A HOUSE
DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF

BY MRS OLIPHANT
IN THREE VOLUMES
COMPLETE
VOL. I.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLXXXVI

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

CHAPTER I.

The day was warm, and there was no shade; out of the olive woods which they had left behind, and where all was soft coolness and freshness, they had emerged into a piece of road widened and perfected by recent improvements till it was as shelterless as a broad street. High walls on one side clothed with the green clinging trails of the mesembryanthemum, with palm-trees towering above, but throwing no shadow below; on the other a low house or two, and more garden walls, leading in a broad curve to the little old walled town, its campanile rising up over the clustered roofs, in which was their home. They had fifteen minutes or more of dazzling sunshine before them ere they could reach any point of shelter.

Ten minutes, or even five, would have been enough for Frances. She could have run along, had she been alone, as like a bird as any human creature could be, being so light and swift and young. But it was very different with her father. He walked but slowly at the best of times; and in the face of the sun at noon, what was to be expected of him? It was part of the strange contrariety of fate, which was against him in whatever he attempted, small or great, that it should be just here, in this broad, open, unavoidable path, that he encountered one of those parties which always made him wroth, and which usually he managed to keep clear of with such dexterity—an English family from one of the hotels.

Tourists from the hotels are always objectionable to residents in a place. Even when the residents are themselves strangers—perhaps, indeed, all the more from that fact—the chance visitors who come to stare and gape at those scenes which the others have appropriated and taken possession of, are insufferable. Mr Waring had lived in the old town of Bordighera for a great number of years. He had seen the Marina and the line of hotels on the beach created, and he had watched the travellers arriving to take possession of them—the sick people, and the people who were not sick. He had denounced the invasion unceasingly, and with vehemence; he had never consented to it. The Italians about might be complacent, thinking of the enrichment of the neighbourhood, and of what was good for trade, as these prosaic people do; but the English colonist on the Punto could not put up with it. And to be met here, on his return from his walk, by an unblushing band about whom there could be no mistake, was very hard to bear. He had to walk along exposed to the fire of all their unabashed and curious glances, to walk slowly, to miss none, from that of the stout mother to that of the slim governess. In the rear of the party came the papa, a portly Saxon, of the class which, if comparisons could be thought of in so broad and general a sentiment, Mr Waring disliked worst of all—a big man, a rosy man, a fat man, in large easy morning clothes, with a big white umbrella over his head. This last member of the family came at some distance behind the rest. He did not like the sun, though he had been persuaded to leave England in search of it. He was very warm, moist, and in a state of general relaxation, his tidy necktie coming loose, his gloves only half on, his waistcoat partially unbuttoned. It was March, when no doubt a good genuine east wind was blowing at home. At that moment this traveller almost regretted the east wind.

The Warings were going up-hill towards their abode: the slope was gentle enough, yet it added to the slowness of Mr Waring’s pace. All the English party had stared at him, as is the habit of English parties; and indeed he and his daughter were not unworthy of a stare. But all these gazes came with a cumulation of curiosity to widen the stare of the last comer, who had, besides, twenty or thirty yards of vacancy in which the indignant resident was fully exposed to his view. Little Frances, who was English enough to stare too, though in a gentlewomanly way, saw a change gradually come, as he gazed, over the face of the stranger. His eyebrows rose up bushy and arched with surprise; his eyelids puckered with the intentness of his stare; his lips dropped apart. Then he came suddenly to a stand-still, and gasped forth the word “Waring!” in tones of surprise to which capital letters can give but faint expression.

Mr Waring, struck by this exclamation as by a bullet, paused too, as with something of that inclination to turn round which is said to be produced by a sudden hit. He put up his hand momentarily, as if to pull down his broad-brimmed hat over his brows. But in the end he did neither. He stood and faced the stranger with angry energy. “Well?” he said.

“Dear me! who could have thought of seeing you here? Let me call my wife. She will be delighted. Mary! Why, I thought you had gone to the East. I thought you had disappeared altogether. And so did everybody. And what a long time it is, to be sure! You look as if you had forgotten me.”

“I have,” said the other, with a supercilious gaze, perusing the large figure from top to toe.

“Oh come, Waring! Why—Mannering; you can’t have forgotten Mannering, a fellow that stuck by you all through. Dear, how it brings up everything, seeing you again! Why, it must be a dozen years ago. And what have you been doing all this time? Wandering over the face of the earth, I suppose, in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, since nobody has ever fallen in with you before.”

“I am something of an invalid,” said Waring. “I fear I cannot stand in the sun to answer so many questions. And my movements are of no importance to any one but myself.”

“Don’t be so misanthropical,” said the stranger in his large round voice. “You always had a turn that way. And I don’t wonder if you are soured—any fellow would be soured. Won’t you say a word to Mary? She’s looking back, wondering with all her might what new acquaintance I’ve found out here, never thinking it’s an old friend. Hillo, Mary! What’s the matter? Don’t you want to see her? Why, man alive, don’t be so bitter! She and I have always stuck up for you; through thick and thin, we’ve stuck up for you. Eh! can’t stand any longer? Well, it is hot, isn’t it? There’s no variety in this confounded climate. Come to the hotel, then—the Victoria, down there.”

Waring had passed his interrogator, and was already at some distance, while the other, breathless, called after him. He ended, affronted, by another discharge of musketry, which hit the fugitive in the rear. “I suppose,” the indiscreet inquirer demanded, breathlessly, “that’s the little girl?”

Frances had followed with great but silent curiosity this strange conversation. She had not interposed in any way, but she had stood close by her father’s side, drinking in every word with keen ears and eyes. She had heard and seen many strange things, but never an encounter like this; and her eagerness to know what it meant was great; but she dared not linger a moment after her father’s rapid movement of the hand, and the longer stride than usual, which was all the increase of speed he was capable of. As she had stood still by his side without a question, she now went on, very much as if she had been a delicate little piece of machinery of which he had touched the spring. That was not at all the character of Frances Waring; but to judge by her movements while at her father’s side, an outside observer might have thought so. She had never offered any resistance to any impulse from him in her whole life; indeed it would have seemed to her an impossibility to do so. But these impulses concerned the outside of her life only. She went along by his side with the movement of a swift creature restrained to the pace of a very slow one, but making neither protest nor remark. And neither did she ask any explanation, though she cast many a stolen glance at him as they pursued their way. And for his part, he said nothing. The heat of the sun, the annoyance of being thus interrupted, were enough to account for that.

This broad bit of sunny road which lay between them and the shelter of their home had been made by one of those too progressive municipalities, thirsting for English visitors and tourists in general, who fill with hatred and horror the old residents in Italy; and after it followed a succession of stony stairs more congenial to the locality, by which, under old archways and through narrow alleys, you got at last to the wider centre of the town, a broad stony piazza, under the shadow of the Bell Tower, the characteristic campanile which was the landmark of the place. Except on one side of the piazza, all here was in grateful shade. Waring’s stern face softened a little when he came into these cool and almost deserted streets: here and there was a woman at a doorway, an old man in the deep shadow of an open shop or booth unguarded by any window, two or three girls filling their pitchers at the well, but no intrusive tourists or passengers of any kind to break the noonday stillness. The pair went slowly through the little town, and emerged by another old gateway, on the farther side, where the blue Mediterranean, with all its wonderful shades of colour, and line after line of headland cutting down into those ethereal tints, stretched out before them, ending in the haze of the Ligurian mountains. The scene was enough to take away the breath of one unaccustomed to that blaze of wonderful light, and all the delightful accidents of those purple hills. But this pair were too familiarly acquainted with every line to make any pause. They turned round the sunny height from the gateway, and entered by a deep small door sunk in the wall, which stood high like a great rampart rising from the Punto. This was the outer wall of the palace of the lord of the town, still called the Palazzo at Bordighera. Every large house is a palace in Italy; but the pretensions of this were well founded. The little door by which they entered had been an opening of modern and peaceful times, the state entrance being through a great doorway and court on the inner side. The deep outer wall was pierced by windows, only at the height of the second storey on the sea side, so that the great marble stair up which Waring toiled slowly was very long and fatiguing, as if it led to a mountaintop. He reached his rooms breathless, and going in through antechamber and corridor, threw himself into the depths of a large but upright chair. There were no signs of luxury about. It was not one of those hermitages of culture and ease which English recluses make for themselves in the most unlikely places. It was more like a real hermitage; or, to speak more simply, it was like, what it really was, an apartment in an old Italian house, in a rustic castle, furnished and provided as such a place, in the possession of its natural inhabitants, would be.

The Palazzo was subdivided into a number of habitations, of which the apartment of the Englishman was the most important. It was composed of a suite of rooms facing to the sea, and commanding the entire circuit of the sun; for the windows on one side were to the east, and at the other the apartment ended in a large loggia, commanding the west and all the glorious sunsets accomplished there. We Northerners, who have but a limited enjoyment of the sun, show often a strange indifference to him in the sites and situations of our houses; but in Italy it is well known that where the sun does not go the doctor goes, and much more regard is shown to the aspect of the house.

The Warings at the worst of that genial climate had little occasion for fire; they had but to follow the centre of light when he glided out of one room to fling himself more abundantly into another. The Punto is always full in the cheerful rays. It commands everything—air and sea, and the mountains and all their thousand effects of light and shade; and the Palazzo stands boldly out upon this the most prominent point in the landscape, with the houses of the little town withdrawing on a dozen different levels behind. In the warlike days when no point of vantage which a pirate could seize upon was left undefended or assailable, it is probable that there was no loggia from which to watch the western illuminations. But peace has been so long on the Riviera that the loggia too was antique, the parapet crumbling and grey. It opened from a large room, very lofty, and with much faded decoration on the upper walls and roof, which was the salone or drawing-room, beyond which was an ante-room, then a sort of library, a dining-room, a succession of bed-chambers; much space, little furniture, sunshine and air unlimited, and a view from every window which it was worth living to be able to look out upon night and day. This, however, at the moment of which we write, was shut out all along the line, the green persiani being closed, and nothing open but the loggia, which was still cool and in the shade. The rooms lay in a soft green twilight, cool and fresh; the doors were open from one to another, affording a long vista of picturesque glimpses.

From where Waring had thrown himself down to rest, he looked straight through the apartment, over the faded formality of the ante-room with its large old chairs, which were never moved from their place, across his own library, in which there was a glimmer of vellum binding and old gilding, to the table with its white tablecloth, laid out for breakfast in the eating-room. The quiet soothed him after a while, and perhaps the evident preparations for his meal, the large and rotund flask of Chianti which Domenico was placing on the table, the vision of another figure behind Domenico with a delicate dish of mayonnaise in her hands. He could distinguish that it was a mayonnaise, and his angry spirit calmed down. Noon began to chime from the campanile, and Frances came in without her hat and with the eagerness subdued in her eyes. “Breakfast is ready, papa,” she said. She had that look of knowing nothing and guessing nothing beyond what lies on the surface, which so many women have.

She was scarcely to be called a woman, not only because of being so young, but of being so small, so slim, so light, with such a tiny figure, that a stronger breeze than usual would, one could not help thinking, blow her away. Her father was very tall, which made her tiny size the more remarkable. She was not beautiful—few people are to the positive degree; but she had the prettiness of youth, of round soft contour, and peach-like skin, and clear eyes. Her hair was light brown, her eyes dark brown, neither very remarkable; her features small and clearly cut, as was her figure, no slovenliness or want of finish about any line. All this pleasing exterior was very simple and easily comprehended, and had but little to do with her, the real Frances, who was not so easy to understand. She had two faces, although there was in her no guile. She had the countenance she now wore, as it were for daily use—a countenance without expression, like a sunny cheerful morning in which there is neither care nor fear—the countenance of a girl calling papa to breakfast, very punctual, determined that nobody should reproach her as being half of a minute late, or having a hair or a ribbon a hair’s-breadth out of place. That such a girl should have ever suspected anything, feared anything—except perhaps gently that the mayonnaise was not to papa’s taste—was beyond the range of possibilities; or that she should be acquainted with anything in life beyond the simple routine of regular hours and habits, the sweet and gentle bond of the ordinary, which is the best rule of young lives.

Frances Waring had sometimes another face. That profile of hers was not so clearly cut for nothing; nor were her eyes so lucid only to perceive the outside of existence. In her room, during the few minutes she spent there, she had looked at herself in her old-fashioned dim glass, and seen a different creature. But what that was, or how it was, must show itself farther on. She led the way into the dining-room, the trimmest composed little figure, all England embodied—though she scarcely remembered England—in the self-restrained and modest toilet of a little girl accustomed to be cared for by women well instructed in the niceties of feminine costume; and yet she had never had any one to take counsel with except an Italian maid-of-all-work, who loved the brightest primitive colours, as became her race. Frances knew so few English people that she had not even the admiration of surprise at her success. Those she did know took it for granted that she got her pretty sober suits, her simple unelaborate dresses, from some very excellent dressmaker at “home,” not knowing that she did not know what home was.

Her father followed her, as different a figure as imagination could suggest. He was very tall, very thin, with long legs and stooping shoulders, his hair in limp locks, his shirt-collar open, a velvet coat—looking as entirely adapted to the locality, the conventional right man in the right place, as she was not the conventional woman. A gloomy look, which was habitual to him, a fretful longitudinal pucker in his forehead, the hollow lines of ill health in his cheeks, disguised the fact that he was, or had been, a handsome man; just as his extreme spareness and thinness made it difficult to believe that he had also been a very powerful one. Nor was he at all old, save in the very young eyes of his daughter, to whom forty-five was venerable. He might have been an artist or a poet of a misanthropical turn of mind; though, when a man has chronic asthma, misanthropy is unnecessary to explain his look of pain, and fatigue, and disgust with the outside world. He walked languidly, his shoulders up to his ears, and followed Frances to the table, and sat down with that air of dissatisfaction which takes the comfort out of everything. Frances either was inaccessible to this kind of discomfort, or so accustomed to it that she did not feel it. She sat serenely opposite to him, and talked of indifferent things.

“Don’t take the mayonnaise, if you don’t like it, papa; there is something else coming that will perhaps be better. Mariuccia does not at all pride herself upon her mayonnaise.”

“Mariuccia knows very little about it; she has not even the sense to know what she can do best.” He took a little more of the dish, partly out of contradiction, which was the result which Frances hoped.

“The lettuce is so crisp and young, that makes it a little better,” she said, with the air of a connoisseur.

“A little better is not the word; it is very good,” he said, fretfully; then added with a slight sigh, “Everything is better for being young.”

“Except people, I know. Why does young mean good with vegetables and everything else, and silly only when it is applied to people?—though it can’t be helped, I know.”

“That is one of your metaphysical questions,” he said, with a slight softening of his tone. “Perhaps because of human jealousy. We all like to discredit what we haven’t got, and most people you see are no longer young.”

“Oh, do you think so, papa? I think there are more young people than old people.”

“I suppose you are right, Fan; but they don’t count for so much, in the way of opinion at least. What has called forth these sage remarks?”

“Only the lettuce,” she said, with a laugh. Then, after a pause, “For instance, there were six or seven children in the party we met to-day, and only two parents.”

“There are seldom more than two parents, my dear.”

She had not looked up when she made this careless little speech, and yet there was a purpose in it, and a good deal of keen observation through her drooped eyelashes. She received his reply with a little laugh. “I did not mean that, papa; but that six or seven are a great deal more than two, which of course you will laugh at me for saying. I suppose they were all English?”

“I suppose so. The father—if he was the father—certainly was English.”

“And you knew him, papa?’

“He knew me, which is a different thing.”

Then there was a little pause. The conversation between the father and daughter was apt to run in broken periods. He very seldom originated anything. When she found a subject upon which she could interest him, he would reply, to a certain limit, and then the talk would drop. He was himself a very silent man, requiring no outlet of conversation; and when he refused to be interested, it was a task too hard for Frances to lead him into speech. She on her side was full of a thousand unsatisfied curiosities, which for the most part were buried in her own bosom. In the meantime Domenico made the circle of the table with the new dish, and his step and a question or two from his master were all the remarks that accompanied the meal. Mr Waring was something of a gourmet, but at the same time he was very temperate—a conjunction which is favourable to fine eating. His table was delicately furnished with dishes almost infinitesimal in quantity, but superlative in quality; and he ate his dainty light repast with gravity and slowly, as a man performs what he feels to be one of the most important functions of his life.

“Tell Mariuccia that a few drops from a fresh lemon would have improved this ragoût—but a very fresh lemon.”

“Yes, Excellency, freschissimo,” said Domenico, with solemnity.

In the household generally, nothing was so important as the second breakfast, except, indeed, the dinner, which was the climax of the day. The gravity of all concerned, the little solemn movement round the white-covered table in the still soft shade of the atmosphere, with those green persiani shutting out all the sunshine, and the brown old walls, bare of any decoration, throwing up the group, made a curious picture. The walls were quite bare, the floor brown and polished, with only a square of carpet round the table; but the roof and cornices were gilt and painted with tarnished gilding and half-obliterated pictures. Opposite to Frances was a blurred figure of a cherub with a finger on his lip. She looked up at this faint image as she had done a hundred times, and was silent. He seemed to command the group, hovering over it like a little tutelary god.

CHAPTER II.

The Warings had been settled at Bordighera almost as long as Frances could remember. She had known no other way of living than that which could be carried on under the painted roofs in the Palazzo, nor any other domestic management than that of Domenico and Mariuccia. She herself had been brought up by the latter, who had taught her to knit stockings and to make lace of a coarse kind, and also how to spare and save, and watch every detail of the spese—the weekly or daily accounts—with an anxious eye. Beyond this, Frances had received very little education: her father had taught her fitfully to read and write after a sort; and he had taught her to draw, for which she had a little faculty—that is to say, she had made little sketches of all the points of view round about, which, if they were not very great in art, amused her, and made her feel that there was something she could do. Indeed, so far as doing went, she had a good deal of knowledge. She could mend very neatly—so neatly, that her darn or her patch was almost an ornament. She was indeed neat in everything, by instinct, without being taught. The consequence was, that her life was very full of occupation, and her time never hung heavy on her hands. At eighteen, indeed, it may be doubted whether time ever does hang heavy on a girl’s hands. It is when ten years or so of additional life have passed over her head, bringing her no more important occupations than those which are pleasant and appropriate to early youth, that she begins to feel her disabilities; but fortunately, that is a period of existence with which at the present moment we have nothing to do.

Her father, who was not fifty yet, had been a young man when he came to this strange seclusion. Why he should have chosen Bordighera, no one had taken the trouble to inquire. He came when it was a little town on the spur of the hill, without either hotels or tourists, or at least very few of these articles—like many other little towns which are perched on little platforms among the olive woods all over that lovely country. The place had commended itself to him because it was so completely out of the way. And then it was very cheap, simple, and primitive. He was not, however, by any means a primitive-minded man; and when he took Domenico and Mariuccia into his service, it was for a year or two an interest in his life to train them to everything that was the reverse of their own natural primitive ways. Mariuccia had a little native instinct for cookery such as is not unusual among the Latin races, and which her master trained into all the sophistications of a cordon bleu. And Domenico had that lively desire to serve his padrone “hand and foot,” as English servants say, and do everything for him, which comes natural to an amiable Italian eager to please. Both of them had been encouraged and trained to carry out these inclinations. Mr Waring was difficult to please. He wanted attendance continually. He would not tolerate a speck of dust anywhere, or any carelessness of service; but otherwise he was not a bad master. He left them many independences, which suited them, and never objected to that appropriation to themselves of his house as theirs, and assertion of themselves as an important part of the family, which is the natural result of a long service. Frances grew up accordingly in franker intimacy with the honest couple than is usual in English households. There was nothing they would not have done for the Signorina—starve for her, scrape and pinch for her, die for her if need had been; and in the meantime, while there was no need for service more heroic, correct her, and improve her mind, and set her faults before her with simplicity. Her faults were small, it is true, but zealous Love did not omit to find many out.

Mr Waring painted a little, and was disposed to call himself an artist; and he read a great deal, or was supposed to do so, in the library, which formed one of the set of rooms, among the old books in vellum, which took a great deal of reading. A little old public library existing in another little town farther up among the hills, gave him an excuse, if it was not anything more, for a great deal of what he called work. There were some manuscripts and a number of old editions laid up in this curious little hermitage of learning, from which the few people who knew him believed he was going some day to compile or collect something of importance. The people who knew him were very few. An old clergyman, who had been a colonial chaplain all his life, and now “took the service” in the bare little room which served as an English church, was the chief of his acquaintances. This gentleman had an old wife and a middle-aged daughter, who furnished something like society for Frances. Another associate was an old Indian officer, much battered by wounds, liver, and disappointment, who, systematically neglected by the authorities (as he thought), and finding himself a nobody in the home to which he had looked forward for so many years, had retired in disgust, and built himself a little house, surrounded with palms, which reminded him of India, and full in the rays of the sun, which kept off his neuralgia. He, too, had a wife, whose constant correspondence with her numerous children occupied her mind and thoughts, and who liked Frances because she never tired of hearing stories of those absent sons and daughters. They saw a good deal of each other, these three resident families, and reminded each other from time to time that there was such a thing as society.

In summer they disappeared—sometimes to places higher up among the hills, sometimes to Switzerland or the Tyrol, sometimes “home.” They all said home, though neither the Durants nor the Gaunts knew much of England, and though they could never say enough in disparagement of its grey skies and cold winds. But the Warings never went “home.” Frances, who was entirely without knowledge or associations with her native country, used the word from time to time because she heard Tasie Durant or Mrs Gaunt do so; but her father never spoke of England, nor of any possible return, nor of any district in England as that to which he belonged. It escaped him at times that he had seen something of society a dozen or fifteen years before this date; but otherwise, nothing was known about his past life. It was not a thing that was much discussed, for the intercourse in which he lived with his neighbours was not intimate, nor was there any particular reason why he should enter upon his own history; but now and then it would be remarked by one or another that nobody knew anything of his antecedents. “What’s your county, Waring?” General Gaunt had once asked; and the other had answered with a languid smile, “I have no county,” without the least attempt to explain. The old general, in spite of himself, had apologised, he did not know why; but still no information was given. And Waring did not look like a man who had no county. His thin long figure had an aristocratic air. He knew about horses, and dogs, and country-gentleman sort of subjects. It was impossible that he should turn out to be a shopkeeper’s son, or a bourgeois of any kind. However, as has been said, the English residents did not give themselves much trouble about the matter. There was not enough of them to get up a little parochial society, like that which flourishes in so many English colonies, gossiping with the best, and forging anew for themselves those chains of a small community which everybody pretends to hate.

In the afternoon of the day on which the encounter recorded in the previous chapter had taken place, Frances sat in the loggia alone at her work. She was busy with her drawing—a very elaborate study of palm-trees, which she was making from a cluster of those trees which were visible from where she sat. A loggia is something more than a balcony; it is like a room with the outer wall or walls taken away. This one was as large as the big salone out of which it opened, and had therefore room for changes of position as the sun changed. Though it faced the west, there was always a shady corner at one end or the other. It was the favourite place in which Frances carried on all her occupations—where her father came to watch the sunset—where she had tea, with that instinct of English habit and tradition which she possessed without knowing how. Mr Waring did not much care for her tea, except now and then in a fitful way; and Mariuccia thought it medicine. But it pleased Frances to have the little table set out with two or three old china cups which did not match, and a small silver teapot, which was one of the very few articles of value in the house. Very rarely, not once in a month, had she any occasion for these cups; but yet, such a chance did occur at long intervals; and in the meantime, with a pleasure not much less infantine, but much more wistful than that with which she had played at having a tea-party seven or eight years before, she set out her little table now.

She was seated with her drawing materials on one table and the tea on another, in the stillness of the afternoon, looking out upon the mountains and the sea. No; she was doing nothing of the sort. She was looking with all her might at the clump of palm-trees within the garden of the villa, which lay low down at her feet between her and the sunset. She was not indifferent to the sunset. She had an admiration, which even the humblest art-training quickens, for the long range of coast, with its innumerable ridges running down from the sky to the sea, in every variety of gnarled edge, and gentle slope, and precipice; and for the amazing blue of the water, with its ribbon-edge of paler colours, and the deep royal purple of the broad surface, and the white sails thrown up against it, and the white foam that turned up the edges of every little wave. But in the meantime she was not thinking of them, nor of the infinitely varied lines of the mountains, or the specks of towns, each with its campanile shining in the sun, which gave character to the scene; but of the palms on which her attention was fixed, and which, however beautiful they sound, or even look, are apt to get very spiky in a drawing, and so often will not “come” at all. She was full of fervour in her work, which had got to such a pitch of impossibility that her lips were dry and wide apart from the strain of excitement with which she struggled with her subject, when the bell tinkled where it hung outside upon the stairs, sending a little jar through all the Palazzo, where bells were very uncommon; and presently Tasie Durant, pushing open the door of the salone, with a breathless little “Permesso?” came out upon the loggia in her usual state of haste, and with half-a-dozen small books tumbling out of her hand.

“Never mind, dear; they are only books for the Sunday-school. Don’t you know we had twelve last Sunday? Twelve!—think!—when I have thought it quite large and extensive to have five. I never was more pleased. I am getting up a little library for them like they have at home. It is so nice to have everything like they have at home.”

“Like what?” said Frances, though she had no education.

“Like they have—well, if you are so particular, the same as they have at home. There were three of one family—think! Not little nobodies, but ladies and gentlemen. It is so nice of people not just poor people, people of education, to send their children to the Sunday-school.”

“New people?” said Frances.

“Yes; tourists, I suppose. You all scoff at the tourists; but I think it is very good for the place, and so pleasant for us to see a new face from time to time. Why should they all go to Mentone? Mentone is so towny, quite a big place. And papa says that in his time Nice was everything, and that nobody had ever heard of Mentone.”

“Who are the new people, Tasie?” Frances asked.

“They are a large family—that is all I know; not likely to settle, more’s the pity. Oh no. Quite well people, not even a delicate child,” said Miss Durant, regretfully; “and such a nice domestic family, always walking about together. Father and mother, and governess and six children. They must be very well off, too, or they could not travel like that, such a lot of them, and nurses—and I think I heard, a courier too.” This, Miss Durant said in a tone of some emotion; for the place, as has been said, was just beginning to be known, and the people who came as yet were but pioneers.

“I have seen them. I wonder who they are. My father——” said Frances; and then stopped, and held her head on one side, to contemplate the effect of the last touches on her drawing; but this was in reality because it suddenly occurred to her that to publish her father’s acquaintance with the stranger might be unwise.

“Your father?” said Tasie. “Did he take any notice of them? I thought he never took any notice of tourists. Haven’t you done those palms yet? What a long time you are taking over them! Do you think you have got the colour quite right on those stems? Nothing is so difficult to do as palms, though they look so easy—except olives: olives are impossible. But what were you going to say about your father? Papa says he has not seen Mr Waring for ages. When will you come up to see us?”

“It was only last Saturday, Tasie.”

“——Week,” said Tasie. “Oh yes, I assure you; for I put it down in my diary: Saturday week. You can’t quite tell how time goes, when you don’t come to church. Without Sunday, all the days are alike. I wondered that you were not at church last Sunday, Frances, and so did mamma.”

“Why was it? I forget. I had a headache, I think. I never like to stay away. But I went to church here in the village instead.”

“O Frances, I wonder your papa lets you do that! It is much better when you have a headache to stay at home. I am sure I don’t want to be intolerant, but what good can it do you going there? You can’t understand a word.”

“Yes, indeed I do—many words. Mariuccia has shown me all the places; and it is good to see the people all saying their prayers. They are a great deal more in earnest than the people down at the Marina, where it would be just as natural to dance as to pray.”

“Ah, dance!” said Tasie, with a little sigh. “You know there is never anything of that kind here. I suppose you never was at a dance in your life—unless it is in summer, when you go away?”

“I have never been at a dance in my life. I have seen a ballet, that is all.”

“O Frances, please don’t talk of anything so wicked! A ballet! that is very different from nice people dancing—from dancing one’s own self with a nice partner. However, as we never do dance here, I can’t see why you should say that about our church. It is a pity, to be sure, that we have no right church; but it is a lovely room, and quite suitable. If you would only practise the harmonium a little, so as to take the music when I am away. I never can afford to have a headache on Sunday,” Miss Durant added, in an injured tone.

“But, Tasie, how could I take the harmonium, when I don’t even know how to play?”

“I have offered to teach you, till I am tired, Frances. I wonder what your papa thinks, if he calls it reasonable to leave you without any accomplishments? You can draw a little, it is true; but you can’t bring out your sketches in the drawing-room of an evening, to amuse people; and you can always play——”

“When you can play.”

“Yes, of course that is what I mean—when you can play. It has quite vexed me often to think how little trouble is taken about you; for you can’t always be young, so young as you are now. And suppose some time you should have to go home—to your friends, you know?”

Frances raised her head from her drawing and looked her companion in the face. “I don’t think we have any—friends,” she said.

“Oh, my dear, that must be nonsense!” cried Tasie. “I confess I have never heard your papa talk of any. He never says ‘my brother,’ or ‘my sister,’ or ‘my brother-in-law,’ as other people do—but then he is such a very quiet man; and you must have somebody—cousins at least—you must have cousins; nobody is without somebody,” Miss Durant said.

“Well, I suppose we must have cousins,” said Frances. “I had not thought of it. But I don’t see that it matters much; for if my cousins are surprised that I can’t play, it will not hurt them—they can’t be considered responsible for me, you know.”

Tasie looked at her with the look of one who would say much if she could—wistfully and kindly, yet with something of the air of mingled importance and reluctance with which the bearer of ill news hesitates before opening his budget. She had indeed no actual ill news to tell, only the burden of that fact of which everybody felt Frances should be warned—that her father was looking more delicate than ever, and that his “friends” ought to know. She would have liked to speak, and yet she had not courage to do so. The girl’s calm consent that probably she must have cousins was too much for any one’s patience. She never seemed to think that one day she might have to be dependent on these cousins; she never seemed to think—— But after all, it was Mr Waring’s fault. It was not poor Frances that was to blame.

“You know how often I have said to you that you ought to play, you ought to be able to play. Supposing you have not any gift for it, still you might be able to do a little. You could so easily get an old piano, and I should like to teach you. It would not be a task at all. I should like it. I do so wish you would begin. Drawing and languages depend a great deal upon your own taste and upon your opportunities; but every lady ought to play.”

Tasie (or Anastasia, but that name was too long for anybody’s patience) was a great deal older than Frances—so much older as to justify the hyperbole that she might be her mother; but of this fact she herself was not aware. It may seem absurd to say so, but yet it was true. She knew, of course, how old she was, and how young Frances was; but her faculties were of the kind which do not perceive differences. Tasie herself was just as she had been at Frances’ age—the girl at home, the young lady of the house. She had the same sort of occupations: to arrange the flowers; to play the harmonium in the little colonial chapel; to look after the little exotic Sunday-school; to take care of papa’s surplice; to play a little in the evenings when they “had people with them”; to do fancy-work, and look out for such amusements as were going. It would be cruel to say how long this condition of young-ladyhood had lasted, especially as Tasie was a very good girl, kind, and friendly, and simple-hearted, and thinking no evil.

Some women chafe at the condition which keeps them still girls when they are no longer girls; but Miss Durant had never taken it into her consideration. She had a little more of the housekeeping to do, since mamma had become so delicate; and she had a great deal to fill up her time, and no leisure to think or inquire into her own position. It was her position, and therefore the best position which any girl could have. She had the satisfaction of being of the greatest use to her parents, which is the thing of all others which a good child would naturally desire. She talked to Frances without any notion of an immeasurable distance between them, from the same level, though with a feeling that the girl, by reason of having had no mother, poor thing, was lamentably backward in many ways, and sadly blind, though that was natural, to the hazard of her own position. What would become of her if Mr Waring died? Tasie would sometimes grow quite anxious about this, declaring that she could not sleep for thinking of it. If there were relations—as of course there must be—she felt that they would think Frances sadly deficient. To teach her to play was the only practical way in which she could show her desire to benefit the girl, who, she thought, might accept the suggestion from a girl like herself, when she might not have done so from a more authoritative voice.

Frances on her part accepted the suggestion with placidity, and replied that she would think of it, and ask her father; and perhaps if she had time—— But she did not really at all intend to learn music of Tasie. She had no desire to know just as much as Tasie did, whose accomplishments, as well as her age and her condition altogether, were quite evident and clear to the young creature, whose eyes possessed the unbiassed and distinct vision of youth. She appraised Miss Durant exactly at her real value, as the young so constantly do, even when they are quite submissive to the little conventional fables of life, and never think of asserting their superior knowledge; but the conversation was suggestive, and beguiled her mind into many new channels of thought. The cousins unknown—should she ever be brought into intercourse with them, and enter perhaps a kind of other world through their means—would they think it strange that she knew so little, and could not play the piano? Who were they? These thoughts circled vaguely in her mind through all Tasie’s talk, and kept flitting out and in of her brain, even when she removed to the tea-table and poured out some tea. Tasie always admired the cups. She cried, “This is a new one, Frances. Oh, how lucky you are! What pretty bits you have picked up!” with all the ardour of a collector. And then she began to talk of the old Savona pots, which were to be had so cheap, quite cheap, but which, she heard at home, were so much thought of.

Frances did not pay much attention to the discourse about the Savona pots; she went on with her thoughts about the cousins, and when Miss Durant went away, gave herself up entirely to those speculations. What sort of people would they be? Where would they live? And then there recurred to her mind the meeting of the morning, and what the stranger said who knew her father. It was almost the first time she had ever seen him meet any one whom he knew, except the acquaintances of recent times, with whom she had made acquaintance, as he did. But the stranger of the morning evidently knew about him in a period unknown to Frances. She had made a slight and cautious attempt to find out something about him at breakfast, but it had not been successful. She wondered whether she would have courage to ask her father now in so many words who he was and what he meant.

CHAPTER III.

As it turned out, Frances had not the courage. Mr Waring strolled into the loggia shortly after Miss Durant had left her. He smiled when he heard of her visit, and asked what news she had brought. Tasie was the recognised channel for news, and seldom appeared without leaving some little story behind her.

“I don’t think she had any news to-day, except that there had been a great many at the Sunday-school last Sunday. Fancy, papa, twelve children! She is quite excited about it.”

“That is a triumph,” said Mr Waring, with a laugh. He stretched out his long limbs from the low basket-chair in which he had placed himself. He had relaxed a little altogether from the tension of the morning, feeling himself secure and at his ease in his own house, where no one could intrude upon him or call up ghosts of the past. The air was beyond expression sweet and tranquillising, the sun going down in a mist of glory behind the endless peaks and ridges that stretched away towards the west, the sea lapping the shore with a soft cadence that was more imagined than heard on the heights of the Punto, but yet added another harmony to the scene. Near at hand a faint wind rustled the long leaves of the palm-trees, and the pale olive woods lent a softness to the landscape, tempering its radiance. Such a scene fills up the weary mind, and has the blessed quality of arresting thought. It was good for the breathing too—or at least so this invalid thought—and he was more amiable than usual, with no harshness in voice or temper to introduce a discord. “I am glad she was pleased,” he said. “Tasie is a good girl, though not perhaps so much of a girl as she thinks. Why she goes in for a Sunday-school where none is wanted, I can’t tell; but anyhow, I am glad she is pleased. Where did they come from, the twelve children? Poor little beggars, how sick of it they must have been!”

“A number of them belonged to that English family, papa——”

“I suppose they must all belong to English families,” he said, calmly; “the natives are not such fools.”

“But, papa, I mean—the people we met—the people you knew.”

He made no reply for a few minutes, and then he said calmly, “What an ass the man must be, not only to travel with children, but to send them to poor Tasie’s Sunday-school! You must do me the justice, Fan, to acknowledge that I never attempted to treat you in that way.”

“No; but, papa—perhaps the gentleman is a very religious man.”

“And you don’t think I am? Well, perhaps I laid myself open to such a retort.”

“O papa!” Frances cried, with tears starting to her eyes, “you know I could not mean that.”

“If you take religion as meaning a life by rule, which is its true meaning, you were right enough, my dear. That is what I never could do. It might have been better for me if I had been more capable of it. It is always better to put one’s self in harmony with received notions and the prejudices of society. Tasie would not have her Sunday-school but for that. It is the right thing. I think you have a leaning towards the right thing, my little girl, yourself.”

“I don’t like to be particular, papa, if that is what you mean.”

“Always keep to that,” her father said, with a smile. And then he opened the book which he had been holding all this time in his hand. Such a thing had happened, when Frances was in high spirits and very courageous, as that she had pursued him even into his book; but it was a very rare exercise of valour, and to-day she shrank from it. If she only had the courage! But she had not the courage. She had given up her drawing, for the sun no longer shone on the group of palms. She had no book, and indeed at any time was not much given to reading, except when a happy chance threw a novel into her hands. She watched the sun go down by imperceptible degrees, yet not slowly, behind the mountains. When he had quite disappeared, the landscape changed too; the air, as the Italians say, grew brown; a little momentary chill breathed out of the sky. It is always depressing to a solitary watcher when this change takes place.

Frances was not apt to be depressed, but for the moment she felt lonely and dull, and a great sense of monotony took hold upon her. It was like this every night; it would be like this, so far as she knew, every night to come, until perhaps she grew old, like Tasie, without becoming aware that she had ceased to be a girl. It was not a cheering prospect. And when there is any darkness or mystery surrounding one’s life, these are just the circumstances to quicken curiosity, and turn it into something graver, into an anxious desire to know. Frances did not know positively that there was a mystery. She had no reason to think there was, she said to herself. Her father preferred to live easily on the Riviera, instead of living in a way that would trouble him at home. Perhaps the gentleman they had met was a bore, and that was why Mr Waring avoided all mention of him. He frequently thought people were bores, with whom Frances was very well satisfied. Why should she think any more of it? Oh, how she wished she had the courage to ask plainly and boldly, Who are we? Where do we come from? Have we any friends? But she had not the courage. She looked towards him, and trembled, imagining within herself what would be the consequence if she interrupted his reading, plucked him out of the quietude of the hour and of his book, and demanded an explanation—when very likely there was no explanation! when, in all probability, everything was quite simple, if she only knew.

The evening passed as evenings generally did pass in the Palazzo. Mr Waring talked a little at dinner quite pleasantly, and smoked a cigarette in the loggia afterwards in great good-humour, telling Frances various little stories of people he had known. This was a sign of high satisfaction on his part, and very agreeable to her, and no doubt he was entirely unaware of the perplexity in her mind and the questions she was so desirous of asking. The air was peculiarly soft that evening, and he sat in the loggia till the young moon set, with an overcoat on his shoulders and a rug on his knees, sometimes talking, sometimes silent—in either way a very agreeable companion. Frances had never been cooped up in streets, or exposed to the chill of an English spring; so she had not that keen sense of contrast which doubles the enjoyment of a heavenly evening in such a heavenly locality. It was all quite natural, common, and everyday to her; but no one could be indifferent to the sheen of the young moon, to the soft circling of the darkness, and the reflections on the sea. It was all very lovely, and yet there was something wanting. What was wanting? She thought it was knowledge, acquaintance with her own position, and relief from this strange bewildering sensation of being cut off from the race altogether, which had risen within her mind so quickly and with so little cause.

But many beside Frances have felt the wistful call for happiness more complete, which comes in the soft darkening of a summer night; and probably it was not explanation, but something else, more common to human nature, that she wanted. The voices of the peaceful people outside, the old men and women who came out to sit on the benches upon the Punto, or on the stone seat under the wall of the Palazzo, and compare their experiences, and enjoy the cool of the evening, sounded pleasantly from below. There was a softened din of children playing, and now and then a sudden rush of voices, when the young men who were strolling about got excited in conversation, and stopped short in their walk for the delivery of some sentence more emphatic than the rest; and the mothers chattered over their babies, cooing and laughing. The babies should have been in bed, Frances said to herself, half laughing, half crying, in a sort of tender anger with them all for being so familiar and so much at home. They were entirely at home where they were; they knew everybody, and were known from father to son, and from mother to daughter, all about them. They did not call a distant and unknown country by that sweet name, nor was there one among them who had any doubt as to where he or she was born. This thought made Frances sigh, and then made her smile. After all, if that was all! And then she saw that Domenico had brought the lamp into the salone, and that it was time to go indoors.

Next morning she went out between the early coffee and the mid-day breakfast to do some little household business, on which, in consideration that she was English and not bound by the laws that are so hard and fast with Italian girls, Mariuccia consented to let her go alone. It was very seldom that Mr Waring went out or indeed was visible at that hour, the expedition of the former day being very exceptional. Frances went down to the shops to do her little commissions for Mariuccia. She even investigated the Savona pots of which Tasie had spoken. In her circumstances, it was scarcely possible not to be more or less of a collector. There is nobody in these regions who does not go about with eyes open to anything there may be to “pick up.” And after this she walked back through the olive woods, by those distracting little terraces which lead the stranger so constantly out of his way, but are quite simple to those who are to the manner born—until she reached once more the broad piece of unshadowed road which leads up to the old town. At the spot at which she and her father had met the English family yesterday, she made a momentary pause, recalling all the circumstances of the meeting, and what the stranger had said—“A fellow that stuck by you all through.” All through what? she asked herself. As she paused to make this little question, to which there was no response, she heard a sound of voices coming from the upper side of the wood, where the slopes rose high into more and more olive gardens. “Don’t hurry along so; I’m coming,” some one said. Frances looked up, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she perceived that it was once more the English family whom she was about to meet on the same spot.

The father was in advance this time, and he was hurrying down, she thought, with the intention of addressing her. What should she do? She knew very well what her father would have wished her to do; but probably for that very reason a contradictory impulse arose in her. Without doubt, she wanted to know what this man knew and could tell her. Not that she would ask him anything; she was too proud for that. To betray that she was not acquainted with her father’s affairs, that she had to go to a stranger for information, was a thing of which she was incapable. But if he wished to speak to her—to send, perhaps, some message to her father? Frances quieted her conscience in this way. She was very anxious, excited by the sense that there was something to find out; and if it was anything her father would not approve, why, then she could shut it up in her own breast and never let him know it to trouble him. And it was right at her age that she should know. All these sophistries hurried through her mind more rapidly than lightning during the moment in which she paused hesitating, and gave the large Englishman, overwhelmed with the heat, and hurrying down the steep path with his white umbrella over his head, time to make up to her. He was rather out of breath, for though he had been coming down hill, and not going up, the way was steep.

“Miss Waring, Miss Waring!” he cried as he approached, “how is your father? I want to ask for your father,” taking off his straw hat and exposing his flushed countenance under the shadow of the green-lined umbrella, which enhanced all its ruddy tints. Then, as he came within reach of her, he added hastily, “I am so glad I have met you. How is he? for he did not give me any address.”

“Papa is quite well, thank you,” said Frances, with the habitual response of a child.

“Quite well? Oh, that is a great deal more than I expected to hear. He was not quite well yesterday, I am sure. He is dreadfully changed. It was a sort of guesswork my recognising him at all. He used to be such a powerful-made man. Is it pulmonary? I suspect it must be something of the kind, he has so wasted away.”

“Pulmonary? Indeed I don’t know. He has a little asthma sometimes. And of course he is very thin,” said Frances; “but that does not mean anything; he is quite well.”

The stranger shook his head. He had taken the opportunity to wipe it with a large white handkerchief, and had made his bald forehead look redder than ever. “I shouldn’t like to alarm you,” he said—“I wouldn’t, for all the world; but I hope you have trustworthy advice? These Italian doctors, they are not much to be trusted. You should get a real good English doctor to come and have a look at him.”

“Oh, indeed, it is only asthma; he is well enough, quite well, not anything the matter with him,” Frances protested. The large stranger stood and smiled compassionately upon her, still shaking his head.

“Mary,” he said—“here, my dear! This is Miss Waring. She says her father is quite well, poor thing. I am telling her I am so very glad we have met her, for Waring did not leave me any address.”

“How do you do, my dear?” said the stout lady—not much less red than her husband—who had also hurried down the steep path to meet Frances. “And your father is quite well? I am so glad. We thought him looking rather—thin; not so strong as he used to look.”

“But then,” added her husband, “it is such a long time since we have seen him, and he never was very stout. I hope, if you will pardon me for asking, that things have been smoothed down between him and the rest of the family? When I say ‘smoothed down,’ I mean set on a better footing—more friendly, more harmonious. I am very glad I have seen you, to inquire privately; for one never knows how far to go with a man of his—well—peculiar temper.”

“Don’t say that, George. You must not think, my dear, that Mr Mannering means anything that is not quite nice, and friendly, and respectful to your papa. It is only out of kindness that he asks. Your poor papa has been much tried. I am sure he has always had my sympathy, and my husband’s too. Mr Mannering only means that he hopes things are more comfortable between your father and—— Which is so much to be desired for everybody’s sake.”

The poor girl stood and stared at them with large, round, widely opening eyes, with the wondering stare of a child. There had been a little half-mischievous, half-anxious longing in her mind to find out what these strangers knew; but now she came to herself suddenly, and felt as a traveller feels who all at once pulls himself up on the edge of a precipice. What was this pitfall which she had nearly stumbled into, this rent from the past which was so great and so complete that she had never heard of it, never guessed it? Fright seized upon her, and dismay, and, what probably stood her in more stead for the moment, a stinging sensation of wounded pride, which brought the colour burning to her cheeks. Must she let these people find out that she knew nothing, at her age—that her father had never confided in her at all—that she could not even form an idea what they were talking about? She had pleased herself with the possibility of some little easy discovery—of finding out, perhaps, something about the cousins whom it seemed certain, according to Tasie, every one must possess, whether they were aware of it or not—some little revelation of origin and connections such as could do nobody any harm. But when she woke up suddenly to find herself as it were upon the edge of a chasm which had split her father’s life in two, the young creature trembled. She was frightened beyond measure by this unexpected contingency; she dared not listen to another word.

“Oh,” she said, with a quiver in her voice, “I am afraid I have no time to stop and talk. Papa will be waiting for his breakfast. I will tell him you—asked for him.”

“Give him our love,” said the lady. “Indeed, George, she is quite right; we must hurry too, or we shall be too late for the table d’hôte.”

“But I have not got the address,” said the husband. Frances made a little curtsey, as she had been taught, and waved her hand as she hurried away. He thought that she had not understood him. “Where do you live?” he called after her as she hastened along. She pointed towards the height of the little town, and alarmed for she knew not what, lest he should follow her, lest he should call something after her which she ought not to hear, fled along towards the steep ascent. She could hear the voices behind her slightly elevated talking to each other, and then the sound of the children rattling down the stony course of the higher road, and the quick question and answer as they rejoined their parents. Then gradually everything relapsed into silence as the party disappeared. When she heard the voices no longer, Frances began to regret that she had been so hasty. She paused for a moment, and looked back; but already the family were almost out of sight, the solid figures which led the procession indistinguishable from the little ones who straggled behind. Whether it might have been well or ill to take advantage of the chance, it was now over. She arrived at the Palazzo out of breath, and found Domenico at the door, looking out anxiously for her. “The signorina is late,” he said, very gravely; “the padrone has almost had to wait for his breakfast.” Domenico was quite original, and did not know that such a terrible possibility had threatened any illustrious personage before.

CHAPTER IV.

It was natural that this occurrence should take a great hold of the girl’s mind. It was not the first time that she had speculated concerning their life. A life which one has always lived, indeed, the conditions of which have been familiar and inevitable since childhood, is not a matter which awakens questions in the mind. However extraordinary its conditions may be, they are natural—they are life to the young soul which has had no choice in the matter. Still there are curiosities which will arise. General Gaunt foamed at the mouth when he talked of the way in which he had been treated by the people “at home”; but still he went “home” in the summer as a matter of course. And as for the Durants, it was a subject of the fondest consideration with them when they could afford themselves that greatest of delights. They all talked about the cold, the fogs, the pleasure of getting back to the sunshine when they returned; but this made no difference in the fact that to go home was their thought all the year, and the most salient point in their lives. “Why do we never go home?” Frances had often asked herself. And both these families, and all the people to whom she had ever talked, the strangers who went and came, and those whom they met in the rambles which the Warings, too, were forced to take in the hot weather, when the mistral was blowing—talked continually of their county, of their parish, of their village, of where they lived, and where they had been born. But on these points Mr Waring never said a word. And whereas Mrs Gaunt could talk of nothing but her family, who were scattered all over the world, and the Durants met people they knew at every turn, the Warings knew nobody, had no relations, no house at home, and apparently had been born nowhere in particular, as Frances sometimes said to herself with more annoyance than humour. Sometimes she wondered whether she had ever had a mother.

These thoughts, indeed, occurred but fitfully now and then, when some incident brought more forcibly than usual under her notice the difference between herself and others. She did not brood over them, her life being quite pleasant and comfortable to herself, and no necessity laid upon her to elucidate its dimnesses. But yet they came across her mind from time to time. She had not been brought face to face with any old friend of her father’s, that she could remember, until now. She had never heard any question raised about his past life. And yet no doubt he had a past life, like every other man, and there was something in it—something, she could not guess what, which had made him unlike other men.

Frances had a great deal of self-command. She did not betray her agitation to her father; she did not ask him any questions; she told him about the greengrocer and the fisherman, these two important agents in the life of the Riviera, and of what she had seen in the Marina, even the Savona pots; but she did not disturb his meal and his digestion by any reference to the English strangers. She postponed until she had time to think of it, all reference to this second meeting. She had by instinct made no reply to the question about where she lived; but she knew that there would be no difficulty in discovering that, and that her father might be subject at any moment to invasion by this old acquaintance, whom he had evidently no desire to see. What should she do? The whole matter wanted thought. Whether she should ask him what to do; whether she should take it upon herself; whether she should disclose to him her newborn curiosity and anxiety, or conceal them in her own bosom; whether she should tell him frankly what she felt—that she was worthy to be trusted, and that it was the right of his only child to be prepared for all emergencies, and to be acquainted with her family and her antecedents, if not with his,—all these were things to be thought over. Surely she had a right, if any one had a right. But she would not stand upon that.

She sat by herself all day and thought, putting forward all the arguments on either side. If there was, as there might be, something wrong in that past—something guilty, which might make her look on her father with different eyes, he had a right to be silent, and she no right, none whatever, to insist upon such a revelation. And what end would it serve? If she had relations or a family from whom she had been separated, would not the revelation fill her with eager desire to know them, and open a fountain of dissatisfaction and discontent in her life if she were not permitted to do so? Would she not chafe at the banishment if she found out that somewhere there was a home, that she had “belongings” like all the rest of the world? These were little feeble barriers which she set up against the strong tide of consciousness in her that she was to be trusted, that she ought to know. Whatever it was, and however she might bear it, was it not true that she ought to know? She was not a fool or a child. Frances knew that her eighteen years had brought more experience, more sense to her, than Tasie’s forty; that she was capable of understanding, capable of keeping a secret—and was it not her own secret, the explanation of the enigma of her life as well as of his?

This course of reflection went on in her mind until the evening, and it was somewhat quickened by a little conversation which she had in the afternoon with the servants. Domenico was going out. It was early in the afternoon, the moment of leisure, when one meal with all its responsibilities was over, and the second great event of the day, the dinner, not yet imminent. It was the hour when Mariuccia sat in the ante-room and did her sewing, her mending, her knitting—whatever was wanted. This was a large and lofty room—not very light, with a great window looking out only into the court of the Palazzo—in which stood a long table and a few tall chairs. The smaller ante-room, from which the long suite of rooms opened on either side, communicated with this, as did also the corridor, which ran all the length of the house, and the kitchen and its appendages on the other side. There is always abundance of space of this kind in every old Italian house. Here Mariuccia established herself whenever she was free to leave her cooking and her kitchen-work. She was a comely middle-aged woman, with a dark gown, a white apron, a little shawl on her shoulders, large earrings, and a gold cross at her neck, which was a little more visible than is common with Englishwomen of her class. Her hair was crisp and curly, and never had been covered with anything, save, when she went to church, a shawl or veil; and Mariuccia’s olive complexion and ruddy tint feared no encounter of the sun. Domenico was tall, and spare, and brown, a grave man with little jest in him; but his wife was always ready to laugh. He came out hat in hand while Frances stood by the table inspecting Mariuccia’s work. “I am going out,” he said; “and this is the hour when the English gentlefolks pay visits. See that thou remember what the padrone said.”

“What did the padrone say?” cried Frances, pricking up her ears.

“Signorina, it was to my wife I was speaking,” said Domenico.

“That I understand; but I wish to know as well. Was papa expecting a visit? What did he say?”

“The padrone himself will tell the signorina,” said Domenico, “all that is intended for her. Some things are for the servants, some for the family; Mariuccia knows what I mean.”

“You are an ass, ’Menico,” said his wife, calmly. “Why shouldn’t the dear child know? It is nothing to be concerned about, my soul—only that the padrone does not receive, and again that he does not receive, and that he never receives. I must repeat this till the Ave Maria, if necessary, till the strangers accept it and go away.”

“Are these special orders?” said Frances, “or has it always been so? I don’t think that it has always been so.”

Domenico had gone out while his wife was speaking, with a half-threatening and wholly disapproving look, as if he would not involve himself in the responsibility which Mariuccia had taken upon her.

“Carina, don’t trouble yourself about it. It has always been so in the spirit, if not in the letter,” said Mariuccia. “Figure to yourself Domenico or me letting in any one, any one that chose to come, to disturb the signor padrone! That would be impossible. It appears, however, that there is some one down there in the hotels to whom the padrone has a great objection, greater than to the others. It is no secret, nothing to trouble you. But ’Menico, though he is a good man, is not very wise. Che! you know that as well as I.”

“And what will you do if this gentleman will not pay any attention—if he comes in all the same? The English don’t understand what it means when you say you do not receive. You must say he is not in; he has gone out; he is not at home.”

“Che! che! che!” cried Mariuccia; “little deceiver! But that would be a lie.”

Frances shook her head. “Yes; I suppose so,” she said, with a troubled look; “but if you don’t say it, the Englishman will come in all the same.”

“He will come in, then, over my body,” cried Mariuccia with a cheerful laugh, standing square and solid against the door.

This gave the last impulse to Frances’ thoughts. She could not go on with her study of the palms. She sat with her pencil in her hand, and the colour growing dry, thinking all the afternoon through. It was very certain, then, that her father would not expose himself to another meeting with the strangers who called themselves his friends—innocent people who would not harm any one, Frances was sure. They were tourists—that was evident; and they might be vulgar—that was possible. But she was sure that there was no harm in them. It could only be that her father was resolute to shut out his past, and let no one know what had been. This gave her an additional impulse, instead of discouragement. If it was so serious, and he so determined, then surely there must be something that she, his only child, ought to know. She waited till the evening with a gradually growing excitement; but not until after dinner, after the soothing cigarette, which he puffed so slowly and luxuriously in the loggia, did she venture to speak. Then the day was over. It could not put him out, or spoil his appetite, or risk his digestion. To be sure, it might interfere with his sleep; but after consideration, Frances did not think that a very serious matter, probably because she had never known what it was to pass a wakeful night. She began, however, with the greatest caution and care.

“Papa,” she said, “I want to consult you about something Tasie was saying.”

“Ah! that must be something very serious, no doubt.”

“Not serious, perhaps; but—— she wants to teach me to play.”

“To play! What? Croquet? or whist, perhaps? I have always heard she was excellent at both.”

“These are games, papa,” said Frances, with a touch of severity. “She means the piano, which is very different.”

“Ah!” said Mr Waring, taking the cigarette from his lips and sending a larger puff of smoke into the dim air; “very different indeed, Frances. It is anything but a game to hear Miss Tasie play.”

“She says,” continued Frances, with a certain constriction in her throat, “that every lady is expected to play—to play a little at least, even if she has not much taste for it. She thinks when we go home—that all our relations will be so surprised——”

She stopped, having no breath to go further, and watched as well as she could, through the dimness and through the mist of agitation in her own eyes, her father’s face. He made no sign; he did not disturb even the easy balance of his foot, stretched out along the pavement. After another pause, he said in the same indifferent tone, “As we are not going home, and as you have no relations in particular, I don’t think your friend’s argument is very strong. Do you?”

“O papa, I don’t want indeed to be inquisitive or trouble you, but I should like to know!”

“What?” he said, with the same composure. “If I think that a lady, whether she has any musical taste or not, ought to play? Well, that is a very simple question. I don’t, whatever Miss Tasie may say.”

“It is not that,” Frances said, regaining a little control of herself. “I said I did not know of any relations we had. But Tasie said there must be cousins; we must have cousins—everybody has cousins. That is true, is it not?”

“In most cases, certainly,” Mr Waring said; “and a great nuisance too.”

“I don’t think it would be a nuisance to have people about one’s own age, belonging to one—not strangers—people who were interested in you, to whom you could say anything. Brothers and sisters, that would be the best; but cousins—I think, papa, cousins would be very nice.”

“I will tell you, if you like, of one cousin you have,” her father said.

The heart of Frances swelled as if it would leap out of her breast. She put her hands together, turning full round upon him in an attitude of supplication and delight. “O papa!” she cried with enthusiasm, breathless for his next word.

“Certainly, if you wish it, Frances. He is in reality your first-cousin. He is fifty. He is a great sufferer from gout. He has lived so well in the early part of his life, that he is condemned to slops now, and spends most of his time in an easy-chair. He has the temper of a demon, and swears at everybody that comes near him. He is very red in the face, very bleared about the eyes, very——”

“O papa!” she cried, in a very different tone. She was so much disappointed, that the sudden downfall had almost a physical effect upon her, as if she had fallen from a height. Her father laughed softly while she gathered all her strength together to regain command of herself, and the laugh had a jarring effect upon her nerves, of which she had never been conscious till now.

“I don’t suppose that he would care much whether you played the piano or not; or that you would care much, my dear, what he thought.”

“For all that, papa,” said Frances, recovering herself, “it is a little interesting to know there is somebody, even if he is not at all what one thought. Where does he live, and what is his name? That will give me one little landmark in England, where there is none now.”

“Not a very reasonable satisfaction,” said her father lazily, but without any other reply. “In my life, I have always found relations a nuisance. Happy are they who have none; and next best is to cast them off and do without them. As a matter of fact, it is every one for himself in this world.”

Frances was silenced, though not convinced. She looked with some anxiety at the outline of her father’s spare and lengthy figure laid out in the basket-chair, one foot moving slightly, which was a habit he had, the whole extended in perfect rest and calm. He was not angry, he was not disturbed. The questions which she had put with so much mental perturbation had not affected him at all. She felt that she might dare further without fear.

“When I was out to-day,” she said, faltering a little, “I met—that gentleman again.”

“Ah!” said Mr Waring—no more; but he ceased to shake his foot, and turned towards her the merest hair’s-breadth, so little that it was impossible to say he had moved, and yet there was a change.

“And the lady,” said Frances, breathless. “I am sure they wanted to be kind. They asked me a great many questions.”

He gave a faint laugh, but it was not without a little quiver in it. “What a good thing that you could not answer them!” he said.

“Do you think so, papa? I was rather unhappy. It looked as if you could not trust me. I should have been ashamed to say I did not know; which is the truth—for I know nothing, not so much as where I was born!” cried the girl. “It is very humiliating, when you are asked about your own father, to say you don’t know. So I said it was time for breakfast, and you would be waiting; and ran away.”

“The best thing you could have done, my dear. Discretion in a woman, or a girl, is always the better part of valour. I think you got out of it very cleverly,” Mr Waring said.

And that was all. He did not seem to think another word was needed. He did not even rise and go away, as Frances had known him to do when the conversation was not to his mind. She could not see his face, but his attitude was unchanged. He had recovered his calm, if there had ever been any disturbance of it. But as for Frances, her heart was thumping against her breast, her pulses beating in her ears, her lips parched and dry. “I wish,” she cried, “oh, I wish you would tell me something, papa! Do you think I would talk of things you don’t want talked about? I am not a child any longer; and I am not silly, as perhaps you think.”

“On the contrary, my dear,” said Mr Waring, “I think you are often very sensible.”

“Papa! oh, how can you say that, how can you say such things—and then leave me as if I were a baby, knowing nothing!”

“My dear,” he said (with the sound of a smile in his voice, she thought to herself), “you are very hard to please. Must not I say that you are sensible? I think it is the highest compliment I can pay you.”

“O papa!” Disappointment, and mortification, and the keen sense of being fooled, which is so miserable to the young, took her very breath away. The exasperation with which we discover that not only is no explanation, no confidence to be given us, but the very occasion for it ignored, and our anxiety baffled by a smile—a mortification to which women are so often subject—flooded her being. She had hard ado not to burst into angry tears, not to betray the sense of cruelty and injustice which overwhelmed her; but who could have seen any injustice or cruelty in the gentleness of his tone, his soft reply? Frances subdued herself as best she could in her dark corner of the loggia, glad at least that he could not see the spasm that passed over her, the acute misery and irritation of her spirit. It would be strange if he did not divine something of what was going on within her: but he took no notice. He began in the same tone, as if one theme was quite as important as the other, to remark upon the unusual heaviness of the clouds which hid the moon. “If we were in England, I should say there was a storm brewing,” he said. “Even here, I think we shall have some rain. Don’t you feel that little creep in the air, something sinister, as if there was a bad angel about? And Domenico, I see, has brought the lamp. I vote we go in.”

“Are there any bad angels?” she cried, to give her impatience vent.

He had risen up, and stood swaying indolently from one foot to the other. “Bad angels? Oh yes,” he said; “abundance; very different from devils, who are honest—like the fiends in the pictures, unmistakable. The others, you know, deceive. Don’t you remember?—

‘How there looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright;
And how he knew it was a fiend,
That miserable knight.’”

He turned and went into the salone, repeating these words in an undertone to himself. But there was in his face none of the bitterness or horror with which they must have been said by one who had ever in his own person made that discovery. He was quite calm, meditative, marking with a slight intonation and movement of his head the cadence of the poetry.

Frances stayed behind in the darkness. She had not the practice which we acquire in later life; she could not hide the excitement which was still coursing through her veins. She went to the corner of the loggia which was nearest the sea, and caught in her face the rush of the rising breeze, which flung at her the first drops of the coming rain. A storm on that soft coast is a welcome break in the monotony of the clear skies and unchanging calm. After a while her father called to her that the rain was coming in, that the windows must be shut; and she hurried in, brushing by Domenico, who had come to close everything up, and who looked at her reproachfully as she rushed past him. She came behind her father’s chair and leaned over to kiss him. “I have got a little wet, and I think I had better go to bed,” she said.

“Yes, surely, if you wish it, my dear,” said Mr Waring. Something moist had touched his forehead, which was too warm to be rain. He waited politely till she had gone before he wiped it off. It was the edge of a tear, hot, miserable, full of anger as well as pain, which had made that mark upon his high white forehead. It made him pause for a minute or two in his reading. “Poor little girl!” he said, with a sigh. Perhaps he was not so insensible as he seemed.

CHAPTER V.

It is a common impression that happiness and unhappiness are permanent states of mind, and that for long tracts of our lives we are under the continuous sway of one or other of these conditions. But this is almost always a mistake, save in the case of grief, which is perhaps the only emotion which is beyond the reach of the momentary lightenings and alleviations and perpetual vicissitudes of life. Death, and the pangs of separation from those we love, are permanent, at least for their time; but in everything else there is an ebb and flow which keeps the heart alive. When Frances Waring told the story of this period of her life, she represented herself unconsciously as having been oppressed by the mystery that over-shadowed her, and as having lost all the ease of her young life prematurely in a sudden encounter with shadows unsuspected before. But as a matter of fact, this was not the case. She had a bad night—that is, she cried herself asleep; but once over the boundary which divides our waking thoughts from the visions of the night, she knew no more till the sun came in and woke her to a very cheerful morning. It is true that care made several partially successful assaults upon her that day and for several days after. But as everything went on quite calmly and peacefully, the impression wore off. The English family found out, as was inevitable, where Mr Waring lived, without any difficulty; and first the father came, then the mother, and finally the pair together, to call. Frances, to whom a breach of decorum or civility was pain unspeakable, sat trembling and ashamed in the deepest corner of the loggia, while these kind strangers encountered Mariuccia at the door. The scene, as a matter of fact, was rather comic than tragic, for neither the visitors nor the guardian of the house possessed any language but their own; and Mr and Mrs Mannering had as little understanding of the statement that Mr Waring did not “receive” as Frances had expected.

“But he is in—è in casa—è IN?” said the worthy Englishman. “Then, my dear, of course it is only a mistake. When he knows who we are—when he has our names——”

“Non riceve oggi,” said Mariuccia, setting her sturdy breadth in the doorway; “oggi non riceve il signore” (The master does not receive to-day).

“But he is in?” repeated the bewildered good people. They could have understood “Not at home,” which to Mariuccia would have been simply a lie—with which indeed, had need been, or could it have done the padrone any good, she would have burdened her conscience as lightly as any one. But why, when it was not in the least necessary?

Thus they played their little game at cross-purposes, while Frances sat, hot and red with shame, in her corner, sensible to the bottom of her heart of the discourtesy, the unkindness, of turning them from the door. They were her father’s friends; they claimed to have “stuck by him through thick and thin;” they were people who knew about him, and all that he belonged to, and the conditions of his former life; and yet they were turned from his door!

She did not venture to go out again for some days, except in the evening, when she knew that all the strangers were at the inevitable table d’hôte; and it was with a sigh of relief, yet disappointment, that she heard they had gone away. Yes, at last they did go away, angry, no doubt, thinking her father a churl, and she herself an ignorant rustic, who knew nothing about good manners. Of course this was what they must think. Frances heard those words, “Non riceve oggi,” even in her dreams. She saw in imagination the astonished faces of the visitors. “But he will receive us, if you will only take in our names;” and then Mariuccia’s steady voice repeating the well-known phrase. What must they have thought? That it was an insult—that their old friend scorned and defied them. What else could they suppose?

They departed, however, and Frances got over it: and everything went on as before; her father was just as usual—a sphinx indeed, more and more hopelessly wrapped up in silence and mystery, but so natural and easy and kind in his uncommunicativeness, with so little appearance of repression or concealment about him, that it was almost impossible to retain any feeling of injury or displeasure. Love is cheated every day in this way by offenders much more serious, who can make their dependants happy even while they are ruining them, and beguile the bitterest anxiety into forgetfulness and smiles. It was easy to make Frances forget the sudden access of wonderment and wounded feeling which had seized her, even without any special exertion; time alone and the calm succession of the days were enough for that. She resumed her little picture of the palms, and was very successful—more than usually so. Mr Waring, who had hitherto praised her little works as he might have praised the sampler of a child, was silenced by this, and took it away with him into his room, and when he brought it back, looked at her with more attention than he had been used to show. “I think,” he said, “little Fan, that you must be growing up,” laying his hand upon her head with a smile.

“I am grown up, papa; I am eighteen,” she said.

At which he laughed softly. “I don’t think much of your eighteen; but this shows. I should not wonder, with time and work, if—you mightn’t be good enough to exhibit at Mentone—after a while.”

Frances had been looking at him with an expression of almost rapturous expectation. The poor little countenance fell at this, and a quick sting of mortification brought tears to her eyes. The exhibition at Mentone was an exhibition of amateurs. Tasie was in it, and even Mrs Gaunt, and all the people about who ever spoilt a piece of harmless paper. “O papa!” she said. Since the failure of her late appeal to him, this was the only formula of reproach which she used.

“Well,” he said, “are you more ambitious than that, you little thing? Perhaps, by-and-by, you may be fit even for better things.”

“It is beautiful,” said Mariuccia. “You see where the light goes, and where it is in the shade. But, carina, if you were to copy the face of Domenico, or even mine, that would be more interesting. The palms we can see if we look out of the window; but imagine to yourself that ’Menico might go away, or even might die; and we should not miss him so much if we had his face hung up upon the wall.”

“It is easier to do the trees than to do Domenico,” said Frances; “they stand still.”

“And so would ’Menico stand still, if it was to please the signorina—he is not very well educated, but he knows enough for that; or I myself, though you will think, perhaps, I am too old to make a pretty picture. But if I had my veil on, and my best earrings, and the coral my mother left me——”

“You look very nice, Mariuccia—I like you as you are; but I am not clever enough to make a portrait.”

Mariuccia cried out with scorn. “You are clever enough to do whatever you wish to do,” she said. “The padrone thinks so too, though he will not say it. Not clever enough! Magari! too clever is what you mean.”

Frances set up her palms on a little stand of carved wood, and was very well pleased with herself; but that sentiment palls perhaps sooner than any other. It was very agreeable to be praised, and also it was pleasant to feel that she had finished her work successfully. But after a short time it began to be a great subject of regret that the work was done. She did not know what to do next. To make a portrait of Domenico was above her powers. She idled about for the day, and found it uncomfortable. That is the moment in which it is most desirable to have a friend on whom to bestow one’s tediousness. She bethought herself that she had not seen Tasie for a week. It was now more than a fortnight since the events detailed in the beginning of this history. Her father, when asked if he would not like a walk, declined. It was too warm, or too cold, or perhaps too dusty, which was very true; and accordingly she set out alone.

Walking down through the Marina, the little tourist town which was rising upon the shore, she saw some parties of travellers arriving, which always had been a little pleasure to her. It was mingled now with a certain excitement. Perhaps some of them, like those who had just gone away, might know all about her, more than she knew herself—what a strange thought it was!—some of those unknown people in their travelling cloaks, which looked so much too warm—people whom she had never seen before, who had not a notion that she was Frances Waring! One of the parties was composed of ladies, surrounded and enveloped, so to speak, by a venerable courier, who swept them and their possessions before him into the hotel. Another was led by a father and mother, not at all unlike the pair who had “stuck by” Mr Waring. How strange to imagine that they might not be strangers at all, but people who knew all about her!

In the first group was a girl, who hung back a little from the rest, and looked curiously up at all the houses, as if looking for some one—a tall, fair-haired girl, with a blue veil tied over her hat. She looked tired, but eager, with more interest in her face than any of the others showed. Frances smiled to herself with the half-superiority which a resident is apt to feel: a girl must be very simple indeed, if she thought the houses on the Marina worth looking at, Frances thought. But she did not pause in her quick walk. The Durants lived at the other end of the Marina, in a little villa built upon a terrace over an olive garden—a low house with no particular beauty, but possessing also a loggia turned to the west, the luxury of building on the Riviera. Here the whole family were seated, the old clergyman with a large English newspaper, which he was reading deliberately from end to end; his wife with a work-basket full of articles to mend; and Tasie at the little tea-table, pouring out the tea. Frances was received with a little clamour of satisfaction, for she was a favourite.

“Sit here, my dear.” “Come this way, close to me, for you know I am getting a little hard of hearing.”

They had always been kind to her, but never, she thought, had she been received with so much cordiality as now.

“Have you come by yourself, Frances? and along the Marina? I think you should make Domenico or his wife walk with you, when you go through the Marina, my dear.”

“Why, Mrs Durant? I have always done it. Even Mariuccia says it does not matter, as I am an English girl.”

“Ah, that may be true; but English girls are not like American girls. I assure you they are taken a great deal more care of. If you ever go home——”

“And how is your poor father to-day, Frances?” said Mrs Durant.

“Oh, papa is very well. He is not such a poor father. There is nothing the matter with him. At least, there is nothing new the matter with him,” said Frances, with a little impatience.

“No,” said the clergyman, looking up over the top of his spectacles and shaking his head. “Nothing new the matter with him. I believe that.”

“——If you ever go home,” resumed Mrs Durant; “and of course some time you will go home——”

“I think very likely I never shall,” said the girl. “Papa never talks of going home. He says home is here.”

“That is all very well for the present moment, my dear; but I feel sure, for my part, that one time or other it will happen as I say; and then you must not let them suppose you have been a little savage, going about as you liked here.”

“I don’t think any one would care much, Mrs Durant; and I am not going; so you need not be afraid.”

“Your poor father,” Mr Durant went on in his turn, “has a great deal of self-command, Frances; he has a great deal of self-control. In some ways, that is an excellent quality, but it may be carried too far. I wish very much he would allow me to come and have a talk with him—not as a clergyman, but just in a friendly way.”

“I am quite sure you may come and talk with him as much as you like,” said Frances, astonished; “or if you want very much to see him, he will come to you.”

“Oh, I should not take it upon me to ask that—in the meantime,” Mr Durant said.

The girl stared a little, but asked no further questions. There was something among them which she did not understand—a look of curiosity, an air of meaning more than their words said. The Durants were always a little apt to be didactic, as became a clergyman’s family; but Tasie was generally a safe refuge. Frances turned to her with a little sigh of perplexity, hoping to escape further question. “Was the Sunday-school as large last Sunday, Tasie?” she said.

“Oh, Frances, no! Such a disappointment! There were only four! Isn’t it a pity? But you see the little Mannerings have all gone away. Such sweet children! and the little one of all has such a voice. They are perhaps coming back for Easter, if they don’t stay at Rome; and if so, I think we must put little Herbert in a white surplice—he will look like an angel—and have a real anthem with a soprano solo, for once.”

“I doubt if they will all come back,” said Mr Durant. “Mr Mannering himself indeed, I don’t doubt, on business; but as for the family, you must not flatter yourself, Tasie.”

“She liked the place,” said his wife; “and very likely she would think it her duty, if anything is to come of it, you know.”

“Be careful,” said the clergyman, with a glance aside, which Frances would have been dull indeed not to have perceived was directed at herself. “Don’t say anything that may be premature.”

Frances was brave in her way. She felt, with a little rising excitement, that her friends were bursting with some piece of knowledge which they were longing to communicate. It roused in her an impatience and reluctance mingled with keen curiosity. She would not hear it, and yet was breathless with impatience to know what it was.

“Mr Mannering?” she said, deliberately—“that was the gentleman that knew papa.”

“You saw him, then?” cried Mrs Durant. There was something like a faint disappointment in her tone.

“He was one of papa’s early friends,” said Frances, with a little emphasis. “I saw him twice. He and his wife both; they seemed kind people.”

Mr Durant and his wife looked at each other, and even Tasie stared over her teacups. “Oh, very kind people, my dear; I don’t think you could do better than have full confidence in them,” Mrs Durant said.

“And your poor father could not have a truer friend,” said the old clergyman. “You must tell him I am coming to have a talk with him about it. It was a great revelation, but I hope that everything will turn out for the best.”

Frances grew redder and redder as she sat a mark for all their arrows. What was it that was a “revelation”? But she would not ask. She began to be angry, and to say to herself that she would put her hands to her ears, that she would listen to nothing.

“Henry!” said Mrs Durant, “who is it that is premature now?”

“I am afraid I can’t stay,” said Frances, rising quickly from her chair. “I have something to do for Mariuccia. I only came in because—because I was passing. Never mind, Tasie; I know my way so well; and Mr Durant wants some more tea.”

“Oh but, Frances, my dear, you really must let me send some one with you. You must not move about in that independent way.”

“And we had a great many things to say to you,” said the old clergyman, keeping her hand in his. “Are you really in such a hurry? It will be better for yourself to wait a little, and hear something that will be for your good.”

“It cannot be any worse for me to run about to-day than any other day,” said Frances, almost sternly; “and whatever there is to hear, won’t to-morrow do just as well? I think it is a little funny of you all to speak to me so; but now I must go.”

She was so rapid in her movements that she was gone before Tasie could extricate herself from the somewhat crazy little table. And then they all three looked at each other and shook their heads. “Do you think she can know?” “Can she have known it all the time?” “Has Waring told her, or was it Mannering?” they said to each other.

Frances could not hear their mutual questions, but something very like the purport of them got into her agitated brain. She felt sure they were wondering whether she knew—what? this revelation, this something which they had found out. Nothing would make her submit to hear it from them, she said to herself. But the moment was come when she could not be put off any longer. She would go to her father, and she would not rest until she was informed what it was.

She hastened along, avoiding the Marina, which had amused her on her way, hurrying from terrace to terrace of the olive groves. Her heart was beating fast, and her rapid pace made it faster. But as she thought of her father’s unperturbed looks, the calm with which he had received her eager questions, and the very small likelihood that anything she could say about the hints of the Durants would move him, her pace and her excitement both decreased. She went more slowly, less hopefully, back to the Palazzo. It was all very well to say that she must know. But what if he would not tell her? What if he received her questions as he had received them before? The circumstances were not changed, nor was he changed because the Durants knew something, she did not know what. Oh, what a poor piece of friendship was that, that betrayed a friend’s secret to his neighbours! She did not know, she could not so much as form a guess, what the secret was. But little or great, his friend should have kept it. She said this to herself bitterly, when the chill probabilities of the case began to make themselves felt. It was harder to think that the Durants knew, than to be kept in darkness herself.

She went in at last very soberly, with the intention of telling her father all that had passed, if perhaps that of itself might be an inducement to him to have confidence in her. It was not a pleasant mission. Her steps had become very sober as she went up the long marble stair. Mariuccia met her with a little cry. Had she not met the padrone? He had gone out down through the olive woods to meet her and fetch her home. It was a brief reprieve. In the evening after dinner was the time when he was most accessible. Frances, with a thrill of mingled relief and disappointment, retired to her room to make her little toilet. She had an hour or two at least before her ere it would be necessary to speak.

CHAPTER VI.

When one has made up one’s mind to reopen a painful subject after dinner, the preliminary meal is not usually a very pleasant one; nor, with the tremor of preparation in one’s mind, is one likely to make a satisfactory dinner. Frances could not talk about anything. She could not eat; her mind was absorbed in what was coming. It seemed to her that she must speak: and yet how gladly would she have escaped from or postponed the explanation! Explanation! Possibly he would only smile, and baffle her as he had done before; or perhaps be angry, which would be better. Anything would be better than that indifference.

She went out to the loggia when dinner was over, trembling with the sensation of suspense. It was still not dark, and the night was clear with the young moon already shining, so that between the retiring day and the light of the night it was almost as clear as it had been two hours before. Frances sat down, shivering a little, though not with cold. Usually her father accompanied or immediately followed her, but by some perversity he did not do so to-night. She seated herself in her usual place, and waited, listening for every sound—that is, for sounds of one kind—his slow step coming along the polished floor, here soft and muffled over a piece of carpet, there loud upon the parquet. But for some time, during which she rose into a state of feverish expectation, there was no such sound.

It was nearly half an hour, according to her calculation, probably not half so much by common computation of time, when one or two doors were opened and shut quickly and a sound of voices met her ear—not sounds, however, which had any but a partial interest for her, for they did not indicate his approach. After a while there followed the sound of a footstep but it was not Mr Waring’s; it was not Domenico’s subdued tread, nor the measured march of Mariuccia. It was light, quick, and somewhat uncertain. Frances was half disappointed, half relieved. Some one was coming, but not her father. It would be impossible to speak to him to-night. The relief was uppermost; she felt it through her whole being. Not to-night; and no one can ever tell what to-morrow may bring forth. She looked up no longer with anxiety, but curiosity, as the door opened. It opened quickly; some one looked out, as if to see what was beyond, then, with a slight exclamation of satisfaction, stepped out upon the loggia into the partial light.

Frances rose up quickly, with the curious sensation of acting over something which she had rehearsed before, she did not know where or how. It was the girl whom she had remarked on the Marina as having just arrived who now stood looking about her curiously, with her travelling-cloak fastened only at the throat, her gauze veil thrown up about her hat. This new-comer came in quickly, not with the timidity of a stranger. She came out into the centre of the loggia, where the light fell fully around her, and showed her tall slight figure, the fair hair clustering in her neck, a certain languid grace of movement, which her energetic entrance curiously belied. Frances waited for some form of apology or self-introduction, prepared to be very civil, and feeling in reality pleased and almost grateful for the interruption.

But the young lady made no explanation. She put her hands up to her throat and loosed her cloak with a little sigh of relief. She undid the veil from her hat. “Thank heaven, I have got here at last, free of those people!” she said, putting herself sans façon into Mr Waring’s chair, and laying her hat upon the little table. Then she looked up at the astonished girl, who stood looking on.

“Are you Frances?” she said; but the question was put in an almost indifferent tone.

“Yes; I am Frances. But I don’t know——” Frances was civil to the bottom of her soul, polite, incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. She could not say anything disagreeable; she could not demand brutally, Who are you? and what do you want here?

“I thought so,” said the stranger; “and, oddly enough, I saw you this afternoon, and wondered if it could be you. You are a little like mamma.—I am Constance, of course,” she added, looking up with a half-smile. “We ought to kiss each other, I suppose, though we can’t care much about each other, can we?—Where is papa?”

Frances had no breath to speak; she could not say a word. She looked at the new-comer with a gasp. Who was she? And who was papa? Was it some strange mistake which had brought her here? But then the question, “Are you Frances?” showed that it could not be a mistake.

“I beg your pardon,” she said; “I don’t understand. This is—Mr Waring’s. You are looking for—your father?”

“Yes, yes,” cried the other impatiently; “I know. You can’t imagine I should have come here and taken possession if I had not made sure first! You are well enough known in this little place. There was no trouble about it.—And the house looks nice, and this must be a fine view when there is light to see it by.—But where is papa? They told me he was always to be found at this hour.”

Frances felt the blood ebb to her very finger-points, and then rush back like a great flood upon her heart. She scarcely knew where she was standing or what she was saying in her great bewilderment. “Do you mean—my father?” she said.

The other girl answered with a laugh: “You are very particular. I mean our father, if you prefer it. Your father—my father. What does it matter?—Where is he? Why isn’t he here? It seems he must introduce us to each other. I did not think of any such formality. I thought you would have taken me for granted,” she said.

Frances stood thunderstruck, gazing, listening, as if eyes and ears alike fooled her. She did not seem to know the meaning of the words. They could not, she said to herself, mean what they seemed to mean—it was impossible. There must be some wonderful, altogether unspeakable blunder. “I don’t understand,” she said again, in a piteous tone. “It must be some mistake.”

The other girl fixed her eyes upon her in the waning light. She had not paid so much attention to Frances at first as to the new place and scene. She looked at her now with the air of weighing her in some unseen balance and finding her wanting, with impatience and half contempt. “I thought you would have been glad to see me,” she said; “but the world seems just the same in one place as another. Because I am in distress at home you don’t want me here.”

Then Frances felt herself goaded, galled into the matter-of-fact question, “Who are you?” though she felt that she would not believe the answer she received.

“Who am I? Don’t you know who I am? Who should I be but Con? Constance Waring, your sister?—Where,” she cried, springing to her feet and stamping one of them upon the ground—“where, where is papa?”

The door opened again behind her softly, and Mr Waring with his slow step came out. “Did I hear some one calling for me?” he said.—“Frances, it is not you, surely, that are quarrelling with your visitor?—I beg the lady’s pardon; I cannot see who it is.”

The stranger turned upon him with impatience in her tone. “It was I who called,” she said. “I thought you were sure to be here. Papa, I have always heard that you were kind—a kind man, they all said; that was why I came, thinking—— I am Constance!” she added after a pause, drawing herself up and facing him with something of his own gesture and attitude. She was tall, not much less than he was; very unlike little Frances. Her slight figure seemed to draw out as she raised her head and looked at him. She was not a suppliant. Her whole air was one of indignation that she should be subjected to a moment’s doubt.

“Constance!” said Mr Waring. The daylight was gone outside; the moon had got behind a fleecy white cloud; behind those two figures there was a gleam of light from within, Domenico having brought in the lamp into the drawing-room. He stepped backward, opening the glass door. “Come in,” he said, “to the light.”

Frances came last, with a great commotion in her heart, but very still externally. She felt herself to have sunk into quite a subordinate place. The other two, they were the chief figures. She had now no explanation to ask, no questions to put, though she had a thousand; but everything else was thrown into the background, everything was inferior to this. The chief interest was with the others now.

Constance stepped in after him with a proud freedom of step, the air of one who was mistress of herself and her fate. She went up to the table on which the tall lamp stood, her face on a level with it, fully lighted up by it. She held her hat in her hand, and played with it with a careless yet half-nervous gesture. Her fair hair was short, and clustered in her neck and about her forehead almost like a child’s, though she was not like a child. Mr Waring, looking at her, was more agitated than she. He trembled a little; his eyelids were lifted high over his eyes. Her air was a little defiant; but there was no suspicion, only a little uncertainty in his. He put out his hand to her after a minute’s inspection. “If you are Constance, you are welcome,” he said.

“I don’t suppose that you have any doubt I am Constance,” said the girl, flinging her hat on the table and herself into a chair. “It is a very curious way to receive one, though, after such a long journey—such a tiresome long journey,” she repeated, with a voice into which a querulous tone of exhaustion had come.

Mr Waring sat down too in the immediate centre of the light. He had not kissed her nor approached her, save by the momentary touch of their hands. It was a curious way to receive a stranger, a daughter. She lay back in her chair as if wearied out, and tears came to her eyes. “I should not have come, if I had known,” she said, with her lip quivering. “I am very tired. I put up with everything on the journey, thinking, when I came here—— And I am more a stranger here than anywhere!” She paused, choking with the half-hysterical fit of crying which she would not allow to overcome her. “She—knows nothing about me!” she cried, with a sharp accent of pain, as if this was the last blow.

Frances, in her bewilderment, did not know what to do or say. She looked at her father, but his face was dumb, and gave her no suggestion; and then she looked at the new-comer, who lay back with her head against the back of the chair, her eyes closed, tears forcing their way through her eyelashes, her slender white throat convulsively struggling with a sob. The mind of Frances had been shaken by a sudden storm of feelings unaccustomed; a throb of something which she did not understand, which was jealousy, though she neither knew nor intended it, had gone through her being. She seemed to see herself cast forth from her easy supremacy, her sway over her father’s house, deposed from her principal place. And she was only human. Already she was conscious of a downfall. Constance had drawn the interest towards herself—it was she to whom every eye would turn. The girl stood apart for a moment, with that inevitable movement which has been in the bosom of so many since the well-behaved brother of the Prodigal put it in words, “Now that this thy son has come.” Constance, so far as Frances knew, was no prodigal; but she was what was almost worse—a stranger, and yet the honours of the house were to be hers. She stood thus, looking on, until the sight of the suppressed sob, of the closed eyes, of the weary, hopeless attitude, were too much for her. Then it came suddenly into her mind, if she is Constance! Frances had not known half an hour before that there was any Constance who had a right to her sympathy in the world. She gave her father another questioning look, but got no reply from his eyes. Whatever had to be done must be done by herself. She went up to the chair in which her sister lay and touched her on the shoulder. “If we had known you were coming,” she said, “it would have been different. It is a little your fault not to let us know. I should have gone to meet you; I should have made your room ready. We have nothing ready, because we did not know.”

Constance sat suddenly up in her chair and shook her head, as if to shake off the emotion that had been too much for her. “How sensible you are!” she said. “Is that your character?—She is quite right, isn’t she? But I did not think of that. I suppose I am impetuous, as people say. I was unhappy, and I thought you would—receive me with open arms. It is evident I am not the sensible one.” She said this with still a quiver in her lip, but also a smile, pushing back her chair, and resuming the unconcerned air which she had worn at first.

“Frances is quite right. You ought to have written and warned us,” said Mr Waring.

“Oh yes; there are so many things that one ought to do.”

“But we will do the best we can for you, now you are here. Mariuccia will easily make a room ready. Where is your baggage? Domenico can go to the railway, to the hotel, wherever you have come from.”

“My box is outside the door. I made them bring it. The woman—is that Mariuccia?—would not take it in. But she let me come in. She was not suspicious. She did not say, ‘If you are Constance.’” And here she laughed, with a sound that grated upon Mr Waring’s nerves. He jumped up suddenly from his chair.

“I had no proof that you were Constance,” he said, “though I believed it. But only your mother’s daughter could reproduce that laugh.”

“Has Frances got it?” the girl cried, with an instant lighting up of opposition in her eyes; “for I am like you, but she is the image of mamma.”

He turned round and looked at Frances, who, feeling that an entire circle of new emotions, unknown to her, had come into being at a bound, stood with a passive, frightened look, spectator of everything, not knowing how to adapt herself to the new turn of affairs.

“By Jove!” her father said, with an air of exasperation she had never seen in him before, “that is true! But I had never noticed it. Even Frances. You’ve come to set us all by the ears.”

“Oh no! I’ll tell you, if you like, why I came. Mamma—has been more aggravating than usual. I said to myself you would be sure to understand what that meant. And something arose—I will tell you about it after—a complication, something that mamma insisted I should do, though I had made up my mind not to do it.”

“You had better,” said her father, with a smile, “take care what ideas on that subject you put into your sister’s head.”

Constance paused, and looked at Frances with a look which was half scrutinising, half contemptuous. “Oh, she is not like me,” she said. “Mamma was very aggravating, as you know she can be. She wanted me—— But I’ll tell you after.” And then she began: “I hope, because you live in Italy, papa, you don’t think you ought to be a medieval parent; but that sort of thing in Belgravia, you know, is too ridiculous. It was so out of the question that it was some time before I understood. It was not exactly a case of being locked up in my room and kept on bread and water; but something of the sort. I was so much astonished at first, I did not know what to do; and then it became intolerable. I had nobody I could appeal to, for everybody agreed with her. Markham is generally a safe person; but even Markham took her side. So I immediately thought of you. I said to myself, One’s father is the right person to protect one. And I knew, of course, that if anybody in the world could understand how impossible it is to live with mamma when she has taken a thing into her head, it would be you.”

Waring kept his eye upon Frances while this was being said, with an almost comic embarrassment. It was half laughable; but it was painful, as so many laughable things are; and there was something like alarm, or rather timidity, in the look. The man looked afraid of the little girl—whom all her life he had treated as a child—and her clear sensible eyes.

“One thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words,” he said.

“Oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them,” said Constance. “I always say what I mean. And you must know that things went very far—so far that I couldn’t put up with it any longer; so I made up my mind all at once that I would come off to you.”

“And I tell you, you are welcome, my dear. It is so long since I saw you that I could not have recognised you. That is natural enough. But now that you are here—I cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till I know all the circumstances——”

“Oh, wisdom! I don’t suppose there is any wisdom about it. No one expects wisdom from me. But what could I do? There was nothing else that I could do.”

“At all events,” said Waring, with a little inclination of his head and a smile, as if he were talking to a visitor, Frances said to herself—“Frances and I will forgive any lack of wisdom which has given us—this pleasure.” He laughed at himself as he spoke. “You must expect for a time to feel like a fine lady paying a visit to her poor relations,” he said.

“Oh, I know you will approve of me when you hear everything. Mamma says I am a Waring all over, your own child.”

The sensations with which Frances stood and listened, it would be impossible to describe. Mamma! who was this, of whom the other girl spoke so lightly, whom she had never heard of before? Was it possible that a mother as well as a sister existed for her, as for others, in the unknown world out of which Constance had come? A hundred questions were on her lips, but she controlled herself, and asked none of them. Reflection, which comes so often slowly, almost painfully, to her came now like the flash of lightning. She would not betray to any one, not even to Constance, that she had never known she had a mother. Papa might be wrong—oh, how wrong he had been!—but she would not betray him. She checked the exclamation on her lips; she subdued her soul altogether, forcing it into silence. This was the secret she had been so anxious to penetrate, which he had kept so closely from her. Why should he have kept it from her? It was evident it had not been kept on the other side. Whatever had happened, had Frances been in trouble, she knew of no one with whom she could have taken refuge; but her sister had known. Her brain was made dizzy by these thoughts. It was open to her now to ask whatever she pleased. The mystery had been made plain; but at the same time her mouth was stopped. She would not confuse her father, nor betray him. It was chiefly from this bewildering sensation, and not, as her father, suddenly grown acute in respect to Frances, thought, from a mortifying consciousness that Constance would speak with more freedom if she were not there, that Frances now spoke. “I think,” she said, “that I had better go and see about the rooms. Mariuccia will not know what to do till I come; and you will take care of Constance, papa.”

He looked at her, hearing in her tone a wounded feeling, a touch of forlorn pride, which perhaps was there, but not so much as he thought; but it was Constance who replied: “Oh yes, we will take care of each other. I have so much to tell him,” with a laugh. Frances was aware that there was relief in it, in the prospect of her own absence, but she did not feel it so strongly as her father did. She gave them both a smile, and went away.

“So that is Frances,” said the new-found sister, looking after her. “I find her very like mamma. But everybody says I am your child, disposition and all.” She rose, and came up to Waring, who had never lessened the distance between himself and her. She put her hand within his arm and held up her face to him. “I am like you. I shall be much happier with you. Do you think you will like having me instead of Frances, father?” She clasped his arm against her in a caressing way, and leant her cheek upon the sleeve of his velvet coat. “Don’t you think you would like to have me, father, instead of her?” she said.

A whole panorama of the situation, like a landscape, suddenly flashed before Waring’s mind. The spell of this caress, and the confidence she showed of being loved, which is so great a charm, and the impulse of nature, so much as that is worth, drew him towards this handsome stranger, who took possession of him and his affections without a doubt, and pushed away the other from his heart and his side with an impulse which his philosophy said was common to all men—or at least, if that was too sweeping, to all women. But in the same moment came that sense of championship and proprietorship, the one inextricably mingled with the other, which makes us all defend our own whenever assailed. Frances was his own; she was his creation; he had taught her almost everything. Poor little Frances! Not like this girl, who could speak for herself, who could go everywhere, half commanding, half taking with guile every heart that she encountered. Frances would never do that. But she would be true, true as the heavens themselves, and never falter. By a sudden gleam of perception he saw that, though he had never told her anything of this, though it must have been a revelation of wonder to her, yet that she had not burst forth into any outcries of astonishment, or asked any compromising questions, or done anything to betray him.

His heart went forth to Frances with an infinite tenderness. He had not been a doting father to her; he had even—being himself what the world calls a clever man, much above her mental level—felt himself to condescend a little, and almost upbraided Heaven for giving him so ordinary a little girl. And Constance, it was easy to see, was a brilliant creature, accustomed to take her place in the world, fit to be any man’s companion. But the first result of this revelation was to reveal to him, as he had never seen it before, the modest and true little soul which had developed by his side without much notice from him, whom he had treated with such cruel want of confidence, to whom the shock of this evening’s disclosures must have been so great, but who, even in the moment of discovery, shielded him. All this went through his mind with the utmost rapidity. He did not put his new-found child away from him; but there was less enthusiasm than Constance expected in the kiss he gave her. “I am very glad to have you here, my dear,” he said more coldly than pleased her. “But why instead of Frances? You will be happier both of you for being together.”

Constance did not disengage herself with any appearance of disappointment. She perceived, perhaps, that she was not to be so triumphant here as was usually her privilege. She relinquished her father’s arm after a minute, not too precipitately, and returned to her chair. “I shall like it, as long as it is possible,” she said. “It will be very nice for me having a father and sister instead of a mother and brother. But you will find that mamma will not let you off. She likes to have a girl in the house. She will have her pound of flesh.” She threw herself back into her chair with a laugh. “How quaint it all is; and how beautiful the view must be, and the mountains and the sea! I shall be very happy here—the world forgetting, by the world forgot—and with you, papa.”

CHAPTER VII.

She

“What?” cried Mariuccia, making the small monosyllable sound as if it were the biggest word in her vocabulary.

“She has come to stay. She is my sister; papa’s daughter as much as I am. She has come—home.” Frances was a little uncertain about the word, and it was only “a casa” that she said—“to the house,” which means the same.

Mariuccia threw up her arms in astonishment. “Then there has been another signorina all the time!” she cried. “Figure to yourself that I have been with the padrone a dozen years, and I never heard of her before.”

“Papa does not talk very much about his concerns,” said Frances in her faithfulness. “And what we have got to do is to make her very comfortable. She is very pretty, don’t you think? Such beautiful blond hair—and tall. I never shall be tall, I fear. They say she is like papa; but, as is natural, she is much more beautiful than papa.”

“Beauty is as you find it,” said Mariuccia. “Carina, no one will ever be so pretty as our own signorina to Domenico and me.—What is the child doing? She is pulling the things off her own bed.—My angel, you have lost your good sense. You are fluttered and upset by this new arrival. The blue room will be very good for the new young lady. Perhaps she will not stay very long?”

The wish was father to the thought. But Frances took no notice of the suggestion. She said briskly, going on with what she was doing, “She must have my room, Mariuccia. The blue room is quite nice; it will do very well for me; but I should like her to feel at home, not to think our house was bare and cold. The blue room would be rather naked, if we were to put her there to-night. It will not be naked for me, for, of course, I am used to it all, and know everything. But when Constance wakes to-morrow morning and looks round her, and wonders where she is—oh, how strange it all seems!—I wish her to open her eyes upon things that are pretty, and to say to herself, ‘What a delightful house papa has! What a nice room! I feel as if I had been here all my life.’”

“Constanza—is that her name? It is rather a common name—not distinguished, like our signorina’s. But it is very good for her, I have no doubt. And so you will give her your own room, that she may be fond of the house, and stay and supplant you? That is what will happen. The good one, the one of gold, gets pushed out of the way. I would not give her my room to make her love the house.”

“I think you would, Mariuccia.”

“No; I do not think so,” said Mariuccia, squaring herself with one arm akimbo. “No; I do not deny that I would probably take some new things into the blue room, and put up curtains. But I am older than you are, and I have more sense. I would not do it. If she gets your room, she will get your place; and she will please everybody, and be admired, and my angel will be put out of the way.”

“I am such a horrid little wretch,” said Frances, “that I thought of that too. It was mean, oh, so mean of me. She is prettier than I am, and taller; and—yes, of course, she must be older too, so you see it is her right.”

“Is she the eldest?” asked Mariuccia.

Frances made a puzzled pause; but she would not let the woman divine that she did not know. “Oh yes; she must be the eldest.—Come quick, Mariuccia; take all these things to the blue room; and now for your clean linen and everything that is nice and sweet.”

Mariuccia did what she was told, but with many objections. She carried on a running murmur of protest all the time. “When there are changes in a family; when it is by the visitation of God, that is another matter. A son or a daughter who is in trouble, who has no other refuge; that is natural; there is nothing to say. But to remain away during a dozen years, and then to come back at a moment’s notice—nay, without even a moment’s notice—in the evening, when all the beds are made up, and demand everything that is comfortable.—I have always thought that there was a great deal to be said for the poor young signorino of whom the priest speaks, he who had always stayed at home when his brother was amusing himself. Carina, you know what I mean.”

“I have thought of that too,” said Frances. “But my sister is not a prodigal; and papa has never done anything for her. It is all quite different. When we know each other better, it will be delightful always to have a companion, Mariuccia—think how pleasant it will be always to have a companion. I wonder if she will like my pictures?—Now, don’t you think the room looks very pretty? I always thought it was a pretty room. Leave the persiani open that she may see the sea; and in the morning don’t forget to come in and close them before the sun gets hot.—I think that will do now.”

“Indeed I hope it will do—after all the trouble you have taken. And I hope the young lady is worthy of it.—But, my angel, what shall I do when I come in to wake her? Does she expect that I can talk her language to her? No, no. And she will know nothing; she will not even be able to say ‘Good morning.’”

“I hope so. But if not, you must call me first, that is all,” said Frances cheerfully.—“Now, don’t go to bed just yet; perhaps she will like something—some tea; or perhaps a little supper; or—— I never asked if she had dined.”

Mariuccia regarded this possibility with equanimity. She was not afraid of a girl’s appetite. But she made a grimace at the mention of the tea. “It is good when one has a cold; oh yes,” she said; “but to drink it at all times, as you do! If she wants anything it will be a great deal better to give her a sirop, or a little red wine.”

Frances detained Mariuccia as long as she could, and lingered herself still longer after all was ready in the room. She did not know how to go back to the drawing-room, where she had left these two together, to say to each other, no doubt, many things that could be better said in her absence. There was no jealousy, only delicacy, in this; and she had given up her pretty room to her sister, and carried her indispensable belongings to the bare one, with the purest pleasure in making Constance comfortable. Constance! whom an hour ago she had never heard of, and who now was one of them, nearer to her than anybody, except her father. But all this being done, she had the strangest difficulty in going back, in thrusting herself, as imagination said, between them, and interrupting their talk. To think that it should be such a tremendous matter to return to that familiar room in which the greater part of her life had been passed! It felt like another world into which she was about to enter, full of unknown elements and conditions which she did not understand. She had not known what it was to be shy in the very limited society she had ever known; but she was shy now, feeling as if she had not courage to put her hand upon the handle of the door. The familiar creak and jar of it as it opened seemed to her like noisy instruments announcing her approach, which stopped the conversation, as she had divined, and made her father and her sister look up with a little start. Frances could have wished to sink through the floor, to get rid of her own being altogether, as she saw them both give this slight start. Constance was leaning upon the table, the light of the lamp shining full upon her face, with the air of being in the midst of an animated narrative, which she stopped when Frances entered; and Mr Waring had been listening with a smile. He turned half round and held out his hand to the timid girl behind him. “Come, Frances,” he said, “you have been a long time making your preparations. Have you been bringing out the fairest robe for your sister?” It was odd how the parable—which had no signification in their circumstances—haunted them all.

“Your room is quite ready whenever you please. And would you like tea or anything? I ought to have asked if you had dined,” Frances said.

“Is she the housekeeper?—How odd!—Do you look after everything?—Dear me! I am afraid, in that case, I shall make a very poor substitute for Frances, papa.”