she cared for. Strange, was it not, that she should take such a fancy to you, and then extend her friendly feeling to me?"

"Yes, it was strange, undoubtedly. But I believe I owe her kindly feeling entirely to my very shadowy likeness to her son."

"No doubt that was the beginning; but I am sure she likes you for your own sake. You are only second to her son in her affection; and I know she is disappointed in her son."

"I hope he is not unkind to her."

"Unkind! No, no, he is kindness itself. His manner to his mother is all that it should be; affectionate, caressing, deferential. But he is such a restless creature, so eager for change and movement. Clever and amiable as he is, there is something wanting in his character; the want of repose, I believe. He hardly ever rests; and there is no rest where he is. He excites his mother, and he doesn't make her happy. Perhaps it is better for her that he is so seldom at home. She is too highly strung to endure his unquiet spirit."

"You like him though, don't you, Suzette, in spite of his faults?"

"Oh, one cannot help liking him. He is so bright and clever; and he has all his mother's amiability; only, like her, he has just a touch of eccentricity—but I hardly like to call it that. A German word expresses it better; he is überspannt."

"He is what our American friends call a crank," said Allan, relieved to find his sweetheart could speak so lightly of the man who had caused him his first acquaintance with jealousy.

CHAPTER IV.

"LET NO MAN LIVE AS I HAVE LIVED."

Allan went back to Suffolk, and Suzette's life resumed its placid course; a life in which she had for the most part to find her own amusements and occupations. General Vincent was fond and proud of his daughter; but he was not a man to make a companion of a daughter, except at the social board. If Suzette were at home at twelve o'clock to superintend the meal which he called tiffin, and in her place in the drawing-room a quarter of an hour before the eight-o'clock dinner; if she played him to sleep after dinner, or allowed herself to be beaten at chess whenever he fancied an evening game, she fulfilled the whole duty of a daughter as understood by General Vincent. For the rest he had a supreme belief in her high principles and discretion. Her name on the tableau in the parlour at the Sacré Cœur had stood forth conspicuously for all the virtues—order, obedience, propriety, truthfulness. The nuns, who expect perfection in the young human vessel, had discovered no crack or flaw in Suzette.

"She has not only amiability and kindness of heart," said the Reverend Mother, at the parting interview with the pupil's father, "she has plenty of common sense, and she will never give you any trouble."

When the General took his daughter to India, there had been some talk of a companion-governess, or governess-companion, for Suzette; but against this infliction the girl herself protested strongly.

"If I am not old enough or wise enough to take care of myself, I will go back to the convent," she declared. "I would rather take the veil than submit to be governed by a 'Mrs. General.' I had learnt everything the nuns could teach me before I left the Sacré Cœur. I am not going to be taught by an inferior teacher—some smatterer, perhaps. Nobody can teach like the sisters of the Sacré Cœur."

General Vincent had been preached at by his female relatives on this subject of the governess-companion. "Suzette is too young and too pretty to be alone," said one. "Suzette will get into idle habits if there is no one to direct her mind," said another. "A girl's education has only begun when she leaves school," said a third, as gloomy in their foreshadowing of evil as if they had been the three fatal sisters. But the General loved his daughter, and when withdrawing her from the convent had promised her that her life should be happy; so he abandoned an idea that had never been his own.

"A Mrs. General would have been a doosid expensive importation," he told his friends afterwards, "and I knew there would be plenty of nice women to look after Suzie."

Suzette had proved quite capable of looking after herself, unaided by the nice women; indeed, her conduct had been—or should have been—a liberal education to more than one of those nice women, who might have found their matronly exuberances of conversation and behaviour in a manner rebuked by the girl's discretion and self-respect. Suzette passed unsmirched through the furnace of a season at Simla, and a season at Naini Tal, and came to rustic Wiltshire with all the frank gaiety of happy girlhood, and all the savoir faire which comes of two years' society experience. She had been courted and wooed, and had blighted the hopes of more than one eligible admirer.

When she came to Matcham, there was again a question of chaperon or companion. The odious word governess was abandoned. But it was said that Indian society was less conventional than English society, and that what might be permitted at Simla could hardly be endured at Wiltshire; and again Suzette threatened to go back to her convent if she were not to be trusted with the conduct of her own life.

"If I cannot take care of myself I am only fit for a cloister," she said. "I would rather be a lay sister, and scrub floors, than be led about by some prim personage, paid to keep watch and ward over me, a hired guardian of my manners and my complexion."

Mrs. Mornington, who was less conventional than the rest of the General's womankind, put in her word for her niece.

"Suzette wants no chaperon while I am living within five minutes' walk," she said. "She can come to me in all her little domestic difficulties; and as for parties, she is not likely to be asked to any ceremonious affair to which I shall not be asked too."

Mrs. Mornington had been as kind and helpful as she had promised to be; and in all domestic cruxes, in all details of home life, in the arrangement of a dinner or the purchase of household goods Suzette had taken counsel with her aunt. The meadows appertaining to the Grove and to Marsh House were conterminous, and a gate had been made in the fence, so that Suzette could run to her aunt at any hour, without hat or gloves, and without showing herself on the high-road.

"If ever we quarrel, that gate will have to be nailed up," said Mrs. Mornington. "It makes a quarrel much more awful when there is a communication of that kind. The walling up of a gate is a public manifesto. If ever we bar each other out, Suzette, all Matcham will know it within twenty-four hours."

Suzette was not afraid that the gate would have to be nailed up. She was fond of her aunt, and fully appreciated that lady's hard-headed qualities; but although she went to her aunt Mornington for advice about the gardener and the cook, the etiquette of invitations and the law of selection with reference to a dinner-party, it was to Mrs. Wornock she went for sympathy in the higher needs of life; it was to Mrs. Wornock she revealed the mysteries of her heart and her imagination.

"I seem to have known you all my life," she told that lady; "and I am never afraid of being troublesome."

"You never can be troublesome," Mrs. Wornock answered, looking at her with admiring affection. "I don't know what I should do without you, Suzette. You and Allan have given my poor worn-out life a new brightness."

"Allan! How fond you are of Allan," Suzette said, musingly. "It seems so strange that you should have taken him to your heart so quickly—only because he is like your son."

"Not only on that account, Suzette. That was the beginning. I am fond of Allan for his own sake. His fine character has endeared him to me."

"You think he has a fine character?"

"Think! I know he has. Surely you know him too, Suzie. You ought to have learnt his value by this time."

"Yes, I know he is good, generous, honest, and true. His love for his father is very beautiful—and yet he found time to come all this way to spend an hour or two with unworthy frivolous me."

"He did not think that a sacrifice, Suzie, for he adores you."

"You really think so—that he cares as much as that?"

"I am very sure that he loves with his whole heart and mind, as his father—may have done before him."

"Oh, his father would have been in earnest, I have no doubt, in any affection; but I doubt if he was ever tremendously in love with Lady Emily. She is all that is sweet and dear in her frank homely way, but not a person to inspire a grande passion. Allan's father must have loved and lost in his early youth. There is a shade of melancholy in his voice and manner—nothing gloomy or dismal—but just that touch of seriousness which tells of deep thoughts. He is a most interesting man. I wish you could have seen him while he was at Beechhurst. I fear he will never leave Fendyke again."

Mrs. Wornock sighed and sat silent, while Suzette went to the piano and played a short fugue by their favourite Sebastian Bach—played with tender touch, lengthening out every slow passage in her pensive reverie.

There had been no more concertante duets. Geoffrey had entreated her to go on with their mutual study of De Beriot and the older composers, Corelli, Tartini, and the rest; but she had obstinately refused.

"The music is difficult and tiring," she said.

This was her first excuse.

"We will play simpler music—the lightest we can find. There are plenty of easy duets."

"Please don't think me capricious if I confess that I don't care about playing with the violin. It takes too much out of one. I am too anxious."

"Why should you be anxious? I am not going to be angry or disagreeable at your brioches—should you make any."

She still refused, lightly but persistently; and he saw that she had made up her mind.

"I begin to understand," he said, with an offended air; and there was never any further talk of Suzette as an accompanist.

Geoffrey was seldom at home in the daytime after this refusal, and life at the Manor dropped back into the old groove. Mrs. Wornock and Suzette spent some hours of every day together; and, now that the weather often made the garden impossible, the organ and piano afforded their chief occupation and amusement. Suzette was enthusiastic, and pleased with her own improvement under her friend's guidance. It was not so much tuition as sympathy which the elder woman gave to the younger. Suzette's musical talent, since she left her convent, had been withering in an atmosphere of chilling indifference. Her father liked to be played to sleep after dinner; but he hardly knew one air from another, and he called everything his daughter played Rubinstein.

"Wonderful fellow that Rubinstein!" he used to say. "There seems no end to his compositions; and, to my notion, they've only one fault—they're all alike."

Suzette heard of Geoffrey, though she rarely saw him. His mother talked of him daily; but there was a regretful tone in all her talk. Nothing at Discombe seemed quite satisfactory to the son and heir. His horses were failures. The hunting was bad—"rotten," Geoffrey called it, but could give no justification for this charge of rottenness. The sport might be good enough for the neighbours in general; but it was not good enough for a man who had run the whole gamut of sport in Bengal, under the best possible conditions. Geoffrey doubted if there was any hunting worth talking about, except in the shires or in Ireland. He thought of going to Ireland directly after Christmas.

"He is bored and unhappy here, Suzette," Mrs. Wornock said one morning, when Suzette found her particularly low-spirited. "The life that suits Allan, and other young men in the neighbourhood, is not good enough for Geoffrey. He has been spoilt by Fortune, perhaps—or it is his sad inheritance. I was an unhappy woman when he was born, and a portion of my sorrow has descended upon my son."

This was the first time she had ever spoken to Suzette of her past life or its sorrows.

"You must not think that, dear Mrs. Wornock. Your son is tired of this humdrum country life, and he'll be all the better and brighter for a change. Let him go to Ireland and hunt. He will be so much the fonder of you when he comes back."

Mrs. Wornock sighed, and began to walk about the room in a restless way.

"Oh, Suzette, Suzette," she said, "I am very unhappy about him! I don't know what will become of us, my son and me. We have all the elements of happiness, and yet we are not happy."

It was a month after the little dinner at Marsh House, and Suzette and her sweetheart had not met since that evening. There had been no change for the better in Mr. Carew's condition; and Allan had felt it impossible to leave the father over whose dwindling hours the shadow of the end was stealing—gently, gradually, inevitably. There were days when all was hushed and still as at the approach of doom—when the head of the household lay silent and exhausted within closed doors, and all Allan could do was to comfort his mother in her aching anxiety. This he did with tenderest thoughtfulness, cheering her, sustaining her, tempting her out into the gardens and meadows, beguiling her to temporary forgetfulness of the sorrow that was so near. There were happier—or seemingly happier—days when the invalid was well enough to sit in his library, among the books which had been his life-companions. In these waning hours he could only handle his books—fondle them, as it were—slowly turning the leaves, reading a paragraph here and there, or pausing to contemplate the outside of a volume, in love with a tasteful binding, the creamy vellum, or gold-diapered back, the painted edges, the devices to which he had given such careful thought in the uneventful years, when collecting and rebinding these books had been the most serious business of his life. He laid down one volume and took up another, capriciously—sometimes with an impatient, sometimes with a regretful, sigh. He could not read more than a page without fatigue. His eyes clouded and his head ached at any sustained exertion. His son kept him company through the grey winter day, in the warm glow of the luxurious room, sheltered by tapestry portières and tall Indian screens. His son fetched and carried for him, between the book-table by the hearth and the shelves that lined the room from floor to ceiling, and filled an ante-room beyond, and overflowed into the corridor.

"My day is done," George Carew said with a sigh. "These books have been my life, Allan, and now I have outlived them. The zest is gone out of them all; and now in these last days I know what a mistake my life has been. Let no man live as I have done, and think that he is wise. A life without variety or action is something less than life. Never envy the student his peaceful meditative days. Be sure that when the end is near he will look back, as I do, and feel that he has wasted his life—yes, even though he leave some monumental work which the world will treasure when he is in the dust—monument more enduring than brass or marble. The man himself, when the shadows darken round him, will know how much he has lost. Life means action, Allan, and variety, and the knowledge of this glorious world into which we are born. The student is a worm and no man. Let no sorrow blight your life as mine has been blighted."

"Dear father, I have always known there was a cloud upon your life—but at least you have made others happy—as husband, father, master——"

"I have not been a domestic tyrant. That is about the best I can say for myself. I have been tolerably indulgent to the kindest of wives. I have loved my only son. Small merits these in a man whose home-life has been cloudless. But I might have done better, Allan. I might have risen superior to that youthful sorrow. I might have taken my dear Emily closer to my heart, travelled over this varied world with her, shown her all that is strangest and fairest under far-off skies instead of letting her vegetate here. I might have gone into Parliament, put my shoulder to the wheel of progress—helped as other men help, with unselfish toil, struggling on hopefully through the great dismal swamp of mistake and muddle-headedness. Better, far better, any life of laborious endeavour, even if futile in result, than the cultured idlers' paradise—better far for me, since in such a life I should have forgotten the past, and might have been a cheerful companion in the present. I chose to feed my morbid fancies; to live the life of retrospection and regret; and now that the end has come, I begin to understand what a contemptible creature I have been."

"Contemptible! My dear father, if every student were so to upbraid himself after a life of plain living and high thinking, such as you have led——"

"Plain living and high thinking are of very little good, Allan, if they result in no useful work. Plain living and high thinking may be only a polite synonym for selfish sloth."

"Father, I will not hear you depreciate yourself."

"My dear son! It is something to have won your love."