E F F I E O G I L V I E.

EFFIE OGILVIE:
THE STORY OF A YOUNG LIFE.

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT,
AUTHOR OF “CHRONICLES OF CARLINGFORD,” ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
COMPLETE
GLASGOW:
JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS,
Publishers to the University.
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO.
1 8 8 6.
All rights reserved.

Vol. I.

EFFIE OGILVIE:
THE STORY OF A YOUNG LIFE.

CHAPTER I.

The family consisted of Effie’s father, her stepmother, her brother Eric who was in the army, and a little personage, the most important of all, the only child of the second Mrs. Ogilvie, the pet and plaything of the house. You may think it would have been more respectful and becoming to reverse this description, and present Mr. and Mrs. Ogilvie first to the notice of the reader, which we shall now proceed to do. The only excuse we can offer for the irregularity of the beginning consists in the fact that it is the nature of their proceedings in respect to the young people, and particularly to Mr. Ogilvie’s daughter Effie, which induces us to disturb the decorous veil which hangs over the doors of every respectable family, in the case of these worthy persons.

In their own lives, had we time and space to recount all that befell them, there would, no doubt, be many interesting particulars, as in the lives of most other people: but when a country gentleman has attained the age of fifty or a little more, with enough of money for his necessities, and no more ambition than can be satisfied by the regulation of the affairs of the parish, it is inevitably through the fortunes of a son or daughter that he comes within reach of the sympathies of the world. These troublesome productions, of whom we take so little thought at first, who are nothing but playthings and embellishments of our own estate for so many years, have a way of pushing us out of our commanding position as the chief actors in our own lives, setting us aside into a secondary place, and conferring upon us a quite fictitious interest as influences upon theirs. It is an impertinence of fate, it is an irony of circumstance; but still it is so. And it is, consequently, as Effie’s father, a character in which he by no means knew himself, that Mr. Ogilvie of Gilston, a gentleman as much respected as any in his county, the chief heritor in his parish, and a deputy-lieutenant, has now to be presented to the world.

He was a good man in his way, not perfect, as in the general he was himself very willing to allow, though he did not, any more than the rest of us, like that niggling sort of criticism which descends to particulars. He was a man who would have suffered a little personal inconvenience rather than do anything which he was convinced was wrong, which most of us, who are old enough to be acquainted with our own ways, will be aware is no small thing to say. But, ordinarily, also like most of us, his wrong acts were done without taking time to identify them as wrong, on the spur of the moment, in the heat of a present impulse which took from them all the sting of premeditation.

Thus, when he gave good Glen, the virtuous collie, as he came forward smiling and cheerful, with a remark upon the beauty of the morning glistening in his bright eyes and waving majestically in his tail, that sudden kick which sent the good fellow off howling, and oppressed his soul all day with a sense of crime, Mr. Ogilvie did not do it by intention, did not come out with the purpose of doing it, but only did it because he had just got a letter which annoyed him. Glen, who had a tender conscience, lived half the day under a weight of unnecessary remorse, convinced that he must himself have done something very wicked, though a confused moral sense and the absence of a recognized code made him sadly incapable of discovering what it was; but his master had not the slightest intention of inflicting any such mental torture.

He treated his human surroundings in something of the same way, convincing Effie sometimes, by a few well-chosen words, of her own complete mental and physical incompetency; as, for example, when she ran into his library to call his attention to something quite unimportant at the very moment when he was adding up his “sundries,” and had nearly arrived at a result.

“If you had any sense of propriety in you, and were not a born idiot that never can be taught there’s a time for everything, you would know better than to dart in like a whirlwind in your high heels, and all that nonsense in your mouth, to drive a man frantic!”

Effie would withdraw in tears. But Mr. Ogilvie had not really meant any harm.

He had succeeded to his father’s little estate when he was still in his twenties, and had many aspirations. He had not intended to withdraw from the bar, although he had few clients to speak of. He had indeed fully intended to follow up his profession, and it had not seemed impossible that he might attain to the glorious position of Lord Advocate, or, if not, to that of Sheriff-Substitute, which was perhaps more probable. But by degrees, and especially after his marriage, he had found out that professional work was a great “tie,” and that there were many things to be done at home.

His first wife had been the only daughter of the minister, which concentrated his affections still more and more in his own locality. When she died, leaving him with two children, who had never been troublesome to him before, the neighbourhood was moved with the deepest sympathy for poor Ogilvie. Some people even thought he would not survive it, they had been so united a couple, and lived so entirely for each other: or, at least, that he would go away, abandoning the scene of his past happiness.

But, on the contrary, he stayed at home, paying the tribute of the profoundest dulness for one year to the lost partner of his life, cheering up a little decorously afterwards, and at the end of the second year marrying again. All this was done, it will be seen, in the most respectable and well-regulated way, as indeed was everything that Mr. Ogilvie did when he took time to think of it, being actuated by a conscientious desire to do his duty, and set an example to all honest and virtuous men.

Mrs. Ogilvie was not too young to be the second wife of a gentleman of fifty. She was “quite suitable,” everybody said—which, seeing that he might have married a chit of twenty, as mature widowers have been known to do, was considered by everybody a virtuous abstinence and concession to the duties of the position. She was thirty-five, good-looking, even handsome, and very conscientious. If it was her husband’s virtuous principle to submit to personal inconvenience rather than do anything that he knew to be wrong, she went many steps farther in the way of excellence, and seldom did anything unless she was convinced that it was right.

With this high meaning she had come to Gilston, and during the four years of her reign there had, not sternly—for she was not stern: but steadily, and she was a woman of great steadiness of mind and purpose—adhered to it.

These years had been very important years, as may be supposed, in the life of the two young people whom Mrs. Ogilvie described as “the first family.” The boy had been seventeen and the girl fifteen when she came home a bride. And their mother had been dead only two years: an age at which criticism is more uncompromising, or circumstances under which it would be more difficult to begin married life, could scarcely be. They gazed at her with two pairs of large eyes, and countenances which did not seem able to smile, noting everything she did, putting a mute criticism upon the silent record, objecting dumbly to everything, to her entrance there at all, to her assumption of their mother’s chair, their mother’s name, all that was now legally and honourably hers.

Can any one imagine a more terrible ordeal for a woman to go through? She confided to her sister afterwards that if she had acted upon impulse, as Robert, poor dear, so often did, the house would have become a hell on earth.

“I would have liked to have put that boy to the door a hundred times a day: and as for Effie!—I never can tell till this day how it was that I kept my hands off her,” she said, reddening with the recollection of many exasperations past. Women who have filled the office of stepmother, aunt, or any other such domestic anomaly, will understand and sympathize. And yet, of course, there was a great deal to be said on the other side too.

The children had heard with an indignation beyond words of their father’s intention. It had been said to them, with that natural hypocrisy which is so transparent and almost pardonable, that he took this step very much for their sakes, to give them a new mother.

A new mother! Seven and five might have taken this in with wondering ears and made no remark; but seventeen and fifteen! The boy glowed with fierce wrath; the girl shed torrents of hot tears. They formed plans of leaving Gilston at once, going away to seek their fortunes—to America, to Australia, who could tell where? Effie was certain that she would mind no hardship, that she could cook and wash, and do everything in the hut, while Eric (boys are always so much luckier than girls!) spent the day in the saddle after the cattle in the ranche.

Or they would go orange-farming, ostrich-farming—what did it matter which?—anything, in fact, but stay at home. Money was the great difficulty in this as in almost all other cases, besides the dreadful fact that Effie was a girl, a thing which had always been hard upon her in all their previous adventures, but now more than ever.

“We might have gone to sea and worked our passages before the mast, if you had only been a laddie and not a lassie,” Eric said with a sigh and a profound sense of the general contrariety of events. This unalterable misfortune, which somehow seemed (though it was she who suffered from it most) her fault, stopped Effie’s tears, and brought instead a look of despair into her round face. There flashed through her mind an idea of the possibility of neutralizing this disability by means of costume. Rosalind did so in Shakespeare, and Viola, and so had other heroines in less distant regions.

But at the idea of trousers Effie’s countenance flamed, and she rejected the thought. It was quite possible to endure being unhappy, even in her small experience she was well aware of that—but unwomanly! Oh, what would mamma say? That utterance of habit, the words that rose to her lips without thinking, even now when mamma was about to have a successor—a new mother! brought back the tears in torrents. She flung herself upon Eric’s shoulder, and he, poor fellow, gave her with quivering lips a little furtive kiss, the only consolation he could think of, though they were not at all used to caressing each other. Poor children! and yet Mr. Ogilvie had done nothing cruel, and Mrs. Ogilvie was the best-intentioned woman in the world.

It was lucky that they were found at this critical moment by an individual who is of great importance in this little record of events, as he was in the parish and the neighbourhood generally,—that is Uncle John. He was the minister of Gilston; he was their mother’s brother; and he was one of the men selected by Providence for the consolation of their fellow-creatures.

Perhaps he was not always very wise. He was too much under the sway of his heart to be infallible in the way of advice, although that heart was so tender and full of sympathy that it often penetrated secrets which were undiscoverable to common men. But in his powers of comfort-giving he was perfect. The very sight of him soothed the angry and softened the obdurate, and he dried the tears of the young by some inspiration given to him alone.

“What is the matter?” he said in his large soft voice, which was deep bass and very masculine, yet had something in it too of the wood-pigeon’s brooding tones. They were seated at the foot of a tree in the little wood that protected Gilston House from the east, on the roots of the big ash which were like gray curves of rock among the green moss and the fallen leaves. He came between them, sitting down too, raising Effie with his arm.

“But I think I can guess. You are just raging at Providence and your father, you two ungrateful bairns.”

“Ungrateful!” cried Effie. She was the most speechless of the two, the most prostrate, the most impassioned, and therefore was most ready to reply.

“Oh, what have we to be grateful for?—our own mamma gone away and we’ll never see her more; and another woman—another—a Mistress Ogilvie——” In her rage and despair she pronounced every syllable, with what bitterness and burning scorn and fury! Uncle John drew her little hands down from her face and held them in his own, which were not small, but very firm, though they were soft.

“Your own mother was a very good woman, Effie,” said Uncle John.

The girl paused and looked at him with those fiery eyes which were not softened, but made more angry, by her tears, not seeing how this bore upon the present crisis of affairs.

“Have you any reason to suppose that being herself, as we know she is, with the Lord whom she loved”—and here Uncle John took off his hat as if he were saluting the dearest and most revered of friends—“that she would like you and the rest to be miserable all your lives because she was away?”

“Miserable!” cried Effie. “We were not miserable; we were quite happy; we wanted nothing. Papa may care for new people, but we were happy and wanted nothing, Eric and me.”

“Then, my little Effie,” said Uncle John, “it is not because of your own mother that you are looking like a little fury—for you see you have learned to let her go, and do without her, and be quite contented in a new way—but only because your father has done the same after his fashion, and it is not the same way as yours.”

“Oh, Uncle John, I am not contented,” cried Effie, conscience-stricken; “I think of mamma every day.”

“And are quite happy,” he said with a smile, “as you ought to be. God bless her up yonder, behind the veil. She is not jealous nor angry, but happy too. And we will be very good friends with Mistress Ogilvie, you and me. Come and see that everything is ready for her, for she will not have an easy handful with you two watching her night and day.”

CHAPTER II.

Though Mr. Moubray said this, it is not to be supposed that he liked his brother-in-law’s second marriage. It was not in flesh and blood to do that.

Gilston House must always be the most important house in that parish to the minister; for it is at once nearest to the manse, and the house in which he is most likely to find people who have at least the outside gloss of education. And he had been used to go there familiarly for nearly twenty years. He had been a favourite with the old people, Mr. Ogilvie’s father and mother, and when their son succeeded them he was already engaged to the minister’s young sister. There was therefore a daily habit of meeting for nearly a lifetime. The two men had not always agreed. Indeed it was not in human nature that they should not have sometimes disagreed strenuously, one being the chief heritor, restraining every expenditure, and the other the minister, who was always, by right of his position, wanting to have something done.

But after all their quarrels they “just ’greed again,” which is the best and indeed the only policy in such circumstances. And though the laird would thunder against that “pig-headed fellow, your brother John,” Mrs. Ogilvie had always been able to smile, knowing that on the other hand she would hear nothing worse from the minister than a recommendation to “remind Robert that schoolhouse roofs and manse windows are not eternal.”

And then the children had woven another link between the two houses. Eric had been Uncle John’s pupil since the boy had been old enough to trot unattended through the little wood and across the two fields which separated the manse from the House; and Effie had trotted by his side when the days were fine, and when she pleased—a still more important stipulation. They had been the children of the manse almost as much as of the House.

The death of the mother had for a time drawn the tie still closer, Ogilvie in his first desolation throwing himself entirely upon the succour and help of his brother-in-law; and the young ones clinging with redoubled tenderness to the kind Uncle John, whom for the first time they found out to be “so like mamma!” There never was a day in which he did not appear on his way to his visiting, or to a session meeting, or some catechising or christening among the hills. They were dependent upon him, and he upon them. But now this constant association had come to an end. No, not to an end—that it could never do; but, in all likelihood, it must now change its conditions.

John Moubray was an old bachelor without chick or child: so most people thought. In reality, he was not a bachelor at all; but his married life had lasted only a year, and that was nearly thirty years ago! The little world about might be excused for forgetting—or himself even—for what is one year out of fifty-four? Perhaps that one year had given him more insight into the life of men; perhaps it had made him softer, tenderer to the weak. That mild celibacy, which the Church of Rome has found so powerful an instrument, was touched perhaps to a more benignant outcome still in this Scotch minister, by the fact that he had loved like his fellows, and been as other men in his time, a triumphant bridegroom, a woman’s husband. But the experience itself was long past, and had left no trace behind; it was to him as a dream. Often he felt uncertain whether there had been any reality in it at all—whether it was not a golden vision such as is permitted to youth.

In these circumstances, it may be supposed that the closing upon him in any degree of the house which had been his sister’s, which belonged to the most intimate friend of everyday life, and which was the home of children who were almost his own children, was very serious to Uncle John.

Mrs. Ogilvie, to do her justice, was anxious to obviate any feeling of this kind. The very first time he dined there after her marriage, she took him aside into a corner of the drawing-room, and talked to him privately.

“I hope there will be no difference, Mr. Moubray,” she said; “I hope you will not let it make any difference that I am here.”

“Difference?” said John, startled a little. He had already felt the difference, but had made up his mind to it as a thing that must be.

“I know,” said the lady, “that I’m not clever enough to take your sister’s place; but so far as a good meaning goes, and a real desire to be a mother to the children, and a friend to you, if you will let me, nobody could be better disposed than I am, if you will just take me at my word.”

The minister was so unprepared for any such speech that he stammered a little over his reply.

“My sister,” he said, “had no pretensions to be clever. That was never the ground my poor Jeanie took up. She was a good woman, and very dear to——very dear to those she belonged to,” he said, with a huskiness in his voice.

“That’s just what I say. I come here in a way that is hard upon a woman, with one before me that I will always be compared to. But this one thing I must say, that I hope you will come about the house just as often as you used to do, and in the same way, coming in whenever it enters your head to do so, and believing that you are always welcome. Always welcome. I don’t say I will always be here, for I think it only right to keep up with society (if it were but for Effie’s sake) more than the last Mrs. Ogilvie did. But I will never be happy if you don’t come out and in just in your ordinary, Mr. Moubray, just as you’ve always been accustomed to do.”

John Moubray went home after this address with a mingled sense of humour and vexation and approval. It made him half angry to be invited to his brother-in-law’s house in this way, as if he required invitation. But, at the same time, he did not deny that she meant well.

And she did mean well. She meant to make Effie one of the most complete of young ladies, and Gilston the model country-seat of a Scots gentleman. She meant to do her duty to the most minute particular. She meant her husband to be happy, and her children to be clothed in scarlet and prosperity, and comfort to be diffused around.

All these preliminaries were long past at the point at which this narrative begins. Effie had grown up, and Eric was away in India with his regiment. He had not been intended for a soldier, but whether it was that Mrs. Ogilvie’s opinion, expressed very frankly, that the army was the right thing for him, influenced the mind of the family in general, or whether the lad found the new rule too unlike the old to take much pleasure in his home, the fact was that he went into the army and disappeared, to the great grief of Effie and Uncle John, but, so far as appeared, of no one else, for little Roderick had just been born, and Mr. Ogilvie was ridiculously delighted with the baby, which seemed to throw his grown-up son altogether into the shade.

It need scarcely be said that both before and after this event there was great trouble and many struggles with Effie, who had been so used to her own way, Mrs. Ogilvie said, that to train her was a task almost beyond mortal powers. Yet it had been done. So long as Eric remained at home, the difficulties had been great.

And then there was all but the additional drawback of a premature love story to make matters worse. But that had been happily, silently, expeditiously smothered in the bud, a triumph of which Mrs. Ogilvie was so proud that it was with difficulty she kept it from Effie herself; and she did not attempt to keep it from Mr. Moubray, to whom, after the lads were safely gone, she confided the fact that young Ronald Sutherland, who had been constantly about the house before her marriage, and who since that had spent as much of his time with the brother and sister out-of-doors as had been possible, had come to Mr. Ogilvie a few days before his departure—“What for, can you imagine?” the lady said.

Now Ronald was a neighbour’s son, the companion by nature of the two children of Gilston. He had got his commission in the same regiment, and joined it at the same time as Eric. He was twenty when Eric was eighteen, so much in advance and no more. The minister could have divined, perhaps, had he set his wits to the task, but he had no desire to forestall the explanation, and he shook his head in reply.

“With a proposal for Effie, if you please!” Mrs. Ogilvie said, “and she only sixteen, not half-educated, nor anything like what I want her to be. And, if you will believe me, Robert was half-disposed—well, not to accept it; but to let the boy speak to her, and bring another bonny business on my hands.”

“They are too young,” said Uncle John.

“Too young! They are too—everything that can be thought of—too ridiculous I would say. Fortunately Robert spoke to me, and I got him to make the lad promise not to say a word to Effie or to any one till he comes back. It will be a long time before he can come back, and who knows what may happen in the meantime? Too young! There is a great deal more than being merely too young. I mean Effie to make a much better match than that.”

“He is a good boy,” said Mr. Moubray; “if he were older, and perhaps a little richer, I would not wish a better, for my part.”

“If all ministers were as unworldly as you!—it is what is sorely wanted in the Church, as Robert always says. But parents may be pardoned if they look a little more to interest in the case of their children. I will very likely never have grown-up daughters of my own. And Effie must make a good match; I have set my heart on that. She is growing up a pretty creature, and she will be far more quiet and manageable for her education now that, heaven be praised, those boys are away.”

“As one of the boys carries a large piece of my heart with him, you will not expect me to be so pious and so thankful,” the minister said.

“O Uncle John! I am sure you would like Effie to get the best of educations. She never would have settled down to it, never! if that lad had got his way.”

Mr. Moubray could not say a word against this, for it was all true; but he could not meet Effie’s wistful eyes when she crept to his side, in his study or out-of-doors whenever they met, and hung upon his arm, and asked him where he thought they would be by now? It was Eric chiefly they were both thinking of, yet Effie unawares said “they.” How far would they be on their journey? It was not then the quick way such as we are happily used to now, but a long, long journey round the stormy Cape, three lingering months of sea, and so long, so long before any news could come.

The uncle and niece, who were now more close companions than ever, were found in the minister’s study one day with a map stretched out before them, their heads closely bent over it, his all clad with vigorous curls of gray, hers shining in soft locks of brown, their eyes so intent that they did not hear the opening door and the rustle of Mrs. Ogilvie’s silk gown.

“What are you doing with your heads so close together?” that lady said. And the two started like guilty things. But Uncle John explained calmly that Effie was feeble in her geography, and no more was said.

And so everything settled down. Effie, it was true, was much more manageable after her brother was away. She had to confine herself to shorter walks, to give up much of that freedom of movement which a girl can only be indulged in when she has a brother by her side. She was very dull for a time, and rather rebellious; but that too wore out, as everything will wear out if we but wait long enough.

And now she was nineteen, on the threshold of her life—a pretty creature, as her stepmother had said, not a great beauty like those that bewitch the world when they are seen, which is but rarely. Effie was pretty as the girls are by dozens, like the flowers, overflowing over all the face of the country, making it sweet. Her hair and her eyes were brown, like most other people’s. She was no wonder or prodigy, but fair and honest and true, a pleasure to behold. And after all those youthful tribulations she was still a happy girl enough at home.

Mrs. Ogilvie, when all was said, was a well-meaning woman. There was no tyranny nor unkindness in the house.

So this young soul expanded in the hands of the people who had the care of it, and who had cared for it so far well, though not with much understanding; how it sped in the times of action, and in the crisis that was approaching, and how far they did their duty by it, we have now to see.

CHAPTER III.

The parish of Gilston is not a wealthy one. It lies not far from the Borders, where there is much moorland and pasture-land, and not much high farming. The farmhouses are distant and scattered, the population small. The greatest house in the district, indeed, stands within its boundaries, but that was shut up at this moment, and of use to nobody. There were two or three country houses of the smaller sort scattered about, at four and five miles’ distance from each other, and a cluster of dwellings near the church, in which amid a few cottages rose the solid square house of the doctor, which he called Gowanbrae, and the cottage of the Miss Dempsters, which they called Rosebank.

The doctor, whose name was Jardine, had a great deal to do, and rode about the country early and late. The Miss Dempsters had nothing to do except to keep up a general supervision of the proceedings of the neighbours and of all that happened in the country side. It was a supervision not unkind.

They were good neighbours, always handy and ready in any case of family affliction or rejoicing. They were ready to lend anything and everything that might be required—pepper, or a lemon, or cloves, or soap, or any of the little things that so generally give out before the storeroom is replenished, when you are out of reach of co-operative stores or grocers’ shops; or their glass and china, or knives, or lamps—or even a fine pair of silver candlesticks which they were very proud of—when their neighbours had company: or good advice to any extent, which sometimes was not wanted.

It was perhaps because everybody ran to them in case of need that they were so well acquainted with everybody’s affairs. And then people were so unreasonable as to find fault and call the Miss Dempsters gossips. It was undeserved: they spoke ill of nobody unless there was good cause; they made no mischief: but they did know everything, and they did more or less superintend the life of the parish, having leisure and unbounded interest in life.

The neighbours grumbled and sometimes called them names—old maids, old cats, and many other pretty titles: which did not prevent them from borrowing the spoons or the candlesticks, or sending for Miss Robina when anything happened. Had these excellent ladies died the parish would have mourned sincerely, and they would have been universally missed: but as they were alive and well they were called the old cats. Human nature is subject to such perversities.

The rural world in general had thus an affectionate hostility to the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-aiding ladies of Rosebank; but between them and Dr. Jardine the feeling was a great deal stronger. Hatred, it was understood, was not too strong a word. Rosebank stood a little higher than Gowanbrae: it was raised, indeed, upon a knoll, so that the house, though in front only one storey, was two storeys behind, and in reality a much larger house than it looked. The doctor’s house was on the level of the village, and the Miss Dempsters from their point of vantage commanded him completely.

He was of opinion that they watched all his proceedings from the windows of their drawing-room, which in summer were always open, with white curtains fluttering, and baskets of flowers so arranged that it was hopeless to attempt to return the inspection. There was a garden bench on the path that ran in front of the windows, and on fine days Miss Robina, who was not at all rheumatic, would sit there in order to see the doctor’s doings more distinctly. So at least the doctor thought.

“You may say it’s as good as a lady at the head of my table,” said the doctor. “That old cat counts every bite I put into my mouth. She knows what Merran has got for my dinner, and watches me eat. I cannot take a glass of wine, when I’m tired, but they make a note of it.”

“Then, doctor, you should draw down your blind,” said the minister, who was always a peacemaker.

“Me!” cried Dr. Jardine, with a fine Scotch contempt for the other pronoun. “Me give the old hag that satisfaction. Not for the half of Scotland! I am doing nothing that I am ashamed of, I hope.”

Miss Robina on her side expressed other views. She had a soft, slightly-indistinct voice, as if that proverbial butter that “would not melt in her mouth” was held there when she spoke.

“It’s a great vexation,” she said, in her placid way, “that we cannot look out at our own windows without being affronted with the sight of that hideous house. It’s just an offence: and a man’s house that is shameless—that will come to the window and take off his dram, and nod his head as if he were saying, Here’s to ye. It is just an offence,” Miss Robina said.

Miss Robina was the youngest. She was a large woman, soft and imperfectly laced, like a cushion badly stuffed and bulging here and there. Her hair was still yellow as it had been in her youth, but her complexion had not worn so well. Her features were large like her person. Miss Dempster was smaller and gray, which she considered much more distinguished than the yellow braids of her sister.

“It’s common to suppose Beenie dyes her hair; but I’m thankful to say nobody can doubt me,” she would say. “It was very bonny hair when we were young; but when the face gets old there’s something softening in the white. I would have everybody gray at our age; not that Beenie dyes—oh no. She never had that much thought.”

Miss Beenie was always in the foreground, taking up much more room than her sister, and able to be out in all weathers. But Miss Dempster, though rheumatic, and often confined to the house, was the real head of everything. It was she who took upon her chiefly the care of the manners of the young people, and especially of Effie Ogilvie, who was the foremost object of regard, inspection, and criticism to these ladies. They knew everything about her from her birth. She could not have a headache without their knowledge (though indeed she gave them little trouble in this respect, her headaches being few); and as for her wardrobe, even her new chemises (if the reader will not be shocked) had to be exhibited to the sisters, who had an exasperating way of investigating a hem, and inspecting the stitching, which, as they were partly made by Effie herself, made that young lady’s brow burn.

“But I approve of your trimmings,” Miss Dempster said; “none of your common cotton stuff. Take my word for it, a real lace is ten times thriftier. It will wear and wear—while that rubbish has to be thrown into the fire.”

“It was some we had in the house,” Mrs. Ogilvie said; “I could not let her buy thread lace for her underclothes.”

“Oh ay, it would be some of her mother’s,” and Miss Robina, with a nod and a tone which as good as said, “That accounts for it.” And this made Mrs. Ogilvie indignant too.

The Miss Dempsters had taken a great interest in Ronald Sutherland. They knew (of course) how it was that Mrs. Ogilvie so skilfully had baulked that young hero in his intentions, and they did not approve. The lady defended herself stoutly.

“An engagement at sixteen!” she cried, “and with a long-legged lad in a marching regiment, with not enough money to buy himself shoes.”

“And how can ye tell,” said Miss Robina, “that she will ever get another offer? He was a nice lad—and nice lads are not so plentiful as they were in our days.”

“For all so plentiful as they were, neither you nor me, Mrs. Ogilvie is thinking, ever came to that advancement,” said Miss Dempster. “And that’s true. But I’m not against young engagements, for my part. It is a great divert to them both, and a very good thing for the young man; where there’s land and sea between them that they cannot fash their neighbours I can see no harm in it; and Ronald was a good lad.”

“Without a penny!”

“The pennies will come where there’s good conduct and a good heart. And I would have let her choose for herself. It’s a great divert——”

“I must do my own business my own way, Miss Dempster, and I think I am the best judge of what is good for Effie. I and her father.”

“Oh, no doubt—you, and her father; her mother might have been of a different opinion. But that’s neither here nor there, for the poor thing is dead and gone.”

“Well, Sarah,” said Miss Robina, “it’s to be hoped so, or the laird, honest man, would be in a sad position, and our friend here no better. It’s unbecoming to discourse in that loose way. No, no; we are meaning no interference. We’ve no right. We are not even cousins or kinswomen, only old friends. But Ronald, ye see—Ronald is a kind of connection. We are wae for Ronald, poor lad. But he’s young, and there’s plenty of time, and there’s no saying what may happen.”

“Nothing shall happen if I can help it; and I hope there will not be a word said to put anything in Effie’s head,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. And ever since this discussion she had been more severe than ever against the two old ladies.

“Take care that ye put no confidence in them,” she said to her stepdaughter. “They can be very sweet when it suits their purpose. But I put no faith in them. They will set you against your duties—they will set you against me. No doubt I’m not your mother: but I have always tried to do my duty by you.”

Effie had replied with a few words of acknowledgment. Mrs. Ogilvie was always very kind. It was Uncle John’s conviction, which had a great deal of weight with the girl, that she meant sincerely to do her duty, as she said. But, nevertheless, the doors of Effie’s heart would not open; they yielded a little, just enough to warrant her in feeling that she had not closed them, but that was all.

She was much more at ease with the Miss Dempsters than with her stepmother. Her relations with them were quite simple. They had scolded her and questioned her all her life, and she did not mind what they said to her. Sometimes she would blaze into sudden resentment and cry, or else avenge herself with a few hot words. But as there was no bond of duty in respect to her old friends, there was perfect freedom in their intercourse. If they hurt her she cried out. But when Mrs. Ogilvie hurt her she was silent and thought the more.

Effie was just nineteen when it began to be rumoured over the country that the mansion-house of Allonby was let. There was no place like it within twenty miles. It was an old house, with the remains of a house still older by its side—a proof that the Allonbies had been in the countryside since the old days when life so near the Border was full of disturbance.

The house lay low on the side of a stream, which, after it had passed decorously by the green lawns and park, ran into a dell which was famed far and near. It was in itself a beautiful little ravine, richly wooded, in the midst of a country not very rich in wood; and at the opening of the dell or dene, as they called it, was one of those little lonely churchyards which are so pathetic in Scotland, burying-places of the past, which are to be found in the strangest unexpected places, sometimes without any trace of the protecting chapel which in the old times must have consecrated their loneliness and kept the dead like a faithful watcher.

In the midst of this little cluster of graves there were, however, the ruins of a humble little church very primitive and old, which, but for one corner of masonry with a small lancet window still standing, would have looked like a mound somewhat larger than the rest; and in the shadow of the ruin was a tombstone, with an inscription which recorded an old tragedy of love and death; and this it was which brought pilgrims to visit the little shrine.

The proprietor of the house was an old Lady Allonby, widowed and childless, who had long lived in Italy, and was very unlikely ever to return; consequently it made a great excitement in Gilston when it became known that at last she had been persuaded to let her house, and that a very rich family, a very gay family, people with plenty of money, and the most liberal inclinations in the way of spending, were coming to Allonby.

They were people who had been in business, rich people, people from London. There were at least one son and some daughters. The inhabitants of the smaller houses, the Ogilvies, the Johnstons, the Hopes, and even the Miss Dempsters—all the families who considered themselves county people,—had great talks and consultations as to whether they should call. There were some who thought it was their duty to Lady Allonby, as an old friend and neighbour; and there were some who thought it a duty to themselves.

The Diroms, which was the name of the strangers, were not in any case people to be ignored. They gave, it was said, everything that could be given in the way of entertainment; the sons and the daughters at least, if not the father and mother, were well educated.

But there were a few people who were not convinced by these arguments. The Miss Dempsters stood in the front of this resisting party. They did not care for entertainments, and they did not like parvenoos. The doctor on the other hand, who had not much family to brag of, went to Allonby at once. He said, in his rough way, that it was a providence there was so much influenza fleeing about, which had made it necessary to send for him so soon.

“I went, you may be sure, as fast as Bess’s four legs could carry me. I’m of opinion there are many guineas for me lying about there, and it would be disgraceful not to take them,” the doctor said with a laugh.

“There’s no guineas in the question for Beenie and me,” said Miss Dempster. “I’m thinking we’ll keep our view of the question. I’m not fond of new people, and I think Lady Allonby, after staying so long away, might just have stayed to the end, and let the heirs do what they liked. She cannot want the money; and it’s just an abomination to put strange folk in the house of your fathers; and folk that would have been sent down to the servants’ hall in other days.”

“Not so bad as that,” said the minister, “unless perhaps you are going back to feudal times. Money has always had its acknowledgment in modern society—and has paid for it sweetly.”

“We will give it no acknowledgment,” said the old lady. “We’re but little likely to be the better for their money.”

This conversation took place at a little dinner in Gilston House, convened, in fact, for the settlement of the question.

“That accounts for the difference of opinion,” said the doctor. “I’ll be a great deal the better for their money; and I’m not minding about the blood—so long as they’ll keep it cool with my prescriptions,” he added, with a laugh. He was a coarse man, as the Rosebank ladies knew, and what could you expect?

“There is one thing,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, “that has a great effect upon me, and that is, that there are young people in the house. There are not many young people in the neighbourhood, which is a great disadvantage for Effie. It would be a fine thing for her to have some companions of her own age. But I would like to hear something more about the family. Can anybody tell me who she was? The man may be a parvenoo, but these sort of persons sometimes get very nice wives. There was a friend of my sister’s that married a person of the name of Dirom. And she was a Maitland: so there is no telling.”

“There are Maitlands and Maitlands,” said Miss Robina. “It’s a very good name: but our niece that is married in the north had a butler that was John Maitland. I said she should just call him John. But he did not like that. And then there was a joke that they would call him Lauderdale. But the man was just very much offended, and said the name was his own name, as much as if was a duke: in which, no doubt, he was right.”

“That’s the way with all Scots names,” said her sister. “There are Dempsters that I would not hire to wait at my table. We are not setting up to be better than our neighbours. I’m not standing on a name. But I would not encourage these mere monied folk to come into a quiet neighbourhood, and flaunt their big purses in our faces. They’ll spoil the servants, they’ll learn the common folk ill ways. That’s always what happens. Ye’ll see the very chickens will be dearer, and Nancy Miller at the shop will set up her saucy face, and tell ye they’re all ordered for Allonby; so they shall have no countenance from me.”

“There is something in that,” said Mrs. Ogilvie; “but we have plenty of chickens of our own: I seldom need to buy. And then there is Effie to take into consideration. They will be giving balls and parties. I have Effie to think of. I am thinking I will have to go.”

“I hope Effie will keep them at a distance,” said Miss Robina. Effie heard this discussion without taking any part in it. She had no objection to balls and parties, and there was in her mind the vague excitement with which a girl always hears of possible companions of her own age.

What might be coming with them? new adventures, new experiences, eternal friendship perhaps—perhaps—who can tell what? Whether the mother was a Maitland or the father a parvenoo, as the ladies said, it mattered little to Effie. She had few companions, and her heart was all on the side of the new people with a thoughtlessness in respect to their antecedents which perhaps was culpable.

But then Effie was but nineteen, which made a difference, Miss Robina herself was the first to allow.

CHAPTER IV.

“We will just go without waiting any longer,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “We are their nearest neighbours—and they will take it kind if we lose no time. As for these old cats, it will be little matter to the Diroms what they do—but your papa, that is a different affair. It can do no harm, for everybody knows who we are, Effie, and it may do good. So we will be on the safe side, whatever happens. And there is nothing much doing for the horses to-day. Be you ready at three o’clock, and we will take Rory in the carriage for a drive.”

Effie obeyed her stepmother with alacrity. She had not taken any part in the argument, but her imagination had found a great deal to say. She had seen the young Diroms out riding. She had seen them at church. There were two girls about her own age, and there was a brother. The brother was of quite secondary importance, she said to herself; nevertheless, there are always peradventures in the air, and when one thinks that at any moment one’s predestined companion—he whom heaven intends, whatever men may think or say—may walk round the corner!

The image of Ronald, which had never been very deeply imprinted, had faded out of Effie’s imagination. It had never reached any farther than her imagination. And in her little excitement and the pleasurable quickening of her pulsations, as she set out upon this drive with her stepmother, there was that vague sense that there was no telling what might come of it which gives zest to the proceedings of youth. It was the nearest approach to setting out upon a career of adventure which had ever fallen to Effie’s share. She was going to discover a world. She was a new little Columbus, setting her sail towards the unknown.

Mrs. Ogilvie ran on all the way with a sort of monologue, every sentence of which began with, “I wonder.”

“Dear me, I wish I could have found out who she was. I wonder if it will turn out to be my sister’s friend. She was a great deal older than I am, of course, and might very well have grown-up sons and daughters. For Mary is the eldest of us all, and if she had ever had any children, they would have been grown up by this time. We will see whether she will say anything about Mary. And I wonder if you will like the girls. They will always have been accustomed to more luxury than would be at all becoming to a country gentleman’s daughter like you. And I wonder if the young man—the brother—will be always at Allonby. We will have to ask them to their dinner. And I wonder——” But here Mrs. Ogilvie’s wonderings were cut short on her lips; and so great was her astonishment that her lips dropped apart, and she sat gaping, incapable of speech.

“I declare!” she cried at last, and could say no more. The cause of this consternation was that, as they entered the avenue of Allonby, another vehicle met them coming down. And this turned out to be the carriage from the inn, which was the only one to be had for ten miles round, conveying Miss Dempster and Miss Beenie, in their best apparel. The Gilston coachman stopped, as was natural, and so did the driver of the cab.

“Well,” cried Miss Dempster, waving her hand, “ye are going, I see, after all. We’ve just been having our lunch with them. Since it was to be done, it was just as well to do it in good time. And a very nice luncheon it was, and nicely set upon the table, that I must say—but how can you wonder, with such a number of servants! If they’re not good for that, they’re good for nothing. There was just too much, a great deal too much, upon the table; and a fine set-out of plate, and——”

“Sarah, Mrs. Ogilvie is not minding about that.”

“Mrs. Ogilvie is like other folk, and likes to hear our first impressions. And, Effie, you will need just to trim up your beaver; for, though they are not what you can call fine, they are in the flower of the fashion. We’ll keep you no longer. Sandy, you may drive on. Eh! no—stop a moment,” cried the old lady, flourishing her umbrella.

The Gilston coachman had put his horses in motion also; so that when the two carriages were checked again, it was obliquely and from a distance, raising her voice, that Miss Dempster shouted this piece of information: “Ye’ll be gratified to hear that she was a Miss Maitland,” the old lady cried.

“Well, if ever I heard the like!” said Mrs. Ogilvie, as they went on. “There to their lunch, after vowing they would never give their countenance——! That shows how little you can trust even your nearest neighbours. They are just two old cats! But I am glad she is the person I thought. As Mary’s sister, I will have a different kind of a standing from ordinary strangers, and you will profit by that, Effie. I would not wonder if you found them a great acquisition; and your father and me, we would be very well pleased. We’ve heard nothing about the gentlemen of the house. I wonder if they’re always at home. As I was saying, I wonder if that brother of theirs is an idle man about the place, like so many. I’m not fond of idle men. I wonder——”

And for twenty minutes more Mrs. Ogilvie continued wondering, until the carriage drew up at the door of Allonby, which was open, admitting a view of a couple of fine footmen and two large dogs, which last got up and came forward with lazy cordiality to welcome the visitors.

“Dear me!” Mrs. Ogilvie said aside. “I am always distressed with Glen for lying at the door. I wonder if it can be the fashion. I wonder——”

There was time for these remarks, for there was a long corridor to go through before a door was softly opened, and the ladies found themselves, much to their surprise, in what Mrs. Ogilvie afterwards called “the dark.” It was a room carefully shaded to that twilight which is dear at the present period to fashionable eyes. The sun is never too overpowering at Gilston; but the Miss Diroms were young women of their generation, and scorned to discriminate. They had sunblinds without and curtains within, so that the light was tempered into an obscurity in which the robust eyes of country people, coming out of that broad vulgar daylight to which they were accustomed, could at first distinguish nothing.

Effie’s young and credulous imagination was in a quiver of anticipation, admiration, and wonder. It was all new to her—the great house, the well-regulated silence, the poetic gloom. She held her breath, expecting what might next be revealed to her, with the awe and entranced and wondering satisfaction of a novice about to be initiated. The noiseless figures that rose and came forward and with a soft pressure of her hand, two of them mistily white, the other (only the mother, who didn’t count) dark, impressed her beyond description.

The only thing that a little diminished the spell was the voices, more highly pitched than those native to the district, in unaccustomed modulations of “high English.” Effie murmured quite unconsciously an indistinct “Very well, thank you” in answer to their greetings, and then they all sat down, and it became gradually possible to see.

The two Miss Diroms were tall and had what are called fine figures. They came and sat on either side of Effie, one clasping her hands round her knees, the other leaning back in a corner of the deep sofa with her head against a cushion. The sofa and the cushion were covered with yellow damask, against which the white dress made a pretty harmony, as Effie’s eyes got accustomed to the dimness. But Effie, sitting very straight and properly in her chair, was much bewildered by the ease with which one young lady threw her arms over her head, and the other clasped them round her knees.

“How good of you to come!” said the one on the sofa, who was the eldest. “We were wondering if you would call.”

“We saw you at church on Sunday,” said the other, “and we thought you looked so nice. What a funny little church! I suppose we ought to say k’k.”

“Miss Ogilvie will tell us what to say, and how to talk to the natives. Do tell us. We have been half over the world, but never in Scotland before.”

“Oh then, you will perhaps have been in India,” said Effie; “my brother is there.”

“Is he in the army? Of course, all Scotch people have sons in the army. Oh no, we’ve never been in India.”

“India,” said the other, “is not in the world—it’s outside. We’ve been everywhere where people go. Is he coming back soon? Is he good at tennis and that sort of thing? Do you play a great deal here?”

“They do at Lochlee,” said Effie, “and at Kirkconnel: but not me. For I have nobody to play with.”

“Poor little thing!” said the young lady on the sofa, patting her on the arm: and then they both laughed, while Effie grew crimson with shy pride and confusion. She did not see what she had said that was laughable; but it was evident that they did, and this is not an agreeable sensation even to a little girl.

“You shall come here and play,” said the other. “We are having a new court made. And Fred—where is Fred, Phyll?—Fred will be so pleased to have such a pretty little thing to play with.”

“How should I know where he is?—mooning about somewhere, sketching or something.”

“Oh,” said Effie, “do you sketch?” Perhaps she was secretly mollified, though she said to herself that she was yet more offended, by being called a pretty little thing.

“Not I; but my brother, that is Fred: and I am Phyllis, and she is Doris. Now tell us your name, for we can’t go on calling each other Miss, can we? Such near neighbours as we are, and going to see so much of each other.”

“No, of course we can’t go on saying Miss. What should you say was her name, Phyll? Let us guess. People are always like their names. I should say Violet.”

“Dear no, such a mawkish little sentimental name. She is not sentimental at all—are you? What is an Ogilvie name? You have all family names in Scotland, haven’t you, that go from mother to daughter?”

Effie sat confused while they talked over her. She was not accustomed to this sudden familiarity. To call the girls by their names, when she scarcely had formed their acquaintance, seemed terrible to her—alarming, yet pleasant too. She blushed, yet felt it was time to stop the discussion.

“They call me Effie,” she said. “That is not all my name, but it is my name at home.”

“They call me Effie,” repeated Miss Doris, with a faint mockery in her tone; “what a pretty way of saying it, just like the Italians! If you are going to be so conscientious as that, I wasn’t christened Doris, I must tell you: but I was determined Phyll should not have all the luck. We are quite eighteenth century here—furniture and all.”

“But I can’t see the furniture,” said Effie, making for the first time an original remark. “Do you like to sit in the dark?”

At this both the sisters laughed again, and said that she was a most amusing little thing. “But don’t say that to mamma, or it will quite strengthen her in her rebellion. She would like to sit in the sun, I believe. She was brought up in the barbarous ages, and doesn’t know any better. There she is moving off into the other room with your mother. Now the two old ladies will put their heads together——”

“Mrs. Ogilvie is not an old lady,” said Effie hastily; “she is my stepmother. She is almost as young as——” Here she paused, with a glance at Miss Phyllis on the sofa, who was still lying back with her head against the cushion. Effie felt instinctively that it would not be wise to finish her sentence. “She is a great deal younger than you would suppose,” she added, once more a little confused.

“That explains why you are in such good order. Have you to do what she tells you? Mamma is much better than that—we have her very well in hand. Oh, you are not going yet. It is impossible. There must be tea before you go. Mamma likes everybody to have something. And then Fred—you must see Fred—or at least he must see you——”

“Here he is,” said the other, with a sudden grasp of Effie’s arm.

Effie was much startled by this call upon her attention. She turned round hastily, following the movement of her new friends. There could not have been a more dramatic appearance. Fred was coming in by a door at the end of the room. He had lifted a curtain which hung over it, and stood in the dim light outside holding back the heavy folds—looking, it appeared, into the gloom to see if any one was there.

Naturally, coming out of the daylight his eyes at first made out nothing, and he stood for some time in this highly effective attitude—a spectacle which was not unworthy a maiden’s eye. He was tall and slim like his sisters, dark, almost olive in his complexion, with black hair clustering closely in innumerable little curls about his head. He was dressed in a gray morning suit, with a red tie, which was the only spot of colour visible, and had a great effect. He peered into the gloom, curving his eyelids as if he had been shortsighted.

Then, when sufficient time had elapsed to fix his sight upon Effie’s sensitive imagination like a sun picture, he spoke: “Are any of you girls there?” This was all, and it was not much that Fred said. He was answered by a chorus of laughter from his sisters. They were very fond of laughing, Effie thought.

“Oh yes, some of us girls are here—three of us. You can come in and be presented,” Phyllis said.

“If you think you are worthy of it,” said Doris, once more grasping Effie’s arm.

They had all held their breath a little when the hero thus dramatically presented himself. Doris had kept her hand on Effie’s wrist; perhaps because she wished to feel those little pulses jump, or else it was because of that inevitable peradventure which presented itself to them too, as it had done to Effie. This was the first meeting, but how it might end, or what it might lead to, who could tell? The girls, though they were so unlike each other, all three held their breath. And then the sisters laughed as he approached, and the little excitement dropped.

“I wish you wouldn’t sit in the dark,” said Fred, dropping the curtain behind him as he entered. “I can’t see where you are sitting, and if I am not so respectful as I ought to be, I hope I may be forgiven, for I can see nothing. Oh, here you are!”

“It is not the princess; you are not expected to go on your knees,” said his sisters, while Effie once more felt herself blush furiously at being the subject of the conversation. “You are going to be presented to Miss Ogilvie—don’t you know the young lady in white?—oh, of course, you remember. Effie, my brother Fred. And now you know us all, and we are going to be the best of friends.”

“This is very familiar,” said Fred. “Miss Ogilvie, you must not visit it upon me if Phyll and Dor are exasperating. They always are. But when you come to know them they are not so bad as you might think. They have it all their own way in this house. It has always been the habit of the family to let the girls have their own way—and we find it works well on the whole, though in point of manners it may leave something to be desired.”

He had thrown himself carelessly on the sofa beside his sister as he spoke. Effie sat very still and erect on her chair and listened with a dismay and amazement which it would be hard to put into words. She did not know what to say to this strange group. She was afraid of them, brother and sisters and altogether. It was the greatest relief to her when Mrs. Ogilvie returned into the room again, discoursing in very audible tones with the mistress of the house.

“I am sure I am very glad to have met with you,” Mrs. Ogilvie was saying. “They will be so pleased to hear everything. Poor thing! she is but lonely, with no children about her, and her husband dead this five years and more. He was a great loss to her—the kindest man, and always at her call. But we must just make up our mind to take the bitter with the sweet in this life. Effie, where are you? We must really be going. We have Rory, that is my little boy, with us in the carriage, and he will be getting very tired of waiting. I hope it will not be long before we see you at Gilston. Good-bye, Mrs. Dirom; Effie, I hope you have said to the young ladies that we will be glad to see them—and you too,” giving her hand to Fred—“you especially, for we have but few young men in the country.”

“I accept your invitation as a compliment to the genus young man, Mrs. Ogilvie—not to me.”

“Well, that is true,” she said with a laugh; “but I am sure, from what I can see of you, it will soon be as particular as you could wish. Young people are a great want just in this corner of the country. Effie, poor thing, has felt it all her life: but I hope better things will be coming for her now.”

“She shall not be lonely if we can help it,” said the sisters. They kissed her as they parted, as if they had known her for years, and called her “dear Effie!” waving their hands to her as she disappeared into the light. They did not go out to the door with the visitors, as Effie in the circumstances would have done, but yet sent her away dazzled by their affectionateness, their offers of regard.

She felt another creature, a girl with friends, a member of society, as she drove away. What a thing it is to have friends! She had been assured often by her stepmother that she was a happy girl to have so many people who took an interest in her, and would always be glad to give her good advice. Effie knew where to lay her hand upon a great deal of good advice at any moment; but that is not everything that is required in life.

Phyllis and Doris! they were like names out of a book, and it was like a picture in her memory, the slim figure in white sunk deep in the yellow damask of the sofa, with her dark hair relieved against the big soft puffy cushion. Exactly like a picture; whereas Effie herself had sat straight up like a little country girl. Mrs. Ogilvie ran on like a purling stream as they drove home, expressing her satisfaction that it was Mary’s friend who was the mistress of the house, and describing all the varieties of feeling in her own mind on the subject—her conviction that this was almost too good to be true, and just more fortunate than could be hoped.

But Effie listened, and paid no attention. She had a world of her own now to escape into. Would she ever be bold enough to call them Phyllis and Doris?—and then Fred—but nobody surely would expect her to call him Fred.

Effie was disturbed in these delightful thoughts, and Mrs. Ogilvie’s monologue was suddenly broken in upon by a sound of horses’ hoofs, and a dust and commotion upon the road, followed by the apparition of Dr. Jardine’s mare, with her head almost into the carriage window on Effie’s side. The doctor’s head above the mare’s was pale. There was foam on his lips, and he carried his riding whip short and savagely, as if he meant to strike some one.

“Tell me just one thing,” he said, without any preliminary greetings; “have these women been there?”

“Dear me, doctor, what a fright you have given me. Is anything wrong with Robert; has anything happened? Bless me, the women! what women? You have just taken my breath away.”

“These confounded women that spoil everything—will ye let me know if they were there?”

“Oh, the Miss —— Well, yes—I was as much surprised as you, doctor. With their best bonnets on, and all in state in Mr. Ewing’s carriage; they were there to their lunch.”

The doctor swore a solemn oath—by——! something which he did not say, which is always a safe proceeding.

“You’ll excuse me for stopping you, but I could not believe it. The old cats! And to their lunch!” At this he gave a loud laugh. “They’re just inconceivable!” And rode away.

CHAPTER V.

The acquaintance thus formed between the houses of Allonby and Gilston was followed by much and close intercourse. In the natural order of things, there came two dinner parties, the first of which was given by Mrs. Ogilvie, and was a very elaborate business. The lady of Gilston began her preparations as soon as she returned from that first momentous call. She spent a long time going over the list of possible guests, making marks upon the sheet of paper on which Effie had written out the names.

“Johnstones—three—no, but that will never do. Him and her we must have, of course: but Mary must just stay at home, or come after dinner; where am I to get a gentleman for her? There will have to be two extra gentlemen anyway for Effie, and one of the Miss Diroms. Do ye think I’m just made of men? No, no, Mary Johnstone will have to stay at home. The Duncans?—well, he’s cousin to the Marquis, and that is always something; but he’s a foolish creature, and his wife is not much better. Mrs. Heron and Sir John—Oh, yes; she is just a credit to see at your table, with her diamonds; and though he is rather doited, poor man, he is a great person in the county. Well, and what do you say to the Smiths? They’re nobody in particular, so far as birth goes; but the country is getting so dreadfully democratic that what does that matter? And they’re monied people like the Diroms themselves, and Lady Smith has a great deal to say for herself. We will put down the Smiths. But, Effie, there is one thing that just drives me to despair——”

“Yes?” said Effie, looking up from the list; “and what is that?”

“The Miss Dempsters!” cried her stepmother in a tone which might have touched the hardest heart. That was a question indeed. The Miss Dempsters would have to be asked for the loan of their forks and spoons, and their large lamp, and both the silver candlesticks. How after that would it be possible to leave them out? And how put them in? And how provide two other men to balance the old ladies? Such questions as these are enough to turn any woman’s hair gray, as Mrs. Ogilvie said.

Then when that was settled there came the bill of fare. The entire village knew days before what there was to be for dinner, and about the fish that was sent for from Dumfries, and did not turn out all that could have been wished, so that at the last moment a mere common salmon from Solway, a thing made no account of, had to be put in the pot.

Mrs. Moffatt at the shop had a sight of the pastry, which was “just remarkable” she said. And a dozen little groups were admitted on the afternoon of the great day to see the table set out, all covered with flowers, with the napkins like snowy turrets round the edge, and the silver and crystal shining. The Ogilvies possessed an epergne won at some racing meeting long before, which was a great work of art, all in frosted silver,—a huntsman standing between a leash of dogs; and this, with the Dempster candlesticks on each side, made a brilliant centre. And the schoolmaster recorded afterwards amid his notes of the rainfall and other interesting pieces of information, that the fine smell of the cooking came as far as the school, and distracted the bairns at their lessons, causing that melting sensation in the jaws which is described by the country folk as watering of the mouth.

Effie was busy all the morning with the flowers, with writing out little cards for the guests’ names, and other such ornamental arrangements.

Glen, confused in his mind and full of curiosity, followed her about everywhere, softly waving his great tail like a fan, sweeping off a light article here and there from the crowded tables, and asking in his superior doggish way, what all this fuss and excitement (which he rather enjoyed on the whole) was about? till somebody sent him away with a kick and an adjuration as being “in everybody’s gait”—which was a sad end to his impartial and interested spectatorship.

Little Rory toddled at his sister’s heels on the same errand, but could not be kicked like Glen—and altogether there was a great deal of confusion. But you never would have divined this when Mrs. Ogilvie came sweeping down stairs in her pink silk, as if the dinner had all been arranged by her major-domo, and she had never argued with the cook in her life.

It may easily be supposed that the members of the family had little time to compare notes while their guests remained. And it was not till the last carriage had rolled away and the lady of the house had made her last smiling protestation that it was still just ridiculously early, that this meritorious woman threw herself into her favourite corner of the sofa, with a profound sigh of pleasure and relief.

“Well!” she said, and repeated that long-drawn breath of satisfaction. “Well!—it’s been a terrible trouble; but I cannot say but I’m thoroughly content and pleased now that it’s past.”

To this her husband, standing in front of the expiring fire (for even in August a little fire in the evening is not inappropriate on the Border), replied with a suppressed growl.

“You’re easy pleased,” he said, “but why ye should take all this trouble to fill people with good things, as the Scripture says, that are not hungry and don’t want them—”

“Oh, Robert, just you hold your peace! You’re always very well pleased to go out to your dinner. And as for the Allonby family, it was a clear duty. When you speak of Scripture you surely forget that we’re bidden to entertain strangers unawares. No, that’s not just right, it’s angels we entertain unawares.”

“There’s no angels in that house, or I am mistaken,” said Mr. Ogilvie.

“Well, there’s two very well-dressed girls, which is the nearest to it: and there’s another person, that may turn out even more important.”

“And who may that be?”

“Whist,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, holding up a finger of admonition as the others approached. “Well, Uncle John! And Effie, come you here and rest. Poor thing, you’re done out. Now I would like to have your frank opinion. Mine is that though it took a great deal of trouble, it’s been a great success.”

“The salmon was excellent,” said Mr. Moubray.

“And the table looked very pretty.”

“And yon grouse were not bad at all.”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, throwing up her hands, “ye tiresome people! Am I thinking of the salmon or the grouse; was there any chance they would be bad in my house? I am meaning the party: and my opinion is that everybody was just very well pleased, and that everything went off to a wish.”

“That woman Lady Smith has a tongue that would deave a miller,” said the master of the house. “I request you will put her at a distance from me, Janet, if she ever dines here again.”

“And what will you do when she asks us?” cried his wife. “If she gives you anything but her right hand—my word! but you will be ill pleased.”

To this argument her husband had no reply handy, and after a moment she resumed—

“I am very glad to see you are going to be such friends with the Diroms, Effie; they’re fine girls. Miss Doris, as they call her, might have had her dress a little higher, but no doubt that’s the fault of those grand dressmakers that will have their own way. But the one I like is Mr. Fred. He is a very fine lad; he takes nothing upon him.”

“What should he take upon him? He’s nothing or nobody, but only a rich man’s son.”

“Robert, you are just the most bigoted, inconsiderate person! Well, I think it’s very difficult when you are just a rich person to be modest and young like yon. If you are a young duke that’s different; but to have nothing but money to stand upon—and not to stand upon that—”

“It is very well said,” said Uncle John, making her a bow. “There’s both charity and observation in what Mrs. Ogilvie says.”

“Is there not?” cried the lady in a flush of pleasure. “Oh no, I’m not meaning it is clever of me; but when a young man has nothing else, and is just pleasant, and never seems to mind, but singles out a bit little thing of a girl in a white frock—”

This made them all look at Effie, who as yet said nothing. She was leaning back in the other corner, tired yet flushed with the pleasure and novelty of finding herself so important a person. Her white frock was very simple, but yet it was the best she had ever had; and never before had Effie been “singled out,” as her stepmother said. The dinner party was a great event to her. Nothing so important had occurred before, nothing in which she herself had been so prominent. A pretty flush of colour came over her face.

There had been a great deal in Fred Dirom’s eyes which was quite new, mysterious, and even, in its novelty, delightful to Effie. She could scarcely help laughing at the recollection, and yet it made a warmth about her heart. To be flattered in that silent way—not by any mere compliment, but by the homage of a pair of eloquent eyes—is startling, strange, never unsweet to a girl. It is a more subtle coming of age than any birthday can bring. It shows that she has passed out of the band of little girls into that of those young princesses whom all the poets have combined to praise. This first sensation of the awakening consciousness has something exquisite in it not to be put into words.

Her blush grew deeper as she saw the group round all looking at her—her stepmother with a laugh of satisfaction, her father with a glance in which the usual drawing together of his shaggy eyebrows was a very poor simulation of a frown, and Uncle John with a liquid look of tender sympathy not unmingled with tender ridicule and full of love withal.

“Why do you all look at me like that?” Effie cried, to throw off the growing embarrassment. “I am not the only one that had a white frock.”

“Well, I would not call yon a white frock that was drooping off Doris Dirom’s shoulders,” said Mrs. Ogilvie; “but we’ll say no more about that. So far as I could see, everybody was pleased: and they stayed a most unconscionable time. Bless me! it’s past eleven o’clock. A little license may always be given on a great occasion; but though it’s a pleasure to talk it all over, and everything has been just a great success, I think, Effie, you should go to your bed. It’s later than your ordinary, and you have been about the most of the day. Good-night, my dear. You looked very nice, and your flowers were just beautiful: everybody was speaking of them, and I gave the credit where it was due.”

“It is time for me to go too,” said Uncle John.

“Oh, wait a moment.” Mrs. Ogilvie waited till Effie had gone out of the room with her candle, very tired, very happy, and glad to get away from so much embarrassing observation. The stepmother waited a little until all was safe, and then she gave vent to the suppressed triumph.

“You will just mark my words, you two gentlemen,” she cried. “They have met but three times—once when we called, once when they were playing their tennis, or whatever they call it—and to-night; but if Effie is not Mrs. Fred Dirom before six months are out it will be her own fault.”

“Fred Fiddlestick!” cried Mr. Ogilvie. “You’re just a silly woman, thinking of nothing but love and marriages. I’ll have no more of that.”

“If I’m a silly woman, there’s not far off from here a sillier man,” said Mrs. Ogilvie. “You’ll have to hear a great deal more of it. And if you do not see all the advantages, and the grand thing it would be for Effie to have such a settlement so young—”

“There was one at your hand if you had wanted to get rid of her, much younger.”

“Oh,” cried Mrs. Ogilvie, clasping her hands together, “that men, who are always said to be the cleverest and the wisest, should be so slow at the uptake! Any woman would understand—but you, that are her father! The one that was at my hand, as you say, what was it? A long-leggit lad in a marching regiment! with not enough to keep him a horse, let alone a wife. That would have been a bonnie business!—that would have been taking a mother’s care of Effie! I am thankful her mother cannot hear ye. But Fred Dirom is very different—the only son of a very rich man. And no doubt the father, who perhaps is not exactly made for society, would give them Allonby, and set them up. That is what my heart is set on for Effie, I have always said, I will never perhaps have a grown-up daughter of my own.”

“I am sure,” said Mr. Moubray, “you have nothing but kindness in your heart.”

“You mean I am nothing but a well-intentioned haverel,” said Mrs. Ogilvie, with a laugh. “But you’ll see that I’m more than that. Effie! bless me, what a start you gave me! I thought by this time that you were in your bed.”

Effie had come back to the drawing-room upon some trifling errand. She stood there for a moment, her candle in her hand, her fair head still decked with the rose which had been its only ornament. The light threw a little flickering illumination upon her face, for her stepmother, always thrifty, had already extinguished one of the lamps. Mr. Moubray looked with eyes full of tender pity upon the young figure in the doorway, standing, hesitating, upon the verge of a world unknown. He had no mind for any further discussion. He followed her out when she had carried off the gloves and little ornaments which she had left behind, and stood with her a moment in the hall to say good-night.

“My little Effie,” he said, “an evening like this is little to us, but there is no saying what it may be to you. I think it has brought new thoughts already, to judge by your face.”

She looked up at him startled, with her colour rising. “No, Uncle John,” she answered, with the natural self-defence of youth: then paused to inquire after her denial. “What kind of new thoughts?”

He stooped over her to kiss her, with his hand upon her shoulder.

“We’ll not inquire too far,” he said. “Nothing but novelty, my dear, and the rising of the tide.”

Effie opened the door for him, letting in the fresh sweep of the night-wind, which came so clear and keen over the moors, and the twinkle of the stars looking down from the great vault of dark blue sky. The world seemed to widen out round them, with the opening of that door, which let in all the silence and hush of the deep-breathing night. She put her candle upon the table and came out with him, her delicate being thrilling to the influence of the sweet full air which embraced her round and round.

“Oh, Uncle John, what a night! to think we should shut ourselves up in little dull rooms with all this shining outside the door!”

“We are but frail human creatures, Effie, though we have big souls; the dull rooms are best for us at this hour of the night.”

“I would like to walk with you down among the trees. I would like to go down the Dene and hear the water rushing, but not to Allonby churchyard.”

“No, nor to Allonby at all, Effie. Take time, my bonnie dear, let no one hasten your thoughts. Come, I cannot have you out here in the night in your white frock. You look like a little ghost; and what would Mrs. Ogilvie say to me if you caught cold just at this crisis of affairs?”

He stopped to laugh softly, but put his arm round her, and led her back within the door.

“The night is bonnie and the air is fresh, but home and shelter are the best. Good-night, and God bless my little Effie,” he said.

The people in the village, whose minds were now relieved from the strain of counting all the carriages, and were going to sleep calmly in the certainty that everybody was gone, heard his firm slow step going past, and knew it was the minister, who would naturally be the last to go home. They took a pleasure in hearing him pass, and the children, who were still awake, felt a protection in the fact that he was there, going leisurely along the road, sure to keep away any ghost or robber that might be lurking in the stillness of the night. His very step was full of thought.

It was pleasant to him, without any sad work in hand, to walk through the little street between the sleeping houses, saying a blessing upon the sleepers as he passed. Usually when he was out so late, it was on his way to some sickbed to minister to the troubled or the dying. He enjoyed to-night the exemption and the leisure, and with a smile in his eyes looked from the light in Dr. Jardine’s window, within which the Dr. was no doubt smoking a comfortable pipe before he went to bed, to the little inquisitive glimmer higher up in Rosebank, where the old ladies were laying aside their old finery and talking over the party. He passed between them with a humorous consciousness of their antagonism which did not disturb the general peace.

The stars shone with a little frost in their brightness, though it was but August; the night-air blew fresh in his face; the village, with all its windows and eyelids closed, slept deep in the silence of the night. “God bless them all—but above all Effie,” he repeated, smiling to himself.

CHAPTER VI.

The Diroms belonged to a class now very common in England, the class of very rich people without any antecedents or responsibilities, which it is so difficult to classify or lay hold of, and which neither the authorities of society nor the moralist have yet fully comprehended. They had a great deal of money, which is popularly recognized to be power, and they owed it to nobody but themselves.

They owed nothing to anybody. They had no estates to keep up; no poor people depended upon them; the clerks and porters at the office were not to call dependents, though probably—out of good nature, when they were ill or trouble arose in their families, if it happened to come under the notice of the head of the firm, he would fling them a little money, perhaps with an admonition, perhaps with a joke. But this was pure liberality, generosity as his friends called it. He had nothing to “keep up.”

Even the sick gamekeeper who had been hurt by a fall, though he was in the new tenant’s service, was Lady Allonby’s servant, and it was she who had to support his family while he was ill. The rich people were responsible for nobody. If they were kind—and they were not unkind—it was all to their credit, for they had no duty to any one.

This was how the head of the house considered his position. “I don’t know anything about your land burdens, your feudal burdens,” he would say; “money is what has made me. I pay taxes enough, I hope; but I’ve got no sentimental taxes to pay, and I won’t have anything to say to such rubbish. I am a working man myself, just like the rest. If these fellows will take care of their own business as I did, they will get on themselves as I have done, and want nothing from anybody. I’ve no call even to ‘keep up’ my family; they ought to be working for themselves, as I was at their age. If I do, it’s because the girls and their mother are too many for me, and I have to yield to their prejudices.”

These were Mr. Dirom’s principles: but he threw about his money very liberally all the same, giving large subscriptions, with a determination to stand at the head of the list when he was on it at all, and an inclination to twit the others who did not give so liberally with their stinginess; “What is the use of making bones of it?” he said, with a flourish to Sir John, who was well known to be in straightened circumstances; “I just draw a cheque for five hundred and the thing’s done.”

Sir John could no more have drawn a cheque for five hundred than he could have flown, and Mr. Dirom knew it; and the knowledge gave an edge to his pleasure. Sir John’s twenty-five pounds was in reality a much larger contribution than Mr. Dirom’s five hundred, but the public did not think of this. The public said that Sir John gave the twenty-five because he could not help it, because his position demanded it; but Mr. Dirom’s five hundred took away the breath of the spectators. It was more than liberal; it was magnificent.

Mr. Dirom was a man who wore white waistcoats and large well-blown roses in his coat. He swaggered, without knowing it, in his walk, and in his speech, wherever he was visible. The young people were better bred, and were very conscious of those imperfections. They preferred, indeed, that he should not “trouble,” as they said, to come home, especially to come to the country when business prevented. There was no occasion for papa to “trouble.” Fred could take his place if he was detained in town.

In this way they showed a great deal of tender consideration for their father’s engagements. Perhaps he was deceived by it, perhaps not; no one could tell. He took his own way absolutely, appearing when it suited him, and when it did not suit him leaving them to their own devices. Allonby was too far off for him, too distant from town: though he was quite willing to be known as the occupier of so handsome a “place.” He came down for the first of the shooting, which is the right thing in the city, but afterwards did not trouble his family much with his presence, which was satisfactory to everybody concerned. It was not known exactly what Mr. Dirom had risen from, but it was low enough to make his present elevation wonderful, and to give that double zest to wealth which makes the self-made man happy.

Mrs. Dirom was of a different order. She was two generations at least from the beginning of her family, and she too, though in a less degree than her children, felt that her husband’s manners left something to be desired. He had helped himself up by her means, she having been, as in the primitive legend, of the class of the master’s daughters: at least her father was the head of the firm under which Dirom had begun to “make his way.” But neither was she quite up to the mark.

“Mamma is dreadfully middle-class,” the girls said. In some respects that is worse than the lower class. It made her a little timid and doubtful of her position, which her husband never was. None of these things affected the young people; they had received “every advantage.”

Their father’s wealth was supposed to be immense; and when wealth is immense it penetrates everywhere. A moderate fortune is worth very little in a social point of view, but a great fortune opens every door.

The elder brother, who never came to Allonby, who never went near the business, who had been portioned off contemptuously by his father, as if he had been a girl (and scorn could not go farther), had married an earl’s daughter, and, more than that, had got her off the very steps of the throne, for she had been a Maid of Honour. He was the most refined and cultivated individual in the world, with one of the most lovely houses in London, and everything about him artistic to the last degree. It was with difficulty that he put up with his father at all. Still, for the sake of his little boy, he acknowledged the relationship from time to time.

As for Fred and his sisters, they have already been made known to the reader. Fred was by way of being “in the business,” and went down to the office three or four times in the week when he was in town. But what he wished to be was an artist. He painted more or less, he modelled, he had a studio of his own in the midst of one of the special artistic quarters, and retired there to work, as he said, whenever the light was good.

For his part Fred aspired to be a Bohemian, and did everything he could in a virtuous way to carry out his intention. He scorned money, or thought he did while enjoying every luxury it could procure. If he could have found a beautiful milkmaid or farm girl with anything like the Rossetti type of countenance he would have married her off-hand; but then beauties of that description are rare. The country lasses on the Border were all of too cheerful a type. But he had fully made up his mind that when the right woman appeared no question of money or ambition should be allowed to interfere between him and his inclinations.

“You may say what you will,” he said to his sisters, “and I allow my principles would not answer with girls. You have nothing else to look to, to get on in the world. But a man can take that sort of thing in his own hands, and if one gets beauty that’s enough. It is more distinction than anything else. I shall insist upon beauty, but nothing more.”

“It all depends on what you call beauty,” said Miss Phyllis. “You can make anything beauty if you stand by it and swear to it. Marrying a painter isn’t at all a bad way. He paints you over and over again till you get recognized as a Type, and then it doesn’t matter what other people say.”

“You can’t call Effie a Type,” said the young lady who called herself Doris—her name in fact was a more humble one: but then not even the Herald’s College has anything to do with Christian names.

“She may not be a Type—but if you had seen her as I did in the half light, coming out gradually as one’s eyes got used to it like something developing in a camera—Jove! She was like a Burne-Jones—not strong enough for the blessed Damozel or that sort of thing, but sad and sweet like—like—” Fred paused for a simile, “like a hopeless maiden in a procession winding down endless stairs, or—standing about in the wet, or—If she had not been dressed in nineteenth-century costume.”

“He calls that nineteenth-century costume!” said Phyllis with a mixture of sympathy and scorn.

“Poor Effie is not dressed at all,” said the other sister. “She has clothes on, that is all: but I could make her look very nice if she were in my hands. She has a pretty little figure, not spoiled at all—not too solid like most country girls but just enough to drape a pretty flowing stuff or soft muslin upon. I should turn her out that you would not know her if she trusted herself to me.”

“For goodness’ sake let her alone,” cried Fred; “don’t make a trollop of my little maiden. Her little stiffness suits her. I like her just so, in her white frock.”

“You should have been born a milliner, Dor.”

“Perhaps I was—and papa’s money has thwarted nature. If he should ever lose it all, which I suppose is on the cards——”

“Oh, very much on the cards,” said Fred.

“There is always a smash some time or other in a great commercial concern.”

“What fun!” said Miss Phyllis.

“Then I should set up directly. The sisters Dirom, milliners and dressmakers. It would be exceedingly amusing, and we should make a great fortune—all good dressmakers do.”

“It would be very amiable of you, Dor, to call your firm the sisters Dirom—for I should be of no use. I shall spend the fortune if you please, but I couldn’t help in any other way.”

“Oh, yes, you could. You will marry, and have all your things from me. I should dress you beautifully, and you would be the most delightful advertisement. Of course you would not have any false pride. You would say to your duchesses, I got this from my sister. She is the only possible dressmaker nowadays.”

“False pride—oh, I hope not! It would be quite a distinction—everybody would go. You could set up afternoon teas, and let them try on all your things. It would be delightful. But papa will not come to grief, he is too well backed up,” said Phyllis with a sigh.

“If I do not marry next season, I shall not wait for the catastrophe,” said Doris. “Perhaps if the Opposition comes in we might coax Lord Pantry to get me appointed milliner to the Queen. If Her Majesty had once a dress from me, she would never look at Worth more.”

“Worth!” said Phyllis, throwing up her hands in mild but indignant amazement.

“Well, then, Waley, or whatever you call him. Worth is a mere symbol,” said Doris with philosophical calm. “How I should like it! but if one marries, one’s husband’s family and all kinds of impossible people interfere.”

“You had better marry, you girls,” said Fred; “it is much your best chance. Wipe out the governor with a title. That’s what I should do if I could. But unfortunately I can’t—the finest of heiresses does not communicate her family honours, more’s the pity. I shall always be Fred Dirom, if I were to marry a duchess. But an artist’s antecedents don’t matter. Fortunately he makes his own way.”

“Fred,” said his mother, coming in, “I wish you would not talk of yourself as an artist, dear. Papa does not like it. He indulges you all a great deal, but there are some things that don’t please him at all.”

“Quite unreasonably, mother dear,” said Fred, who was a good son, and very kind to her on the whole. “Most of the fellows I know in that line are much better born than I am. Gentlemen’s sons, most of them.”

“Oh, Fred!” said Mrs. Dirom, with eyes of deep reproach. She added in a tremulous voice, “My grandfather had a great deal of property in the country. He had indeed, I assure you, although you think we have nothing but money. And if that does not make a gentleman, what does?”

“What indeed?” said her son: but he made no further reply. And the sisters interposed.

“We were talking of what we shall all do in case the firm should come to grief, and all the money be lost.”

“Oh, girls!” Mrs. Dirom started violently and put her hand to her heart. “Fred! you don’t mean to say that there are rumours in the city, or a word whispered—”

“Not when I heard last—but then I have not been in the city for a month. That reminds me,” said Fred, “that really I ought to put in an appearance—just once in a way.”