COLLECTION
OF
BRITISH AUTHORS
TAUCHNITZ EDITION.
VOL. 1092.
SALEM CHAPEL BY MRS. OLIPHANT.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

Chronicles of Carlingford

———

SALEM CHAPEL

BY
MRS. OLIPHANT.
COPYRIGHT EDITION.
I N T W O V O L U M E S.
VOL. II.
LEIPZIG
BERNHARD TAUCHNITZ
1870.
The Right of Translation is reserved.

SALEM CHAPEL.

[CHAPTER I., ] [II., ] [III., ] [IV., ] [V., ] [VI., ] [VII., ] [VIII., ] [IX., ] [X., ] [XI., ] [XII., ] [XIII., ] [XIV., ] [XV., ] [XVI., ] [XVII., ] [XVIII., ] [XIX., ] [XX., ] [XXI., ] [XXII., ] [XXIII.]

CHAPTER I.

MRS. VINCENT rose from the uneasy bed, where she had not slept, upon that dreadful Sunday morning, with feelings which it would be vain to attempt any description of. Snatches of momentary sleep more dreadful than wakefulness had fallen upon her during the awful night—moments of unconsciousness which plunged her into a deeper horror still, and from which she started thinking she heard Susan call. Had Susan called, had Susan come, in any dreadful plight of misery, her mother thought she could have borne it; but she could not, yet did, bear this, with the mingled passion and patience of a woman; one moment rising up against the intolerable, the next sitting down dumb and steadfast before that terrible necessity which could not be resisted. She got up in the dim wintry morning with all that restless anguish in her heart, and took out her best black silk dress, and a clean cap to go under her bonnet. She offered a sacrifice and burnt-offering as she dressed herself in her snow-white cuffs, and composed her trim little figure into its Sunday neatness; for the minister’s mother must go to chapel this dreadful day. No whisper of the torture she was enduring must breathe among the flock—nothing could excuse her from attending Salem, seeing her son’s people, and hearing Mr. Beecher preach, and holding up Arthur’s standard at this dangerous crisis of the battle. She felt she was pale when she came into the sitting-room, but comforted herself with thinking that nobody in Salem knew that by nature she had a little tender winter bloom upon her face, and was not usually so downcast and heavy-eyed. Instinctively, she rearranged the breakfast-table as she waited for the young minister from Homerton, who was not an early riser. Mr. Beecher thought it rather cheerful than otherwise when he came in somewhat late and hurried, and found her waiting by the white covered table, with the fire bright and the tea made. He was in high spirits, as was natural. He thought Vincent was in very comfortable quarters, and had uncommonly pleasant rooms.

“Don’t you think so? And one has just as great a chance of being uncomfortable as not in one’s first charge,” said the young preacher; “but we were all delighted to hear that Vincent had made an ’it. Liberal-minded people, I should say, if I may judge by Mr. Tozer, who was uncommonly friendly last night. These sort of people are the strength of our connection—not great people, you know, but the flower of the middle classes. I am surprised you did not bring Miss Vincent with you for a little cheerful society at this time of the year.”

“My daughter may perhaps come yet, before—before I leave,” said Mrs. Vincent, drawing herself up, with a little hauteur, as Mr. Beecher thought, though in reality it was only a physical expression of that sob of agony to which she dared not give vent in audible sound.

“Oh, I thought it might be more cheerful for her in the winter,” said the preacher, a little affronted that his interest in Vincent’s pretty sister should be received so coldly. He was interrupted by the arrival of the post, for Carlingford was a profane country town, and had its letters on Sunday morning. The widow set herself desperately down in an arm-chair to read Arthur’s letter. It made her heart beat loud with throbs so violent that a blindness came over her eyes, and her very life failed for an instant. It was very short, very assured and certain—he was going to Northumberland, where the fugitives had gone—he was going to bring Susan back. Mr. Beecher over his egg watched her reading this, and saw that she grew ashy, deathly pale. It was not possible for him to keep silent, or to refrain from wondering what it was.

“Dear me, I am afraid you are ill—can I get you anything?” he said, rising from the table.

Mrs. Vincent folded up her letter. “Thank you; my tea will refresh me,” she said, coming back to her seat. “I did not sleep very much last night, and my head aches: when people come to my time of life,” said the little woman, with a faint heroical smile, “they seldom sleep well the first few nights in a new place. I hope you rested comfortably, Mr. Beecher. Mr. Vincent, Arthur’s dear papa, used to say that he never preached well if he did not sleep well; and I have heard other ministers say it was a very true rule.”

“If that is all, I hope you will be pleased to-day,” said the preacher, with a little complaisance. “I always sleep well; nothing puts me much out in that respect. Perhaps it is about time to start now? I like to have a few minutes in the vestry before going into the pulpit. You know the way perhaps? or we can call at Mr. Tozer’s and get one of them to guide us.”

“I think I know the way,” said Mrs. Vincent, faintly. It was a slight comfort, in the midst of her martyrdom, to leave the room and have a moment to herself. She sank down by her bedside in an inarticulate agony of prayer, which doubtless God deciphered, though it never came to words, and rose up again to put on her bonnet, her neat shawl, her best pair of gloves. The smile that might have come on the face of a martyr at the stake dawned upon the little woman’s lips as she caught sight of her own pale face in the glass, when she was tying her bonnet-strings. She was not thrusting her hand into the scorching flames, she was only pulling out the bows of black ribbon, and giving the last touch to that perfection of gentle neatness in which Arthur’s mother, for his sake, must present herself to his people. She took Mr. Beecher’s arm afterwards, and walked with him, through the wintry sunshine and streams of churchgoers, to Salem. Perhaps she was just a little sententious in her talk to the young preacher, who would have stared had anybody told him what active and feverish wretchedness was in her heart. She quoted Arthur’s dear father more than usual; she felt a little irritated in spite of herself by the complaisance of the young man from ’Omerton. Notwithstanding the dreadful pressure of her trouble, she felt that his excitement in the prospect of preaching to Arthur’s people was quite ill-timed. What did it matter to him whether the Salem flock liked him or not? Were they not Arthur’s people, pre-engaged to their own pastor? The gentle widow did what she could to bring Mr. Beecher down as they walked through Grove Street. She remarked, gently, that where a minister was very popular, a stranger had but little chance of appreciation. “You must not be mortified if you see the congregation look disappointed when you come into the pulpit,” said Mrs. Vincent; “for my son, if he had not been called away so suddenly, was to commence a course of lectures to-day, and I believe a good deal of expectation was raised about them.” The new preacher was perhaps a shade less buoyant when he resigned his friend’s mother to Tozer at the door of the chapel, to be conducted to her pew. Salem was already about half filled; and the entering flock looked at Mrs. Vincent, as she stood with the deacon in the porch, asking, with the courtesy of a royal personage, humble yet affable, after his wife and daughter. Tozer was a little overawed by the politeness of the minister’s mother. He concluded that she was “quite the lady” in his private heart.

“If you tell me where the minister’s seat is, I need not trouble you to go in,” said Mrs. Vincent. “Mrs. Tufton’s uncommon punctual, and it’s close upon her time,” said Tozer; “being a single man, we’ve not set apart a seat for the minister—not till he’s got some one as can sit in it; it’s the old minister’s seat, as is the only one we’ve set aside; for we’ve been a-letting of the pews uncommon this past month, and it don’t answer to waste nothing in a chapel as is as expensive to keep up as Salem. It’s our pride to give our minister a good salary, as you know, ma’am, and we’ve all got to pay up according, so there ain’t no pew set apart for Mr. Vincent—not till he’s got a wife.”

“Then I am to sit in Mr. Tufton’s pew?” said the minister’s mother, not without a little sharpness.

“There ain’t no more of them never at Salem, but Mrs. Tufton,” said Tozer. “Mr. Tufton has had a shock, and the only one of a family they’ve at home is a great invalid, and never was within the chapel door in my time. Mr. Tufton he do come now and again. He would have been here to-day, I make bold to say, but for the minister being called away. I hope you’ve ’eard from Mr. Vincent, ma’am, and as he’ll soon be back. It ain’t a good thing for a congregation when the pastor takes to going off sudden. Here she is a-coming. Mrs. Tufton, ma’am, this is Mrs. Vincent, the minister’s mother; she’s been waiting for you to go into your pew.”

“I hope I shall not be in your way,” said Mrs. Vincent, with her dignified air. “I have always been accustomed to see a seat for the minister, but as I am a stranger, I hope for once I shall not be in your way.”

“Don’t say a word!” cried Mrs. Tufton. “I am as glad as possible to see Mr. Vincent’s mother. He is a precious young man. It’s not a right principle, you know, but it’s hard not to envy people that are so happy in their families; nothing would make my Tom take to the ministry, though his papa and I had set our hearts upon it; and he’s in Australia, poor dear fellow! and my poor girl is such an invalid. I hope your daughter is pretty well? Come this way. I hope I shall see a great deal of you. Mr. Tufton takes such an interest in his young brother; all that he wants is a little good advice—that is what the minister always tells me. All that Mr. Vincent wants, he says, is a little good advice.”

The latter part of this was communicated in a whisper, as the two ladies seated themselves in the minister’s pew. After a momentary pause of private devotion, Mrs. Tufton again took up the strain where she had left it off.

“I assure you, we take the greatest interest in him at the cottage. He doesn’t come to see us so often as Mr. Tufton would wish, but I daresay he has other things to do. The minister often says to me that he is a precious young man, is Mr. Vincent, and that a little good advice and attention to those that know better is all he wants to make him a shining light; and I am sure he will want no good advice Mr. Tufton can give him. So you may keep your mind easy—you may keep your mind quite easy. In any difficulty that could occur, I am sure the minister would act as if he were his own son.”

“You are very kind; but I hope no difficulty will occur,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a little quiver in her lip.

“I hope not, indeed; but there are so many people to please in a flock,” said the late minister’s wife, with a sigh. “We always got on very well, for Mr. Tufton is not one to take a deal of notice of any unpleasantness; but you know as well as I do that it takes a deal of attention to keep all matters straight. If you’ll excuse me, it’s a great pity Mr. Vincent has gone away to-day. Nothing would have made my husband leave his post just as he was intimated to begin a course of lectures. It’s very excusable in Mr. Vincent, because he hasn’t that experience that’s necessary. I always say he’s very excusable, being such a young man; and we have no doubt he’ll get on very well if he does but take advice.”

“My son was very unwilling to go; but it was quite necessary. His sister,” said Mrs. Vincent, clasping her hands tight under her shawl to balance the pang in her heart, “was with some friends—whom we heard something unpleasant about—and he went to bring her home. I expect them—to-morrow.”

The poor mother shut her lips close when she had said the words, to keep in the cry or sob that seemed bursting from them. Yes, God help her, she expected them; perhaps to-morrow—perhaps that same dreadful night; but even in the height of her anguish there occurred to Mrs. Vincent a forlorn prayer that they might not come back that Sunday. Rather another agonising night than that all the “Chapel folks” should be aware that their pastor was rushing wildly along distant railways on the day of rest. The fact that he was doing so added a pang to her own trouble. Total disarrangement, chaos, all the old habitudes of life gone to wreck, and only desperation and misery left, was the sensation produced by that interruption of all religious use and wont. It came upon her with an acute sting, to think that her poor young minister was travelling that Sunday; just as in Arthur’s own experience at that same moment, the utter incoherence, chaos, and wretchedness into which his life had suddenly fallen, breathed upon him in the sound of the church-bells.

“Dear me, I am very sorry!” said Mrs. Tufton; “some fever or something, I suppose—something that’s catching? Dear, dear me, I am so sorry! but there are some people that never take infection; a little camphor is such a nice thing to carry about—it can’t do any harm, you know. Mrs. Tozer tells me he is a very nice young man, Mr. Vincent’s friend from ’Omerton. I don’t like to say such a thing of a girl, but I do believe your son could have that Phoebe any day for asking, Mrs. Vincent. I can’t bear forward girls, for my part—that is her just going into the pew, with the pink bonnet; oh, you know her!—to be sure, Mrs. Pigeon remarked you were sure to go there; though I should have hoped we would have seen you as soon as any one in Carlingford.”

“Indeed, I have been much disappointed not to call. I—I hope I shall—tomorrow,” said the widow, to whom tomorrow loomed dark like another world, and who could not help repeating over and over the dreaded name.

“That is Maria Pigeon all in white—to be only tradespeople they do dress more than I approve of,” said Mrs. Tufton. “My Adelaide, I am sure, never went like that. Many people think Maria a deal nicer-looking than Phœbe Tozer, but her mother is so particular—more than particular—what I call troublesome, you know. You can’t turn round without giving her offence. Dear me, how my tongue is going! the minister would say I was just at my old imprudent tricks—but you, that were a minister’s wife, can understand. She is such a difficult woman to deal with. I am sure Mr. Tufton is always telling them to wait, and that Mr. Vincent is a young man yet, and experience is all he wants. I wish he had a good wife to keep him straight; but I don’t know that that would be advisable either, because of Phœbe and the rest. Dear, dear, it is a difficult thing to know what to do!—but Mr. Tufton always says, If he had a little more experience—— Bless me, the young man is in the pulpit!” said Mrs. Tufton, coming to a sudden standstill, growing very red, and picking up her hymn-book. Very seldom had the good woman such a chance of talk. She ran herself so out of breath that she could not join in that first hymn.

But Mrs. Vincent, who had a sensation that the pew, and indeed the whole chapel, trembled with the trembling that was in her own frame, but who felt at the same time that everybody was looking at her, and that Arthur’s credit was involved, stood up steadfastly, holding her book firm in both her hands, and with an effort almost too much for her, the heroism of a martyr, added her soft voice, touched with age, yet still melodious and true, to the song of praise. The words choked her as she uttered them, yet with a kind of desperate courage she kept on. Praise!—it happened to be a very effusive hymn that day, an utterance of unmitigated thanksgiving; fortunately she had not sufficient command of her mind or wits to see clearly what she was singing, or to enter into the wonderful bitter difference between the thanks she was uttering and the position in which she stood. Could she give God thanks for Susan’s ruin, or rejoice in the light He had given, when it revealed only misery? She was not called upon to answer that hard question. She stood up mechanically with her white face set in pale steadfastness, and was only aware that she was singing, keeping the tune, and making herself noways remarked among the crowd of strange people, many of whom turned curious eyes towards her. She stood with both her feet set firm on the floor, both her hands holding fast to the book, and over the ache of frightful suspense in her heart came the soft voice of her singing, which for once in her life meant nothing except a forlorn determination to keep up and hold herself erect and vigilant, sentinel over Arthur’s fortunes and his people’s thoughts.

Mr. Beecher’s sermon was undeniably clever; the Salem folks pricked up their ears at the sound of it, recalling as it did that period of delightful excitation when they were hearing candidates, and felt themselves the dispensers of patronage. That was over now, and they were wedded to one; but the bond of union between themselves and their pastor was far from being indissoluble, and they contemplated this new aspirant to their favour with feelings stimulated and piquant, as a not inconsolable husband, likely to become a widower, might contemplate the general female public, out of which candidates for the problematically vacant place might arise. Mrs. Pigeon, who was the leader of the opposition, and whose daughter Mr. Vincent had not distinguished, whose house he had not specially frequented, and whom, most of all, he had passed in the street without recognition, made a note of this man from ’Omerton. If the painful necessity of dismissing the present pastor should occur—as such things did occur, deplorable though they were—it might be worth while sending for Mr. Beecher. She made a note of him privately in her mind, as she sat listening with ostentatious attention, nodding her head now and then by way of assent to his statements. Mrs. Vincent remarked her as she watched the congregation from the minister’s pew, with her jealous mother’s eyes. The Tozers were not so devoted in their listening. Mrs. Tozer’s brilliant cherry-coloured bonnet visibly drooped once or twice with a blessed irregularity of motion; all these signs Mrs. Vincent perceived as she sat in preternatural acute consciousness of everything round her, by Mrs. Tufton’s side. She was even aware that the sermon was clever; she remembered expressions in it long after, which somehow got burned in, without any will of hers, upon her breaking heart. The subdued anguish that was in her collected fuel for its own silent consuming fire, even in the congregation of Salem, where, very upright, very watchful, afraid to relax her strained nerves even by leaning back or forward, she lived through the long service as if through a year of suffering.

The congregation dispersed in a buzz of talk and curiosity. Everybody wanted to know where the minister had gone, and what had taken him away. “I can’t say as I think he’s using of us well,” said somebody, whom Mrs. Vincent could hear as she made her way to the door. “Business of his own! a minister ain’t got no right to have business of his own, leastways on Sundays. Preaching’s his business. I don’t hold with that notion. He’s in our employ, and we pays him well——”

Here a whisper from some charitable bystander directed the speaker’s eyes to Mrs. Vincent, who was close behind.

“Well! it ain’t nothing to me who hears me,” said this rebellious member, not without a certain vulgar pleasure in his power of insult. “We pays him well, as I say; I have to stick to my business well or ill, and I don’t see no reason why the minister should be different. If he don’t mind us as pays him, why, another will.”

“Oh, I’ve been waiting to catch your eye,” said Mrs. Pigeon, darting forward at this crisis to Mrs. Tufton; “wasn’t that a sweet sermon? that’s refreshing, that is! I haven’t listened to anything as has roused me up like that—no, not since dear Mr. Tufton came first to Carlingford; as for what we’ve been hearing of late, I don’t say it’s not clever, but, oh, it’s cold! and for them as like good gospel preaching and rousing up, I must confess as Mr. Vincent——”

“Hush! Mrs. Pigeon—Mrs. Vincent,” said Mrs. Tufton, hurriedly; “you two ladies should have been introduced at the first. Mr. Pigeon is one of our deacons and leading men, Mrs. Vincent, and I don’t doubt you’ve often and often heard your son talking of him. We are always discussing Mr. Vincent, because he is our own pastor now, you know; and a precious young man he is—and all that he wants is a little experience, as Mr. Tufton always says.”

“Oh, I am sorry!— I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” cried Mrs. Pigeon; “but I am one as always speaks my mind, and don’t go back of my word. Folks as sees a deal of the minister,” continued the poulterer’s wife, not without a glance at that cherry-coloured bonnet which had nodded during the sermon, and to which poor Mrs. Vincent felt a certain gratitude, “may know different; but me as don’t have much chance, except in chapel, I will say as I think he wants speaking to: most folks do—specially young folks, when they’re making a start in the world. He’s too high, he is, for us plain Salem folks; what we want is a man as preaches gospel sermons—real rousing-up discourses—and sits down pleasant to his tea, and makes hisself friendly. I never was one as thought a minister couldn’t do wrong. I always said as they were just like other men, liking grand dinners and grand folks, and the vanities of this world; not meaning no offence, Mrs. Vincent, neither to you nor the minister—but I must say as I think, he’s a deal too high.”

“My son has had very good training,” said the widow, not without dignity. “His dear father had many good friends who have taken an interest in him. He has always been accustomed to good society, and I must say, at the same time,” added Mrs. Vincent, “that I never knew Arthur to fail in courtesy to the poorer brethren. If he has done so, I am sure it has been unintentionally. It is quite against my principles and his dear father’s to show any respect to persons. If he has shown any neglect of Mrs. Pigeon’s family,” continued the mild diplomatist, “it must have been because he thought them less, and not more in need of him than the rest of the flock.”

Mrs. Pigeon listened with open mouth, but total discomfiture: whether this was a compliment or a reprimand was totally beyond her power to make out. She cried, “Oh, I’m sure!” in a tone which was half defensive and half deprecating. Mrs. Pigeon, however, intended nothing less than to terminate the conversation at this interesting point, and it was with utter dismay that she perceived Mrs. Vincent sweep past before she had recovered herself—sweep past—though that black silk gown was of very moderate dimensions, and the trim little figure was noways majestic. The minister’s mother made a curtsy to the astonished wife of the poulterer; she said “good morning” with a gracious bow, and went upon her way before Mrs. Pigeon had recovered her breath. Perfect victory attended the gentle widow in this little passage of arms. Her assailant fell back, repeating in a subdued tone, “Well, I’m sure!” Mrs. Pigeon, like Tozer, granted that the minister’s mother was “quite the lady,” henceforward, in her heart.

And Mrs. Vincent passed on victorious; yes, victorious, and conscious of her victory, though giddy with secret anguish, and feeling as if every obstacle that hindered her return was a conscious cruelty. They could not have arrived this morning—it was impossible; yet she burned to get back to see whether impossibility might not be accomplished for once, and Susan be there awaiting her. The first to detain her was Mrs. Tufton, who hurried, with added respect, after her, triumphing secretly in Mrs. Pigeon’s defeat.

“I am so glad you gave her her answer,” said Mrs. Tufton; “bless me! how pleased Adelaide will be when I tell her! I always said it would be well for a minister’s wife to have a spirit. Won’t you come and take a bit of dinner with us, as Mr. Vincent is not at home? Oh, I daresay somebody will ask Mr. Beecher. It does not do to pay too much attention to the young men that come to preach—though I think he was clever. You won’t come?—a headache?—poor dear! You’re worrying about your daughter, I am sure; but I wouldn’t, if I were you. Young girls in health don’t take infection. She’ll come back all right, you’ll see. Well—good-bye. Don’t come in the evening if you have a headache. I shouldn’t, if I were you. Good-bye—and to-morrow, if all is well, we’ll look for you. Siloam Cottage—just a little way past Salem—you can’t miss the way.”

“Yes, thank you—to-morrow,” said Mrs. Vincent. If only anybody could have known what dreadful work it was keeping up that smile, holding upright as she did! Then she went on a little way in peace, half-crazed with the misery that consumed her, yet unnaturally vigilant and on the alert, always holding up Arthur’s standard at that critical hour when he had no representative but herself in his field of battle. But the poor mother was not long allowed this interval of peace. After a few minutes, the Tozers, who were going the same way, came up to her, and surrounded her like a bodyguard.

“I liked that sermon, ma’am,” said Tozer; “there was a deal that was practical in that sermon. If ever we should be in the way of hearing candidates again—and shortsighted creatures like us never knows what’s a-going to happen—I’d put down that young man’s name for an ’earing. There ain’t a word to be said again’ the minister’s sermons in the matter of talent. They’re full of mind, ma’am—they’re philosophical, that’s what they are; and the pews we’ve let in Salem since he come, proves it, let folks say what they will. But if there is a want, it’s in the application. He don’t press it home upon their consciences, not as some on us expected; and Mr. Tufton being all in that line, as you may say, makes it show the more. If I was going to make a change again—not as I mean nothing of the kind, nor as the Salem folks has ever took it into their heads— I’d like to have a little o’ both ways, that’s what I’d like.”

“When you get a minister of independent-mind, Mr. Tozer, if he gives you the best he has, he ought to be allowed to choose his own way,” said Mrs. Vincent. “My dear husband always said so, and he had great experience. Mr. Vincent’s son, I know, will never want friends.”

“I am sure as long as the minister keeps to his duty, he’ll always find friends in Tozer and me,” said the deacon’s wife, striking in; “and though there may be folks in a finer way, there ain’t no such good friends a pastor can have as in his own flock. As for hearing candidates and that, Tozer ought to know as none on us would hear of such a thing. I don’t see no reason why Mr. Vincent shouldn’t settle down in Carlingford and make himself comfortable. We’re all his friends as long as he’s at his post.”

“Oh, ma, I am sure he is at his post,” cried Phoebe; “he has gone away because he could not help it. I am quite sure,” continued the modest maiden, casting down her eyes, “that he would never have left but for a good reason! Oh, I am confident he is fond of Carlingford now. He would not go away if he had not some duty— I am certain he would not!”

“If Phoebe is better informed than the rest of us, it ain’t nobody’s business as I can see,” said the father, with a short laugh. “I always like the young folks to manage them matters among themselves; but I take my own view, miss, for all that.”

“Oh, Pa, how can you talk so,” cried Phœbe, in virgin confusion, “to make Mrs. Vincent think——”

“Indeed, nothing will make me think otherwise than I know,” said Mrs. Vincent, with a voice which extinguished Phœbe. “I understand my son. He does not bestow his confidence very easily; and I am sure he is quite able to manage all the matters he may have in hand,” added the widow, not without significance. Not all her anxiety for Arthur, not all her personal wretchedness, could unwoman the minister’s mother so much as to make her forgive or overlook Phœbe’s presumption. She could not have let this pretendant to her son’s affections off without transfixing her with a passing arrow. Human endurance has its limits. Mrs. Vincent could bear anything for Arthur except this pretence of a special interest in him.

“Oh, I am sure I never meant——!” faltered Phœbe; but she could get no further, and even her mother did not come to the rescue.

“Them things had much best not be talked of,” said Mrs. Tozer, sharply. “Mr. Beecher is coming in to have a bit of dinner. You mightn’t have things comfortable where you are, the minister being away, and you used to your own house. Won’t you come in with us and eat a bit of dinner? I never can swallow a morsel when I’m by myself. It’s lonesome for you in them rooms, and us so near. There ain’t no ceremony nor nonsense, but we’ll be pleased if you’ll come.”

“Thank you very much,” said Mrs. Vincent, who could not forget that the cherry-coloured bonnet had nodded during Mr. Beecher’s sermon, “but I slept badly last night. At my time of life a new bed often makes one sleepless, and I have a bad headache. I think I will go and lie down. Many thanks. It is very kind of you to ask me. I hope I shall see you,” said the widow, with a slight shiver, repeating her formula, “to-morrow.”

“You can’t take us amiss,” said Mrs. Tozer; “there’s always enough for an extra one, if it isn’t grand or any ceremony; or if you’ll come to tea and go to church with us at night? Phœbe can run over and see how you find yourself. Good mornin’. I’m sorry you’ll not come in.”

“Oh, I wish you would let me go with you and nurse you,” said Phœbe, not without a glance in the other direction at the approaching form of the young man from ’Omerton, “I am so frightened you don’t like me!—but I’ll come over before tea, and sit with you if your headache is not better. If I could only make you fancy I was Miss Vincent!” said Phœbe, with pink pleading looks.

Mrs. Vincent turned away more smartly under the effect of that stimulant. She crossed George Street, towards her son’s rooms, a solitary little figure, in the flood of winter sunshine—not dismal to look at, save for its black dress, trim, alert, upright still. And the heart within, which ached with positive throbs of pain, had roused up under that last provocation, and was stinging with indignation and anger, pure womanly, and not to be deadened by any anguish. Phoebe’s impertinence, as she called it to herself, took her out of her own far heavier trouble. To think of that pink creature having designs upon her boy, and taking upon herself little airs of conquest! To encounter Phoebe’s wiles overwhelmed Arthur with shame and annoyance; but they exasperated his mother. She went home with a steadier ring in her little light footstep. But the fumes of that temporary excitement had faded when the door opened upon her—the blank door, with the little maid open-mouthed behind, who did not look her in the face, and who had nothing to communicate: the sitting-room up-stairs lay blank in utter solitude—all the books put away according to Sunday custom, and the cover of Arthur’s letter lying on the table startling his mother into wild hopes that some other communication had come for her. She sank down upon a chair, and covered her pale face with her hands—torture intolerable, unendurable; but oh, how certainly to be endured and put up with! This poor mother, who had met with many a heavy sorrow in her day, though never any so hideous as this, was no excitable, passionate creature, but a wholesome, daylight woman, in whom no strain of superlative emotions had choked up the natural channels of relief. She wept a few bitter, heavy tears under cover of her clasped hands—tears which took away the dreadful pressure upon her brain, and made it easier to bear for the moment. Then she went away in her patience, and took off her bonnet, and prepared herself for the calm of the dreadful day of which so small a portion had yet passed. She pretended to dine, that no outlet might be left to gossip on that score. She took a good book and lay down upon the sofa in the awful silence—the moments creeping, stealing over her in a tedious procession which she could almost see—the silence throbbing all around as if with the beats of her own heart; how was it that the walls of the house stood steady with those throbs palpitating within their dull enclosure? But there was this comfort at least, that nobody fathomed Mrs. Vincent in that speechless martyrdom of hers—nobody guessed the horror in her heart—nobody imagined that there was anything of tragic meaning under that composed aspect. She went to church again in the evening to escape Phoebe’s “nursing,” and sat there choking with the anticipation that meantime her son was bringing Susan home. She walked home with Beecher, devoured by feverish hopes and fears, found still no one there, with an unutterable pang, yet relief, and sat with the young man from ’Omerton for a horrible hour or two, till the strain had all but killed her. But nobody came; nobody came all through the hideous night. Holding with half-frantic hands to the thread of life, which could ill bear this total want of all its usual sustenance, but which must not be sacrificed for her children’s sake—keeping alive, she could not tell how, without food, without rest, without even prayer—nothing but a fever of dumb entreaty coming to her mind when she sought some forlorn comfort from the mere fact of going on her knees— Mrs. Vincent lived through the night and the morning. Another horrible, sunshiny, cheerful day; but no sound in earth or heaven to say they were coming—no arrival, no letter—nothing but hopeless, sickening, intolerable suspense—suspense all the more intolerable because it had to be borne.

CHAPTER II.

TO-MORROW! to-morrow was Monday morning, a new day, a new work-week—cheerful, healthful, and exhilarating—bright with that frosty sunshine, which carried comparative comfort to many a poor house in Carlingford. The widow’s face was sharper, paler, of a wonderful ashy colour. Nature could not go on under such a struggle without showing signs of it. Beecher, who was not to go until a late train, took leave of her as soon as he could, not without a little fright, and betook himself to Tozer’s, where he said she overawed him with her grand manners, and where he was led to admit that Vincent had always been a little “high.” If she could have abandoned herself to her dreadful vigil, perhaps Mrs. Vincent might have found it easier, perhaps harder—she herself thought the former; but she dared not give up to it. She had to set her face like a flint—she was Arthur’s representative, and had still to show a steadfast front of battle for him, and if not discomfit, still confront his enemies. She had to call at Siloam Cottage, at Mrs. Tozer’s, to do what else might be necessary for the propitiation of the flock. She never dreamed of saying to herself that she could not do it; there was no question of that; the flag had to be kept flying for Arthur. No friend of his must be jeopardised, no whisper allowed to rise which his mother could prevent: she had been a minister’s wife for thirty years; well had she learned in that time, like Mrs. Tufton, that a deal of attention was needed to keep all things straight.

Accordingly, in the height of her excitement and anxiety, believing that any moment the poor fugitive might be brought home, the widow, in her unflinching martyrdom, once more put on her bonnet, and drew out her black ribbon into bows of matchless neatness. Though she wrung her poor hands in speechless anguish as she went out of the room, it was with composed, though colourless lips, that she spoke to the little maid in the hall. “Mr. Vincent may come home any time to-day,” said the widow; “you must have some lunch ready, and tea; perhaps his sister may be with him—or—or she may come alone. Any one who comes is to be taken up-stairs. I will not be long gone; and I am going to Mrs. Tufton’s, if anybody should want me——”

At this moment a knock came to the door—a hurried single knock, always alarming, and sounding like an evil omen. Mrs. Vincent’s voice failed her at that sound—most likely her face went into convulsive twitches, for the maid stood staring at her, too much startled to open the door, until a wild gesture from the speechless woman, who was herself unable to move, her breath almost forsaking her, and coming in sobs, recalled the girl to her senses. The door was opened, and Mrs. Vincent stood with burning eyes gazing out. Ah, not Susan! never Susan!—a little, stout, rustic figure, all weary and dishevelled, looking ashamed, frightened, almost disreputable in utter forlornness and unhappiness. Mrs. Vincent gave a great sob to get breath, and dropped upon the chair, and held out her hand to Mary. She had forgotten Mary—forgotten her momentary comfort in the fact that Susan’s flight was not alone. Now was it life or death the girl was bringing? She drew the frightened creature near, close, and shrieked, as she thought, her question in her ear. “What? what?” said Mrs. Vincent in her own mind; but no sound came to Mary’s ears.

“O missis dear, missis dear!” sobbed the girl. “I’ve been and told Mr. Arthur exact where she is—he’s gone to fetch her home. O missis, don’t take on! they’ll soon be here. Miss Susan’s living, she ain’t dead. O missis, missis, she ain’t dead—it might be worse nor it is.”

At these words Mrs. Vincent roused herself up once more. “My daughter has been ill,” she said in gasps, turning a dreadful look upon the servant of the house. Then she rose, took hold of Mary’s arm, and went up-stairs with her, holding her fast. She shut the door with her own hands when they got back to the lonely parlour full of daylight and silence. “Miss Susan has been ill?” she said once more with parched lips, looking again, with that full blank gaze which seemed to deny and defy any other answer, in Mary’s frightened face.

“O missis, don’t take on!” sobbed the terrified girl.

“No, oh no, no, that is impossible. I can’t take on, Mary, if I would—oh no, not now,” said the poor widow, with what seemed a momentary wandering of her strained senses. “Tell me all— I am ready to hear it all.”

And then Mary began the pitiful story, the same they had heard in Lonsdale—the sudden arrival of the girl and her governess, and innocent Susan’s puzzled interest in them; Mr. Fordham’s appearance afterwards, his sudden snatch at the stranger, his ready use of Arthur’s letter, which Susan was disturbed about, to persuade her that she must instantly go to her mother and set all right; the journey bringing them late at night to an unknown place, which, with the boom of the unexpected sea in their ears, the defenceless deceived creatures found out not to be Carlingford. Mary knew nothing of the scene which had been enacted up-stairs, when the villanous scheme was made known to the unhappy victim. She could tell nothing but by guesses of what had passed and followed, and Mary, of course, by a natural certainty, guessed the worst. But next day Susan had written to her mother, either because she was still deceived or still innocent; and the next day again Mary was sent away under a pretence of being sent to church, and the false Fordham himself had conducted her to town and left her there. Such was Mary’s tale. Last night she had met Mr. Arthur and given him the address. Now, no doubt, they were on their way,—if only missis would not take on! “No,” said the widow once more, with speechless lips. Take on! oh no, never more. Surely all these light afflictions that could bring tears were over now—nothing but horror and agony remained. The poor mother sat for a little in a dreadful silence, aching all over her anguished frame. Nothing was to be said or done; the pause of utter misery, in which thought itself had no place, but one horrible sensation of suffering was all that remained of life, passed over her; then a faint agonised smile fluttered upon her white lips. She drew on her glove again slowly and with pain. “I must go out, Mary,” said Arthur’s mother. “I must do my duty if the world were all breaking up, as I—I think it is; and you must stay here and tell my poor darling her mother will come back to her directly. And don’t talk to the other servant, Mary. You shall be like my own child if you will stand by us now.”

“O missis dear, not a word—not if it was to save my life!” said poor Mary, through her tears.

And in her bravery and desperation the widow went out to her other forlorn hope. She went away out of the doors which enclosed at least the knowledge of this event, through the everyday streets, where, if there were other tragedies, nobody knew of them any more than of hers. She had her veil over her face, on which that shadow had settled, and no one could have suspected her of carrying a broken heart through those sunshiny ways. She could not think or anticipate or even fear anything further. Susan might die under that load of shame and anguish, but her mother apprehended, was sensible of, nothing more. The worst had come, except for Arthur, who might be helped out of his troubles. So, stunned and hopeless, she set out to visit Arthur’s people, with a courage more desperate than that of battle. That was the duty which must be done if the world went to pieces—to talk to Adelaide Tufton and hear her sharp criticism and bitter gossip—to listen to the old minister dawdling forth his slow sentiments—to visit the Tozers and soothe their feelings, and hear what they had to say. An auto-da-fé in the old Spanish fashion would have been easier, to be sure; but this was how the minister’s mother, in the depths of unknown anguish and calamity, was expected to exert herself, the only way she could serve her son.

The parlour in Siloam Cottage was as green and obscure, as warm and close, as of old. The big geranium had grown, and covered the little window still more completely, and the fire burned with virulence, conscious of the frost. The minister’s invalid daughter, with the colourless face and sharp eyes, was still knitting, leaning back upon her pillows. Poor Mrs. Vincent, when she sat down, as near the door as possible, feeling as if she could not get breath, became immediately aware that to confront those eyes was a more dangerous process than any which she had yet been subjected to in Carlingford. They penetrated through her, keen with the restless life and curiosity, which made up to that disabled woman for the privations of her existence. In the dim green parlour the minister’s mother saw nothing but Adelaide Tufton’s eyes. If they had been beautiful eyes the effect would have been less surprising; but they were not beautiful; they were pale blue, and had something of the shrill shining of a rainy sky in the glistening white, which counted for far more than the faint watery colour. Mrs. Vincent gave way before them as she had never yet done. She cast down her own eyes, and drew back her chair, and even faltered in her speech, when she was obliged to face their observation. The danger was all the greater for being unexpected. As for Mrs. Tufton, that good woman was in a flutter of interest and sympathy. She wanted to know whether Susan had gone through all the orthodox number of fevers and youthful ailments, and was in her element talking of the merits of camphor as a preventive, and of all the means that might be used to avoid infection.

“When my children were young, and their papa always being noted for so active a man among his people, I don’t know what I should have done if I had been easily frightened,” said Mrs. Tufton. “Don’t worry—keep her quiet, and give her——”

“Mrs. Vincent never said she was afraid of infection,” said Adelaide. “Is it typhus fever? My mother jumps at everything, and never stops to inquire. I daresay it’s something quite different. Love affairs? Oh no; of course we don’t want you to tell us. I don’t think Phœbe Tozer will die of her failure. This young man from Homerton will console her. Has your son recovered his little affair with the young Dowager, Mrs. Vincent? He dined there, you know. I daresay his head was turned; but there is one safeguard with those fine ladies. If a man has his wits about him, he can always know that they mean nothing all the time.”

“Indeed, I don’t know what you mean. My son knows Lady Western, I believe; I remember one time he dined there. My Arthur,” said the mother, with a faint smile, “is not one to have his head turned. He has been used to be thought a great deal of at home.”

“Ah, he’s a precious young man!” said Mr. Tufton, see-sawing the air with his large grey hand. “I am much interested in my dear young brother. He thinks too much, perhaps—too much—of pleasing the carnal mind; and my people, that have been used to practical preaching so long, find the difference. But when he has deeper experiences——”

“Stuff!” said the invalid, turning her head half aside; “you know the chapel has filled since he came. Even when they are asses like your Salem people, you know they like a man with brains. I don’t see that it matters much what Mr. Vincent goes wrong in; he was sure to go wrong somehow. I gave him six months, but he has got through the six months, and they have not killed him off yet. What does he mean, thrusting himself into other people’s messes? As far as I can make out, it’s quite a little tragedy. There was that Mrs. Hilyard, you know—the woman in Back Grove Street. Ah, you know her!” said Adelaide, keenly, seeing the little shiver with which the visitor received the name.

“I have heard my son speak of her,” said the widow, faintly.

“She was some connection of the Bedford family,” said Adelaide, going on, with her curious eyes fixed on Mrs. Vincent’s face, who quailed before her, “and she married a half brother of Lady Western’s—a desperate rascal he was. They had one baby, and then she left him—one baby, a girl, that has grown up an idiot; and here this lady lives—a poor needle-woman—to keep the girl safe, somehow, out of her father’s hand. Why he should want to have her I can’t exactly tell. I suspect, because she’s pretty, to make a decoy of her, and sell her somehow, either to be married, or worse——”

“Adelaide!” cried Mrs. Tufton; “oh, my dear, do mind what you’re saying; Mrs. Vincent does not know you. What can she think if you talk like that?”

“Mrs. Vincent sees well enough I am not a girl to be frightened for words,” said the sick woman. “Now, what I want to know is, what has your son to do with it? He’s gone off after them, now, for some reason or other; of course I don’t expect you to tell me. Perhaps Lady Western has sent him?—never mind, I will find out; but I know it has something to do with Mrs. Hilyard, for they both went off from Carlingford the same day. I have no share in life for myself,” said Adelaide, with another keen look at the stranger; “and so, instead of comforting myself that it’s all for the best, as papa says, I interfere with my fellow-creatures. Oh, pray, don’t be sorry for me! I get on as well as most people. Nobody in this place ever succeeds in concealing anything from me.”

“Indeed it is a pity when people have anything to conceal,” said poor Mrs. Vincent, thinking, with a sensation of deadly sickness at her heart, of the awful secret which was in Mary’s keeping, and faltering, in spite of all her self-command. She rose up hurriedly, when she met once more the glance of those sharp eyes: she could not bear that investigation; all her dreadful suspense and excitement seemed to ooze out unawares, and betray themselves; her only safety seemed in flight.

“This is a very short visit,” said Mr. Tufton. “My dear anxious sister, we can only pray you may be comforted. All things work together for good; you don’t need to be told that. It’s sure to be for the best, whatever happens: take that consolation to your heart—it’s sure to be for the best.”

“If her daughter dies and her son is dismissed, I wonder will that be for the best?” said Adelaide Tufton, as soon as the widow had left the room. Mrs. Vincent’s ears, made acute by suffering, caught enough of this valedictory address to realise, if that were possible, an additional pang. Kind Mrs. Tufton did not hear it, not being in any such state of feverish susceptibility. She, on the contrary, kissed the mother, whom she pitied with all her heart, and entreated her not to worry. “A young healthy girl does not fall ill for nothing. You’ll see things will turn out all right,” said the kind soul; and Mrs. Vincent went upon her forlorn way.

At Mrs. Tozer’s the minister’s mother found a little committee assembled. Mrs. Brown was there from the Devonshire Dairy, and Mrs. Pigeon, whose gratification in being able to hail Mrs. Vincent as an acquaintance, to the confusion of the dairywoman and amazement of Mrs. Tozer, almost restored the minister to that lady’s favour. They were in the drawing-room, where, in honour of the expected visitors, a fire had been lighted; and as Mrs. Vincent ascended the dark staircase, she obtained a passing glimpse of Mr. Beecher seated at the table in the parlour studying “The Railway Guide,” which Phœbe expounded to him, until they were both sent for up-stairs. Altogether the conjunction did not look promising for Arthur’s interests. She went in thrilling with a touch of exasperation and defiance. Now was the time to make a final stand for Arthur. This covert rebellion could be deprecated no longer.

“I expect my son home to-day,” said the brave mother, gulping down all the pangs of her expectation. “I think, now that I see for myself how much he is thought of in Carlingford, I ought to make an apology to the Salem people. It was I that induced him to go away, not thinking that one Sunday would be such a great matter; but indeed it was very gratifying to me to see how disappointed everybody was. I hope Mr. Beecher will pardon me, for I am sure he preached us a very nice sermon, and we were all grateful for it; but, naturally on my dear boy’s account, to see how disappointed everybody was, was a great gratification to me.”

“Oh! I did not mind,” said Mr. Beecher, with a little laugh of embarrassment; but the young man was much taken aback, and stared with astonished looks before he answered, at this totally unexpected address. Having thus floored one of her adversaries, and seeing the female foe more voluble and ready, quite prepared to answer her, Mrs. Vincent blandly proceeded.

“And this, you know, Mrs. Tozer, was all the more gratifying to me, because I was not quite sure that Arthur had done wisely in choosing Carlingford. His dear father had so many friends in our denomination, and people are so kind as to speak of my boy as such a rising young man. Before I knew Carlingford,” said the widow, looking round her with an air of gentle superiority, “I used to regret my son had not accepted the invitation from Liverpool. Many people said to me that his talents would have had so much more room there; but I am reconciled now,” she added, turning her mild eyes upon Mrs. Pigeon, who showed symptoms of resistance. “I may say I am quite satisfied now. He would have been better off, and had more opportunity of making himself a position in Liverpool, but what is that in comparison with the attachment of a flock?”

“Well, indeed, that’s just the thing, ma’am,” said Mrs. Brown, who imagined herself addressed; “we are fond of him. I always said he was an uncommon nice young man; and if he was but to settle down——”

“That will come in time,” said the minister’s mother, graciously; “and I am glad, for my part, that he has been away, for it shows me how his dear people feel towards him; and though he would have been, of course, better off in Liverpool, I would never consider that in comparison. They still want to have him, you know, and keep writing me letters, and him too, I don’t doubt; but after what I have seen, I could never advise him to break the link that has been formed here. The connection between pastor and people is a sacred tie; it should never be broken,” said Mrs. Vincent, with mild grandeur, “for anything so poor as a money object; but my dear boy is far above any such consideration as that.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Pigeon, drawing a long breath of involuntary awe and admiration; “and I don’t doubt as the pastor would have been a deal better off in Liverpool,” she added, after a pause, quite overpowered by that master-stroke.

“It’s a deal bigger a place,” suggested Mrs. Tozer; “and grander folks, I don’t have a doubt,” she too added, after an interval. This new idea took away their breath.

“But, ah! what is that to affection,” said Arthur’s artful mother, “when a minister has the love of his flock! My dear Mrs. Pigeon, though a mother is naturally anxious for her son, nothing on earth would induce me to advise him to break such a tie as that!”

“And indeed, ma’am, it’s as a Christian mother should act,” gasped the poulterer’s subdued wife. Mrs. Brown made a little movement of admiring assent, much impressed with the fine sentiments of the minister’s mother. Phœbe put her handkerchief to her eyes, and Mr. Beecher found it was time for his train. “Tell Vincent I am very glad to have been of use to him. We were all delighted in ’Omerton to hear of him making such an ’it,” said Mr. Beecher, friendly but discomfited. He made his leave-taking all round, before Mrs. Vincent, at the height of victory, rose and went her way. Then she, too, shook hands, and blandly parted with the astonished women. They remained behind, and laid their heads together, much subdued, over this totally new light. She departed, gently victorious. This little demonstration had done her good. When she got out into the street, however, she fell down again into those depths of despair out of which she had risen so bravely for Arthur’s sake. She began to plan how she and Susan could go away—not to Lonsdale—never again to Lonsdale—but to some unknown place, and hide their shame-stricken heads. She was so weary and sick in her heart, it was almost a comfort to think of creeping into some corner, taking her poor darling into her arms, healing those dreadful wounds of hers, hiding her from the sight of men. This was what they must do as soon as her dearest child came back—go to Scotland, perhaps, or into the primitive south country, where nobody knew them, or—— but softly, who was this?

A new claim upon the overworked anxious soul. At the door of her son’s house stood a carriage—an open carriage—luxurious and handsome, with two fine horses impatiently pawing the air, and a very fine footman at the door, talking to the little maid. Within the carriage, the same beautiful young woman whom Mrs. Vincent remembered to have seen waving a lovely hand to Arthur. No doubt it was Lady Western. The beauty did not bewilder Mrs. Vincent as she had bewildered Mrs. Vincent’s son; but, with a thrill of mingled pride, admiration, and disapproval, she hastened forward at sight of her. Could she be asking for Arthur?—and could Arthur have ventured to love that lovely creature in her radiance of wealth and rank? With a mother’s involuntary self-delusion Mrs. Vincent looked at the beautiful vision as at Arthur’s possible bride, and was proud and displeased at the same moment; proud, that anything so lovely and splendid was to fall to her son’s lot—disapproving, that Arthur’s chosen should offer a mark of favour even to Arthur, so much more decided than accorded with the widow’s old-fashioned notion of what became a woman. Mrs. Vincent did not think of the other figure by Lady Western’s side—a man of great height, very slight, and rapid in his movements, with a long brown beard, and thoughtful eyes—eyes which lightened up and became as keen as they were dreamy, whenever occasion arose. Why should the widow look at him? She had nothing to do with him. This once in their life they were to come into momentary contact—never more.

“Mr. Vincent ain’t at home—but oh, look year!—here’s his mother as can tell you better nor me,” cried the half-frightened maid at the door.

“His mother?” said the beautiful creature in the carriage; she had alighted in a moment, and was by Mrs. Vincent’s side—“Oh, I am so glad to see Mr. Vincent’s mother! I am Lady Western—he has told you of me?” she said, taking the widow’s hand; “take us in, please, and let us talk to you—we will not tease you—we have something important to say.”

“Important to us—not to Mrs. Vincent,” said the gentleman who followed her, a remarkable figure, in his loose light-coloured morning dress; and his eyes fell with a remorseful pity upon the widow, standing, drawn-back, and self-restrained, upon the ground of her conscious misery, not knowing whether to hope that they brought her news, or to steel herself into a commonplace aspect of civility. This man had a heart; he looked from the brilliant creature before him, all flushed and radiant with her own happiness, to the little woman by her side, in her pitiful widow’s dress, in her visible paleness and desperation of self-control. It was he who had brought Lady Western here to put his own innocence beyond doubt, but the cruelty of that selfish impulse struck him now as he saw them stand together. “Important to us—not to Mrs. Vincent,” he said again, taking off his hat to her with devout respect.

“Ah, yes! to us,” said Lady Western, looking up to him with a momentary gleam of love and happiness. Then the pretty tender-hearted creature changed her look, and composed her countenance into sympathy. “I am so sorry for you, dear Mrs. Vincent!” she said, with the saddest voice. At this the widow on her part started, and was recalled to herself.

“I am a stranger in Carlingford,” said the mild little woman, drawing up her tiny figure. “I do not know what has procured me this pleasure—but all my son’s friends are welcome to me. I will show you the way up-stairs,” she continued, going up before them with the air of dignity which, after the hard battles and encounters and bitter wounds of this day, became the heroic little figure. She sent Mary, who started up in dismay at her entrance, into another room, and gave Lady Western a chair, but herself continued standing, always the conservator of Arthur’s honour. If Arthur loved her, who was this man? why did such glances pass between them? Mrs. Vincent stood erect before Lady Western, and did not yield even to the winning looks for which poor Arthur would have given his life.

“Oh, dear Mrs. Vincent, I am so sorry for you!” said Lady Western again; “I know it all, and it makes my heart bleed to think of it. I will be your friend and your daughter’s friend as long as I live, if you will let me. Oh, don’t shut your heart against me! Mr. Vincent trusts me, and so must you; and I am heartbroken to think all that you must have gone through——”

“Stop!” said Mrs. Vincent, with a gasp. “I—I cannot tell—what you mean,” she articulated, with difficulty, holding by the table to support herself, but looking with unflinching eyes in her new persecutor’s face.

“Oh, don’t shut your heart against me!” cried the young dowager, with genuine tears in her lovely eyes. “This gentleman was with Mr. Vincent yesterday—he came up here this morning. He is—Mr. Fordham.” She broke off abruptly with a terrified cry. But Mrs. Vincent had not died or fainted standing rigid there before her, as the soft creature thought. Her eyes had only taken that blank lustreless gaze, because the force of emotion beneath was too much for them, and inexpressible. Even in that extremity, it was in the widow’s heart, wrung to desperation, to keep her standing-ground of assumed ignorance, and not to know what this sudden offer of sympathy could mean.

“I do not know—the gentleman,” she said, slowly, trying to make the shadow of a curtsy to him. “I am sorry to seem uncivil; but I am tired and anxious. What—what did you want of me?” she asked, in a little outburst of uncontrollable petulance, which comforted Lady Western. It was a very natural question. Surely, in this forlorn room, where she had passed so many wretched hours, her privacy might have been sacred; and she was jealous and angry at the sight of Fordham for Arthur’s sake. It was another touch in the universal misery. She looked at Lady Western’s beauty with an angry heart. For these two, who ventured to come to her in their happiness, affronting her anguish, was Arthur’s heart to be broken too?

“We wanted—our own ends,” said Fordham, coming forward. “I was so cruel as to think of myself, and that you would prove it was another who had assumed my name. Forgive me—it was I who brought Lady Western here; and if either of us can serve you, or your daughter—or your son—” added Fordham, turning red, and looking round at his beautiful companion——

Mrs. Vincent could bear it no longer. She made a hasty gesture of impatience, and pointed to the door. “I am not well enough, nor happy enough, to be civil,” cried Arthur’s mother; “we want nothing—nothing.” Her voice failed her in this unlooked-for exasperation. A few bitter tears came welling up hot to her eyes. It was very different from the stupor of agony—it was a blaze of short-lived passion, which almost relieved, by its sense of resentment and indignation, a heart worn out with other emotions. Fordham himself, filled with compunction, led Lady Western to the door; but it was not in the kind, foolish heart of the young beauty to leave this poor woman in peace. She came back and seized Mrs. Vincent’s trembling hands in her own; she begged to be allowed to stay to comfort her; she would have kissed the widow, who drew back, and, half fainting with fatigue and excitement, still kept her erect position by the table. Finally, she went away in tears, no other means of showing her sympathy being practicable. Mrs. Vincent dropped down on her knees beside the table as soon as she was alone, and leaned her aching, throbbing head upon it. Oh, dreadful lingering day, which was not yet half gone! Unconsciously groans of suffering, low but repeated, came out of her heart. The sound brought Mary, with whom no concealment was possible, and who gave what attendance and what sympathy she might to her mistress’s grievous trouble. Perhaps the work of this dreadful day was less hard than the vigil to which the mother had now to nerve her heart.

CHAPTER III.

WAS it possible that she had slept? A moment ago and it was daylight—a red sunset afternoon: now the pale half-light, struggling with the black darkness, filled the apartment. She was lying on the sofa where Mary had laid her, and by her side, upon a chair within her reach, was some tea untasted, which Mary must have brought after she had fallen into that momentary slumber. The fire burned brightly, with occasional little outbreaks of flame. Such a silence seemed in the house—silence that crept and shuddered—and to think she should have slept!

The night had found covert in all the corners, so dark they were; but one pale line of light came from the window, and the room had a little ruddy centre in the fire. Mrs. Vincent, in the poignant anguish of her awakening, grew superstitious; some other breath—some other presence—seemed in the room besides her own. She called “Mary,” but there was no answer. In her excited condition anything was possible—the bounds of the living world and the possible seemed gone for ever. She might see anything—hear anything—in the calm of her desperation. She got up, and hastily lighted the candle which stood on the table. As she looked over the little light a great cry escaped her. What was it? rising darkly, rising slowly, out of the shadows in which it had been crouching, a huddled indistinct figure. Oh God! not Susan! not her child! As it rose slowly facing her, the widow cried aloud once more, and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the dreadful vision. Ghastly white, with fixed dilated eyes—with a figure dilated and grandiose—like a statue stricken into marble, raised to grandeur—could it be Susan who stood there, without a word, without a movement, only with a blank dark gaze at the horrified woman, who dared not meet those dreadful eyes? When life rallied in Mrs. Vincent’s horror-stricken heart, she went to the ghastly creature, and put warm arms round it, and called it Susan! Susan! Had it any consciousness at all, this dreadful ghost? had it come from another world? The mother kissed it with lips that woke no answer—held it motionless in her trembling arms. She cried again aloud—a great outcry—no longer fearing anything. What were appearances now? If it was Susan, it was Susan dead whom she held, all unyielding and terrible in her warm human arms.

Mary heard and came with exclamations of terror and sympathy. They got her between them to the fire, and chafed her chill hands and feet. Nobody knew how she had got in, where she had come from; no one was with her—no one had admitted her. She sat a marble woman in the chair where they had placed her, unresistant, only gazing, gazing—turning her awful eyes after her mother. At last she drew some long gasping breaths, and, with a shudder which shook her entire frame, seemed to come to herself. “I am Susan Vincent,” said the awful ghost. No tears, nor cries, nor wild pressure of her mother’s arms, nor entreaties poured into her cold ear, could extract any other words. Mrs. Vincent lost her self-possession: she rushed out of the room for remedies—rung the bell—called for Arthur in a voice of despair—could nobody help her, even in this horrible crisis? When she had roused the house she recollected herself, and shut the door upon the wondering strangers, and returned once more to her hopeless task. “Oh, Mary! what are we to do? Oh, Susan, my child, my darling! speak to your poor mother,” cried the widow; but the marble figure in the chair, which was Susan, made no reply. It began to shiver with dreadful trembling fits—to be convulsed with long gasping sobs. “I am—Susan—Susan Vincent”—it said at intervals, with a pitiful iteration. The sight of her daughter in this frightful condition, coming after all her fatigue and strain of excitement, unnerved Mrs. Vincent completely. She had locked the door in her sudden dismay. She was kneeling, clasping Susan’s knees—wasting vain adjurations upon her—driven beyond hope, beyond sense, beyond capacity. Little rustic Mary had all the weight of the emergency thrown upon her shoulders. It was she who called to the curious landlady outside to send for the doctor, and who managed to get Susan put into her mother’s bed. When they had succeeded in laying her down there, a long interval, that seemed like years, passed before Dr. Rider came. The bed was opposite the window, through which the pale rays of the twilight were still trembling. The candle on the other side showed Mrs. Vincent walking about the room wringing her hands, now and then coming to the bedside to look at the unconscious form there, rent by those gasping sobs, uttering those dreadful words. Mary stood crying at the foot of the bed. As for the widow, her eyes were tearless—her heart in an intolerable fever of suffering. She could not bear it. She said aloud she could not bear it—she could not bear it! Then she returned again to call vainly upon her child, her child! Her strength had given way—she had spent all her reserves, and had nothing to resist this unexpected climax of misery.

It was quite dark when Dr. Rider came. Mary held the candle for him as he felt Susan’s pulse, and examined her wide-open eyes. The doctor knew nothing about her any more than if he had not been a doctor. He said it must have been some dreadful mental shock, with inquiring looks at Mrs. Vincent, who began to recover herself. He put back the heavy locks of golden brown hair, which had been loosened down from Susan’s head, and said he was afraid there was pressure on the brain. What could he say?—he knew nothing more about it. He left some simple directions, said he would send some medicine, and took Mrs. Vincent into a corner to ask what it was. “Some severe mental shock?” asked Dr. Rider; but, before she could reply, a cab drove rapidly up to the door, and sounds of a sudden arrival were audible in the house. “Oh, doctor, thank God, my son is come—now I can bear it,” said the widow. Dr. Rider, who was of a compassionate nature, waited with pitying eyes till the minister should come up, and went to take another look at the patient, relieved to think he could speak to her brother, instead of racking her mother’s heart. Mrs. Vincent grew calm in the sudden consolation of thinking Arthur at hand. She sat down by the bedside, with her eyes fixed on the door, yearning for her son, the only living creature from whom she could have entire sympathy. Was it necessary that they should speak so loudly as they came up-stairs?—could he be bringing a stranger with him to Susan’s sickroom? Her heart began to beat louder with mingled expectation and displeasure. It was not like Arthur—and there was no sound of his voice in the noise that swept up the stair. She rose up instinctively as the footsteps approached—heavy steps, not like her son’s. Then the door was thrown open. It was not Arthur who stood upon the dim threshold. It was a stranger in a rough travelling-coat, excited, resolute, full of his own errand. He made a stride into the room to the bedside, thrusting Mrs. Vincent aside, not wittingly, but because she was in his way. Mary stood at the other side with the doctor, holding up the one pale candle, which threw a flickering light upon the marble white figure on the bed, and the utter consternation and surprise in Dr. Rider’s face. Mrs. Vincent, too much alarmed and astonished to offer any resistance, followed the man who had thus entered into her sanctuary of anguish. He knew what he was doing, though nobody else did. He went straight forward to the bed. But the sight of the unconscious figure there appalled the confident stranger. “It is she, sure enough,” he said; “are you a doctor, sir? is the lady taken ill? I’ve come after her every step of the way. She’s in my custody now. I’ll not give any trouble that I can help, but I must stay here.”

Mrs. Vincent, who scarcely could endure to hear, and did not understand, rushed forward while he was speaking, and seized him by the arm—“Leave the room!” she cried with sudden passion—“He has made some impudent mistake, doctor. God help me!—will you let my child be insulted? Leave the room, sir—leave the room, I say! This is my daughter, Miss Vincent, lying here. Mary, ring the bell—he must be turned out of the room. Doctor, doctor! you are a man; you will never let my child be insulted because her brother is away.”

“What does it mean?” cried Dr. Rider—“go outside and I will come and speak to you. Miss Vincent is in a most dangerous state—perhaps dying. If you know her——”

“Know her, doctor! you are speaking of my child,” cried Mrs. Vincent, who faced the intruder with blazing eyes. The man held his ground, not impertinently, but with steadiness.

“I know her fast enough,” he said; “I’ve tracked her every step of the way; not to hurt the lady’s feelings, I can’t help what I’m doing, sir. It’s murder;—I can’t let her out of my sight.”

Mrs. Vincent clasped her hands together with a grasp of desperation. “What is murder?” she said, in a voice that echoed through the room. The doctor, with an exclamation of horror, repeated the same question. Murder! it seemed to ring through the shuddering house.

“It’s hard upon a lady, not to say her mother,” said the man, compassionately; “but I have to do my duty. A gentleman’s been shot where she’s come from. She’s the first as suspicion falls on. It often turns out as the one that’s first suspected isn’t the criminal. Don’t fret, ma’am,” he added, with a glance of pity, “perhaps it’s only as a witness she’ll be wanted—but I must stay here. I daren’t let her out of my sight.”

There was a dreadful pause. Mrs. Vincent looked up at the two men before her with a heartrending appeal in her eyes. Would anybody tell her what it meant?—would nobody interfere for Susan? She moaned aloud inarticulate in her voiceless misery. “And Arthur is not here!” was the outcry which at last burst from her heart. She was beyond feeling what this was—her senses were confused with extremity of suffering. She only felt that another blow had been dealt at her, and that Arthur was not here to help to bear it. Then the stranger, who had put himself so horribly in possession of Susan’s sickroom, once more began to speak. The widow could not tell what he said—the voice rang in her ears like a noise of unmeaning sound, but it stirred her to a flush of female passion, as violent as it was shortlived. She sprang forward and took hold of his arm with her white little trembling hand: “Not here—not here!” cried the mother in her passion. With her feeble force excited into something irresistible, she put the astonished stranger out of the room before he knew what she was doing. If an infant had done it the man could not have been more utterly astonished. Outside, the people of the house were standing in an excited group. She thrust the dreadful messenger of justice out with those hands that shook with tremors of anguish and weakness. She shut the door upon him with all her feeble strength, locked it, put a chair against it; then she stumbled and fell as she stretched out for another—fell down upon her knees, poor soul! and remained so, forgetting, as it seemed, how she came there, and gradually, by instinct, putting together the hands which trembled like leaves in the wind—“Lord, Lord!” cried the mother, hovering on the wild verge between passion and insensibility. She called Him by name only as utter anguish alone knows how; she had nothing to tell Him; she could only call upon Him by His name.

Dr. Rider took the half-insensible form up in his arms and carried her to the bedside, where Susan still lay motionless with her eyes wide open, in an awful abstraction and unconsciousness. He put Mrs. Vincent tenderly into the chair, and held the hands that shook with that palsied irrestrainable tremor. “No one can bring her to life but you,” said the doctor, turning the face of the miserable mother towards her child. “She has kept her senses till she reached you; when she was here she no longer wanted them; she has left her life in your hands.” He held those hands fast as he spoke; pressed them gently, but firmly; repeated his words over again. “In your hands,” said the doctor once more, struck to his heart with horror and pity. Susan’s bare beautiful arm lay on the coverlid, white, round, and full, like marble. The doctor, who had never seen the fair Saxon girl who was Mrs. Vincent’s daughter a week ago, thought in his heart that this full developed form and face, rapt to grandeur by the extremity of woe, gave no contradiction to the accusation he had just heard with so much horror. That week had obliterated Susan’s soft girlish innocence and the simplicity of her eighteen years. She was a grand form as she lay there upon that bed—might have loved to desperation—fallen—killed. Unconsciously he uttered aloud the thought in his heart—“Perhaps it would be better she should die!”

Then the mother rose. Once more her painful senses came back to the woman who was still the minister’s mother, and, even in this hideous dream of misery, had not forgotten the habits of her life. “When my son comes he will settle it all,” said Mrs. Vincent. “I expect him—any time—he may come any minute. Some one has made—a mistake. I don’t know what that man said; but he has made—a mistake, doctor. My son, Mr. Vincent, will see to all that. It has nothing to do with us. Tell me what we are to do for my child. Cut off her hair? Oh, yes, yes, anything! I don’t mind it, though it is a sacrifice. She has had—a—a great fright, doctor. She could not tell me particulars. When her brother comes home, we will hear all—” said the widow, looking with a jealous gaze in his eyes to see if he believed her. The scene altogether overcame Dr. Rider. He turned away and went to the other side of the room, and took a glass of water from the table before he could answer her or meet that appeal. Then he soothed her as he best could with directions about Susan. He went away immediately to come back in an hour, if perhaps there might be any change—so he said; but, in reality, he wanted to escape, to hear this dreadful story, to think what was best. Friendless, with nobody near to protect them, and the officer of justice waiting at the door, what were these women to do? perhaps death waited closer than the visible messenger of fate. Would it be well to stay that more merciful executioner on his way?

The doctor found the officer outside the door, waiting, not without pity, at his post. He heard what was this man’s version of the strange tragedy—strange, and yet not unfamiliar to human ears. The young woman had been betrayed and ruined. In wild vengeance and misery she had seized one of her seducer’s pistols and shot him through the head—such was the story. And now she had fled from the scene of the murder, tracked step by step by the avenger. The whole house was in a tumult, as may be supposed. The indignant landlady, who was a member of Salem, could scarcely be prevented going into the jealously-closed room and turning out the unhappy criminal. Another lodger, a nervous woman, had already collected her goods to fly from the place. Outside, some mysterious instinct had collected a few people about the door of the hitherto irreproachable house, which imagination magnified into a crowd. Already Tozer had set out from his shop, red with anger, to inquire into this incipient excitement, which nobody could explain. And still Arthur had not appeared to stand by the miserable women in this horrible climax of fate.

When the doctor went back to the room where Susan was, he found Mrs. Vincent in a state of agitated activity. Mary and she were flitting about the room, moving lights before Susan’s eyes, making what noises they could with the furniture, keeping a fantastic commotion about the bed. “She stirred, doctor, and we were trying to rouse her,” said the widow, who had put everything but Susan’s bodily extremity from her eyes at the moment. The doctor, who was desperate, and whose heart was moved, resorted to desperate measures. He gathered them about the bed, set Mrs. Vincent to support the insensible form, and raising that white marble arm which had developed into such glorious proportion, touched the swollen blue vein with his lancet. The touch acted like magic. In another moment she had struggled up out of her mother’s grasp, and thrown out the arm, from which the blood flowed, up above her head: the crimson stream caught her wild eye as she raised her arm in the air. A convulsive shudder shook her frame. She threw herself over on her face with a cry of horror, far more than a match, in her strength of youth and passion, for the agitated arms that held her. “Mother, mother, mother! it is his blood! it is his life!” cried that despairing voice. The confused bed, the convulsed frame, the flowing blood, all pitifully lighted up by Mary’s candle, made up of themselves a scene like murder; and Dr. Rider vainly tried to forget the dreadful words which forced upon his mind their untimely testimony. He shuddered at the touch of that white woman’s hand as he bound up the wounded arm. He withdrew his eyes from the pallid grandeur of the stricken face. In spite of himself, horror mingled with his pity. A heavier stain was upon her than those crimson traces on her pearly skin. Other words followed in an incoherent stream. Fever of the heart and brain, burning up into consuming frenzy, had seized upon this lost creature, who was no longer a girl or innocent. Ere long they had to send for nurses, to restrain her delirium. She, raving with a wild madness which betrayed in every wandering exclamation the horror upon her soul, lay desperate in the room which had enclosed for so many lingering hours her mother’s anguish of suspense and fear. In an adjoining room, the man who had followed her to this refuge still waited, watchful yet pitiful, intent that his prisoner should not escape him. While outside a few gazers lingered, looking up at the lights in the windows, with a strange perception that something unusual had happened, though nobody knew what it was. Such was the scene upon which Arthur Vincent, not unwarned, yet incredulous, came suddenly with eyes of horror and wild indignation as he reached his own door.

CHAPTER IV.

WHEN Vincent was set down, in the darkness and silence of the Sunday night, in the Dover railway station, it was some minutes before he could collect himself, and understand where he was. He had fallen into a feverish sleep during the journey, little as he could have supposed himself capable of sleeping at such a moment; but he was young, and unused to the ceaseless fatigue and excitement and total want of rest which had obliterated for him the natural distinction between night and day. While his fellow-passengers trooped away with all the bustle and excitement of travellers, who had then only completed the first stage of their journey, to the pier and the night-boat which waited to carry them across the Channel, he, whom various porters and attendants stimulated with adjurations to make haste, and warnings that he would be late, stumbled out into the dark, collecting his faculties, and trying to think what he must do first. He was giddy and feverish with that insufficient snatch of sleep which had lost him the time in which he might have been laying his plans. But when he got outside the station into the unknown place, into the gloom of night, and heard the “moanings of the homeless sea” sounding sullen against the unseen shore, recollection and energy came back to him. That very sound, booming through the darkness, inspired Susan’s brother. He thought of her forlorn, desolate, succourless, a weary wanderer seeking rest and finding none, shrouded up in darkness and danger, lost in the mysterious gloom—such was the sentiment of the night. The minister went on rapidly to the town, with its restless lights, through which everybody seemed to be passing towards the unseen sea. Should he follow with the stream, or should he stop at the hotel of which Mary had told him? He quickened his steps as he reached the open door of the inn, and plunged in to make rapid inquiries. Nobody knew either Colonel Mildmay or Mr. Fordham, but the party which he described had been there, and had left only an hour before—not for the boat, the attendants thought: but the boat was ringing its bells through the night; and if by chance they had gone there, no time was to be lost. He rushed from the inn as fast as his wearied limbs could carry him to the pier, where the lookers-on stood aside out of his way, recognising his excitement. He went through among all the passengers with the rough captain and his lantern, having briefly explained to that functionary what he wanted. But they were not there. When he had satisfied himself, he left the boat, and stood with suspicious reluctance, unwilling to lose sight of it, on the pier, and watched the coloured lamp on the mast of the steamer gradually gliding through the darkness out of the sheltering harbour, till it began to plunge and heave on the unseen sea. Then he took his troubled way back to the inn. It was very late, and all the population seemed to disappear out of the streets, with the little attendant crowd which had been waiting upon the last event of the day, the departure of this night-boat. The inn itself looked half asleep, and was half closed when he returned. No further arrivals, no incidents in the shape of trains or boats, were to be looked for till the morning. It was the first time that Arthur had encountered this compulsory pause of night. He struggled against it for some time, questioning the waiters, and gleaning some particulars which did but increase his anxiety, but the waiters themselves were sleepy, and all the world around had closed itself up in utter quietness and rest.

Vincent went out again, but he could get admittance nowhere, save at the office of the police, where he went in desperation to ask the services of some one skilful in such inquiries. He found this not without difficulty, but nothing was to be done that night. He had to go back to the hotel to consent to the necessary rest for which, notwithstanding the fever of his mind, his worn-out frame craved. Weariness, indeed, had gradually overpowered and absorbed him—stronger than anxiety, more urgent even than his love for his sister, was this present and over-powering exhaustion which began to occupy all his thoughts. Though he struggled with it he could not but feel in his heart, with a certain guilt, how this overwhelming desire to throw himself down somewhere and rest possessed him to the exclusion of more worthy impulses. After he had ordered some refreshment, of which, indeed, he stood as much in need, the young man threw himself upon a sofa, and there fell into a deep sleep of utter weariness. He could do no more. He slept as youth must sleep, were it on the edge of a precipice, were it at the deathbed of its dearest friend. The very waiter who brought in the food he had ordered, took pity upon the worn-out slumberer. The man heaped up the fire, and covered Vincent with his railway wrapper before he withdrew; and it was not till morning that the young minister awoke out of that profound slumber—awoke chilled and aching, and confused, in the dark, with the untouched meal still on the table, the candle flaming in its socket, and he himself totally unaware how long he had been asleep.

In the interval that elapsed before the first sounds of awakening life in the house, he had time to collect himself, and when he went down-stairs to the coffee-room, still in the dark of the winter morning, had regained more command of himself and his powers than at any previous moment since this misery came upon him.

But it was still so early that the fire was scarcely alight, and he had to wait for the cup of coffee he ordered. Vincent went to the window, as was natural—a large window looking into the dark street, faintly lighted with lamps, which somehow burned less bright in the chill of the morning than they did at night. Looking out vaguely, yet with the vigilance of anxiety, without being able to discriminate anything except here and there a dark figure passing in the darkness, the young man waited with his face close to the uncurtained panes. There was nothing in that blank undecipherable street to interest him, and yet he gazed out mechanically in the anxious pre-occupation of his mind. When the attendant came into the room with his coffee, his attention was temporarily distracted. He got up to go to the table where breakfast was being arranged for him; but, as he rose, his eye was caught by the gleam of a passing face, ghastly white in the darkness, looking in. Before he could draw breath, the apparition was gone. Without saying a word to the astonished waiter, who began to think him mad, Vincent dashed out after this vanished vision. Two female figures were visible a little further on in the gloomy street. He pursued them with breathless, noiseless speed, and grasped at the arm of a terrified woman who, gasping with sudden fright, turned upon him a face he had never seen before. Nobody else was to be seen in any direction. The minister made an inarticulate apology, and turned back to search for some opening or passage through which that face could have disappeared. It was no fancy of his that painted that pale countenance upon the darkness—the same face that he had seen in the railway carriage following Colonel Mildmay—the same, but with a new look of horror and desperation in its eyes. The young man investigated, as he thought, every doorway, every corner which could have given shelter to such a fugitive. He returned, excited and agitated, to the inn, to ask if there was any passage through the line of houses which he might have overlooked, but could hear of none. It was on his lips to ask if they had heard of any crime or accident during the night—any—murder; but prudence restrained the incautious utterance. He went out with the wildest agitation in his mind; something had happened. Mrs. Hilyard’s face, gleaming in unconscious at the window, betrayed to him much more clearly than any confession, that some new and awful event had been added to that woman’s strange experiences of life; and in the darkness he had been aware of some shadowy figure beside her, accompanying her ghostly way. Perhaps her child—perhaps—could it be Susan? The young man went out, not knowing where he went, into the darkness of the winter morning; he hastened to the pier, to the railway, startling the half-awakened people about, but nowhere could either see or hear of her. Could it be a delusion? but the wildest imagination in the world could not have inspired with such a new horror of expression the eyes that gleamed out of that ghastly pale face.

The grey daylight had just got final mastery of the dark, when Vincent met the man whom he had employed the night before to help him in his inquiries. This agent, more skilful than the minister, had found out the cab-driver who conveyed the party from the hotel on the previous evening. Colonel Mildmay seemed to have made the precipitate retreat of a man suddenly startled and frightened out of his plans. The cabman gave a detailed account of the strange conduct of his fare. “We was a-going to the pier to the Ostend steamer, sir,” said the driver, “when I was pulled up sharp, and got my directions to turn about sudden and go to the railway. There was a lady as I see keeping her eye on us, a-standing by the pier gates with her bag in her hand; but it was dark, and she couldn’t have seen who was in the cab. The same occurred, sir, as we came up to the railway. I don’t say as I see the lady there—but sure enough I was pulled up second time, and ordered out along the Folkestone road, a matter o’ three mile or so. Then I was turned back again; and the end of all was that I took them to the Swan in Walmer Street, as is a place where there’s well-aired beds and chops, and that style o’ thing. That ain’t the style of thing as is done in the Lord Warden. To take a fare, and partic’lar along with ladies, from the one of them places to the other, looks queer—that’s what it does; it looks very queer, sir. It made me take a deal of notice. Gen’leman tall, light-haired, hook nose, awful swell to look at. Ladies, one on ’em pretty tall, one little; pretty creatures, but dreadful skeared as far as I could see. The little one had a blue veil. That’s them, sir; thought as I was right.”

“And you can take me to the place?” said Vincent.

“Jump into my cab, and I’ll have you there, sir, in five minutes,” said the man.

The minister sprang into the cab alone. He no longer wanted the aid of a stranger; the darkling streets seemed to glide past him, and not he past them, as he dashed on at last to find his sister, this time there could be no mistake. After they had threaded several obscure streets, the driver came to a sudden pause, got off his box, and touched his hat with an alarmed look. “I can’t drive up to the very ’ouse, sir—there’s a crowd around the door; they do say as something has happened. I hope it ain’t to any of your friends?” said the cabman. Vincent flung the door open as he was speaking, and rushed out. A horrified and excited crowd was besieging the door of the shabby public-house to which he had been brought. Seeing his hasty arrival, and the passionate anxiety in his eyes, the crowd gave way before him, recognising his right of entry; the very policeman at the door yielded to him in the force of his passion. “What is it?” he cried, aware of putting away some women and babies from the door with mechanical kindness, but unconscious that he had stumbled up the steps like a man in a dream, and was demanding an answer to his question with an almost wild vehemence. The question was answered by a dozen eager voices. It was murder—murder! He could make out nothing but the word in the confusion of many speakers and of his own mind. Nobody opposed his entrance or asked what business he had there. He sprang up the stairs in two or three steps, pressed forward to a half-open door, within which he saw some people assembled, and, unawares thrusting aside a man who stopped him, went into that chamber of death. Several people were around the bed—one, a surgeon, occupied with the prostrate figure there. Vincent, over the heads of the spectators, gazed with burning eyes at this horrible spectacle. Susan herself, whom he did not expect to find there, nor could associate in any way with such a scene, faded out of his mind as he gazed with haggard face and horror-stricken soul at the shattered head, bound up in bloody-bandages, scarce recognisable except by sharp eyes of love or hate, which rested on that mean pillow. He asked no questions for the moment. To him alone the business needed no explanation. He was not even surprised—he stood gazing in a momentary trance of horror at the lamentable sight. It was a wretched room, shabby and meagre, such a place as only terror could have driven Mildmay to. Villain as he was, his punishment had begun before that pistol-shot brought it to a climax—even in his success he had been conscious that she would keep her word.

The policeman at the door touched Vincent on the sleeve, just as he turned from the dreadful spectacle before him. “Nobody is allowed in here but for a good reason,” said this man, gazing suspiciously at the stranger; “unless you knows something about it, or have come to identify the poor gentleman, or are of some use somehow, I can’t let you stay here.”

“I do not wish to stay here,” said Vincent, turning away with a shudder. “I want to see the ladies who were with him. Yes, I know who he is—but I am not a friend of his; I have nothing to do with the matter. Where are the ladies who were with him? Miss Vincent,” said the minister with a pang, “and—and Miss Mildmay. I have come to take them away.”

“The ladies as were with him? Oh, it’s them as you’re awanting; perhaps you’ll stop a minute and talk to the inspector,” said the policeman. “The ladies as were with him? Maybe you can tell the inspector something as will help justice? You didn’t know the reason as brought out two young women a-travelling with a gen’leman, did you? They’ll want all the friends they can collect afore all’s done. You come this way with me.”

It was a relief to get out of sight of that which horrified yet fascinated his eyes. Vincent followed the man into another room without observing the evident suspicion with which he was regarded. “Where are they?” he asked again. “I have a cab below. This is not a place for women. I have come to take them away. Where are the people of the house? What do you mean by keeping your hand on me? I want Miss Vincent. Do you hear me? I have nothing to do with Colonel Mildmay. He has plenty of friends to avenge him. I want my sister. Where is she? Call the people of the house.”

Vincent threw off the policeman’s hand from his arm, and, looking for a bell, rang violently. He was too much horror-stricken, and too secure of finding Susan, weeping and helpless in some corner, to show any of the passionate eagerness with which he had started on his search. Little doubt she was there, poor lost soul. He shrank from meeting with her, now that the meeting was so near; and his thoughts went after that other desperate wretched woman, flying—who could tell where?—in despair and darkness. The house was in utter disorder, as was natural; none of its humble occupants being capable, at the present exciting moment, of attending to their usual duties. Vincent rang the bell again, till it pealed and echoed through the place. Then he bethought himself, with a natural shudder, of the death-chamber close by. He turned to the man by his side, with an instinctive involuntary curiosity. “Is any one suspected?” said the minister, feeling his face grow pale with a dreadful consciousness of the secret which he shared. But before he could hear the answer, his second summons had brought up the terrified mistress of the house, attended half way up the stair by a throng of curious women. He went hurriedly to meet her at the door.

“Where are the ladies?” said the minister. “I have just heard that my sister was brought here last night. Tell her I am here. Take me to her. Don’t be alarmed. You know what I mean? The two ladies—young ladies who came here with Colonel Mildmay last night—where are they? Good heavens! do you not understand what I mean?”

“The young ladies, sir?” faltered the landlady, gasping and looking at the man who still kept by Vincent’s side. “Oh, Lord bless us! The young ladies——”

“Make haste and let them know I am here,” said Vincent, gradually growing more and more anxious. “I will undertake to produce them if they are wanted as witnesses. Where are they?—where is my sister? I tell you she is my sister. I have come for her. Tell Miss Vincent. Surely I am speaking plain English,” said the young man, with a flush of sudden dread. “The elder one, Miss Vincent—you understand me? Let her know that I am here.”

“His sister! Oh, Lord bless us; and he don’t know no more than the unborn,” cried the woman of the house. “Oh, Lord! p’liceman, can’t you tell the poor gentleman? His sister! oh, that’s worse than ever, that is. Some poor young thing as has been beguiled and led astray. Lord bless us! don’t look at me o’ that way. I ain’t to blame. Oh, gracious me, that I should have to tell the gentleman, and you standing there! Oh, sir, it’s her as has done it. She’s gone away from here afore break of day. I don’t blame her; oh, I don’t blame her; don’t look o’ that dreadful way at me. He’s drove her to it with bad usage. She’ll have to suffer for it; but I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her if it was my last word in life.”

Vincent felt his tongue cleave to his mouth. He was stunned; he did not know what he said—what he was hearing. “Blame her? whom? for what?” he said, with a mechanical effort. He seemed to himself to be suddenly engulfed in some horrible cloud, but he did not know what it meant.

“Oh, Lord! don’t look o’ that dreadful way at me; she’s gone off from here as soon as she done it,” cried the woman. “She had that much sense left, poor soul. He’s drove her mad; he’s drove her to it. My man says it can’t be brought in no worse than manslaughter——”

“You don’t understand me,” Vincent broke in; “you are talking of the criminal. Who are you talking of?—but it does not matter. I want Miss Vincent. Do you hear me?—the young lady whom he brought here last night. Where is my sister? Gone away before daybreak! You mean the criminal, but I want my sister. Susan! take me to where she is. She had nothing to do with it. I will give you anything—pay you anything, only take me to where she is.”

He moved towards the door as he spoke, half believing that, if he could but hold out and refuse to credit this horror, Susan might still be found. “Lord bless us! the poor young gentleman’s gone out of his senses,” cried the landlady. “Let him go through all the house if that’s what he wants. There ain’t nothing to conceal in my house. I’ll take you to the room as they were in—she and the other one. This way, sir. They hadn’t nothing with them but two little bags, so there wasn’t much to leave; but such as it is, being her night-things, is there. She wasn’t thinking of bags, nor any of her little comforts, when she went away. Here, sir; walk in here.”

The woman took him to a room up-stairs, where Vincent followed her mechanically. The room had evidently been occupied a very short time before. Upon a chair, open, with the contents only half thrust in, was a travelling-bag, which the minister recognised at once—a piece of family property dreadful to see in such a place. Susan had been putting her things away with the orderly instinct of her mother’s daughter when this sudden shock of terror came upon her. “Do you mean to tell me that it is she who has gone away,” said Vincent, with a look of incredulous wonder and appeal—“she—Susan Vincent, my sister? Take time to think. It was not she—somebody else. Tell me where she is—”

“Oh, sir, don’t say anything as may come against her,” cried the landlady. “It’s nobody but her, poor soul, poor soul. If it was possible to think as it could be another, I would—but there was nobody else to do it. As soon as we heard the shot and the groan the master got up. He met her on the stair, sir, if you’ll believe me, like a woman as was walking in her sleep. He was that struck he daren’t say a word to her. He let her pass by him and go out at the door—and when he went into the gentleman’s room and found him there a-dying, she was gone clean off, and couldn’t be heard of. Folks say as my husband should have stopped her, but it wasn’t none of his business. Oh, sir, don’t say nothing as’ll put them on her track! There’s one man gone off after her already—oh, it’s dreadful!—if you’ll be advised by me, you’ll slip out the back way, and don’t come across that policeman again. If she did kill him,” cried the weeping landlady, “it was to save herself, poor dear. I’ll let you out the back way, if you’ll be guided by me.”

The horror of this accusation had come home to Vincent’s mind at last. He saw, as if by a sudden flash of dreadful enlightenment, not guilt indeed, or its awful punishment, but open shame—the disgrace of publicity—the horrible suspicions which were of themselves more than enough to kill the unhappy girl. He made a great effort to speak, but could not for the moment. He thrust in the white soft garments which were hanging out of it, into that familiar bag, which somehow gave him a pang more acute than all the terrible news he was hearing. He had travelled with it himself on innocent boyish journeys, had seen it in his mother’s innocent hands—and now to find it in this shuddering atmosphere of crime and mystery! He too shuddered as he roused himself to speak. “Hush—hush,” said Vincent, “you mistake, my sister has nothing to do with it; I—I can prove that—easily,” said the minister, getting the words out with difficulty. “Tell me how it all happened—when they came here, what passed; for instance——” He paused, and his eye caught another evidence of the reality of his horrible position. It was the blue veil which he had followed and described, and looked for through all these weary hours. He took it up in his hand, crushing it together with an almost ungovernable impulse of rage, from where it had been thrown down on the shabby carpet. “For instance,” said Susan’s brother, restraining himself, “where is the girl who wore this? You said Miss Vincent went away alone—where was the other? was she left behind—is she here?”

The policeman had followed them up into the room in natural curiosity and suspicion. The landlady’s husband had sworn that Susan left the house by herself. Then, where was the girl? The fugitive had been tracked to the railway, the policeman said; but she was alone. Nobody had thought before of her helpless companion. The inspector arrived while they were going over the house trying if it were possible to find any traces of this forlorn creature. Vincent was much too profoundly concerned himself to keep silence about the mysterious movements of the woman whom he had seen on his way to Dover—whom he had seen that very morning in the darkness—whom he knew to be the bitterest enemy of the murdered man. It was only when he described her—when he tried to collect all the information he had ever had about her for the guidance of justice—that he saw how little he knew of her in reality. His very description was tinged with a touch of fancy; and in this frightful emergency he perceived, for the first time, how much his imagination had supplied of the interest he felt in this woman. When he had done all it was possible to do to set the pursuer on her track, and gathered all he could of the supposed proofs against Susan, he left the place where he could do nothing further. He had to describe himself fully—to prove his identity by a reference to the Dissenting minister of the place, and explain whence he had come and whither he was going, before the officers in charge of the house, although conscious that they had no grounds for detaining him, would let him go. But he was permitted to leave at last. While he waited for the next train to Carlingford, he questioned the cabman, who could give but a very faint and indistinct description of the lady whom he had seen at the pier-gates, whose appearance had stopped Colonel Mildmay in the prosecution of his journey. She was standing under a lamp, the man said: the gentleman might see her, but he didn’t think as she could see him; but dim as the vision was, this was another little link in the chain of evidence. If it did but vindicate Susan—save her, not from the penalty, but from the very shadow and suspicion of such a horror! It was this which filled the minister’s mind with every sort of frightful apprehension. To have Susan’s name exposed to such a horrible publicity—to have such a scene, such a crime anyhow connected with his sister—the idea shook Vincent’s mind utterly, and almost disabled him from thought at all. And where was she, poor horror-stricken fugitive? He scarcely dared hope that she had gone to her mother. Sudden death, madness, any misery, seemed possible to have overtaken the unhappy girl thus suddenly reft out of the peacefulness of her youth into circumstances so horrible. When he entered Carlingford, late at night, it was with insupportable pangs of suspense and alarm that he looked into the faces he met on the lighted streets. Were they looking at him already with a consciousness that some frightful shadow enveloped him? Tozer’s shop was already shut—earlier than usual, surely—and two or three people stood talking at the open door, clearly visible against the gaslight, which still burned bright within. Farther up, opposite his own house, two or three passengers had stopped to look up at the lighted windows. When Vincent thrust aside a lad who happened to be in his way, asking, with uncontrollable irritation, what he wanted there, the door opened suddenly at the sound of his voice. All was excited and confused within—common life, with its quiet summonses and answers, was over there. Wild confusion, agitation, reproach, surrounded the unfortunate minister. His landlady came forward to meet him, to bewail her own misfortune, and upbraid him with the wrong he had done her. “I took in the pastor for a lodger, because he was sure to be steady and respectable, and this is what he has brought to me!” cried the hysterical woman. “What is the meaning of all this?” cried Vincent, looking round him with restrained fury, but he did not wait for an answer. He went up to his rooms to know the worst. As he rushed breathless up-stairs, loud outcries of delirium reached him. In his horror and anguish he could not recognise the voice—was it his mother who had given way under the terrible burden? He dashed open the door of the sitting-room in which he had spent so many quiet hours—neither mother nor sister were there; instead of them a rough-featured man, in a blue travelling-coat, and Tozer, flushed and argumentative, standing by the table. Vincent had not time to ask what the controversy was that was going on between the two. The butterman grasped his hand with an almost violent pressure, and took the stranger’s arm. “Beg your pardon for being in your room, Mr. Vincent, but me and this gentleman has a little business. I’ll be back presently and explain,” said the good deacon, with a compassionate look at the young man, whose weary eyes sought with instinctive suspicion that unknown face. “I’m your friend, Mr. Vincent— I always was; I’m not one as will desert a friend in trouble,” said Tozer, with another shake of his hand, lowering his voice. Then he disappeared with his strange companion. The minister was alone with those cries, with this agitation. He threw himself down in momentary despair. The worst, it appeared, had happened—the horror had travelled before him. He gave up everything in the anguish of that moment. There seemed to be no use for any further struggle. To this sensitive, spotless, inexperienced household, suspicion was worse than death.

CHAPTER V.

WHEN Vincent came to himself, and began to see clearly the true horrors of his position, his mind, driven to its last stronghold, rallied convulsively to meet the worst. It was Susan who was raving close by; but her brother, in the sickening despair of his heart, had not the courage to go into that agitated sick-room. He sat waiting for Tozer’s return with a sense of helplessness, a sense of irritation, against which he had no strength to contend. In that bitter moment he gave up everything, and felt himself no longer capable of striving against his fate. He felt in his heart that all Carlingford must already be discussing the calamity that had come upon him, and that his innocent honourable name was already sullied by the breath of the crowd; and, with a strange mixture of intolerance and eagerness, he waited the return of the man who had first, as it appeared, thrust himself into the secret—a man whom the minister must not affront, must not defy, on peril of all he had in the world. These few silent moments were more terrible to Vincent than any that had gone before them. Was it any good holding out, attempting to keep a brave face to the world, struggling against this crushing blow?—or would it not be easiest to give in, to drop the useless arms, to fly from the inevitable downfall? Some corner of the earth there surely remained where he could hide his head and find a shelter for the two poor women who were greater sufferers than he. It was with such feelings that he awaited the return of Tozer—feelings aggravated by the consciousness that somehow the butterman was engaged in his service at this very moment, and by a shadowy and unexpressed suspicion in his mind as to the character of the stranger whom Tozer had taken away. The excellent deacon returned at last with looks of conscious importance. He was very sorry and anxious, but he could not help looking confidential, and standing a little higher upon the ground of this mystery, which nobody shared but himself. Once more he shook hands with Vincent, sympathetically, and with a grasp full of meaning.

“The thing for us to do is to keep it quiet—to keep it quiet, sir,” said Tozer, lowering his voice as he spoke. “Nothing must be said about it—no more nor can be helped, Mr. Vincent. As far as it has gone, there’s nobody as has heard but me. If it could be kept private from the Salem folks,” continued the butterman, taking a seat at the table, and looking cautiously round him, as if to make sure that no one was within hearing, “it would be for the best. Them women do make such a talk about everything. Not to tell a falsehood, sir, as I wouldn’t, not to save my own, if so be as my own could be in such a position—we’ll say as your sister’s took bad, sir, that’s what we’ll say. And no lie neither—hear to her, poor soul!— But, Mr. Vincent,” said Tozer, drawing closer, and confiding his doubt in a whisper, “what she says is best not to be listened to, if you’ll take my advice. It ain’t to be built upon what a poor creature says in a fever, but them sort of words and screechings don’t come out of nothing but a troubled mind. She was aggravated awful—so the man tells me.”

“Who was the man?” asked Vincent, hurriedly.

“The man? oh!—which man was you meaning, sir?” asked Tozer, with a little fright, recurring to his more generous intention of keeping this intruder altogether from the knowledge of the minister; “nobody in particular, Mr. Vincent—nobody as is worth mentioning. One as was sent to inquire—that’s all. I’ve cleared him away out of the road,” said the butterman, not without some natural complacency: “there ain’t no matter about him. Don’t ask me no more, Mr. Vincent, for it’s losing time as is precious. If there’s anything as can be done, it’s best to do it directly. I’d speak to John Brown as is the cleverest attorney in Carlingford, sir, if I was you. She’s young, and, as I was saying, she was aggravated awful. She might be got off.”

“Hush!” said Vincent, who had to put a desperate curb upon himself, lest the restrained rage with which he heard this implication of guilt should burst out; “you think there is something in this horrible business—that my sister has something to do with it. It is all a frightful delusion—an infernal——”

“Mr. Vincent, sir, you mustn’t swear. I’m as sorry for you as a man can be; but you’re a minister, and you mustn’t give way,” said Tozer. “If there ain’t nothing in it, so much the better; but I’m told as the evidence is clean again’ her. Well, I won’t say no more; it’s no pleasure to me to think of a young creature, and a minister’s daughter, with a mother like what she’s got, going any ways astray—far the contrary, Mr. Vincent: your own father, if he was living, couldn’t be more sorry than me. But my advice is, keep quiet, and don’t let anything get out no more nor can be helped. I don’t mean to say as it can be altogether kep’ quiet—that ain’t in the nature of things; nor I don’t mean to make you suppose as all is likely to go smooth, and no fault found. There’s pretty sure to be some unpleasantness, one way or another; and the only thing as I can see is just to put up with it, and stand your ground, and do your duty all the same. And I for one will stand by you, sir,” said Tozer, rising to his feet with a little glow of conscious generosity and valour, and shaking the hand of the poor young minister with cordial kindness—“I’ll stand by you, sir, for one, whatever happens; and we’ll tide it out, Mr. Vincent, that’s what we’ll do, sir, if you can but hold on.”

“Thank you,” said poor Vincent, moved to the heart—“thank you. I dare not think how it is all to end, but thank you all the same; I shall not forget what you say.”

“And tell your mother,” continued Tozer, swelling to a little triumph in his own magnanimity—“tell your mother as I said so; tell her as I’ll stand by you through thick and thin; and we’ll pull through, we’ll pull through!” said the butterman, slowly disappearing, with a face radiant with conscious bounty and patronage, through the open door.

Vincent had followed him with an instinct of civility and gratitude. Just as Tozer withdrew, a fresh burst of outcry came from the sick-room, ringing through the excited house. The deacon turned round half-way down the stair, held up his hands, listened, and made a movement of wondering pity towards the closed door which hid Susan, but did not keep in her cries. The wretched minister drew back from that compassionate gesture as if some one had struck him a blow. He went back and threw himself down on the sofa, and covered his face with his hands. The pity and the patronage were the last drop of humiliation in his bitter cup. Hot tears came to his eyes; it seemed to him more than flesh and blood could bear.

Some time elapsed, however, before Vincent had the courage to meet his mother. When those dreadful outcries sank into exhaustion, and all for the moment was quiet in the sick-room, he sent to tell her he had arrived, and went to the dreadful door which she kept closed so jealously. He was afraid to meet her eye when she came to him, and noiselessly drew him within. Judging by himself, he had not ventured to think what his mother’s horror and despair would be. But Mrs. Vincent put her arms round her son with an exclamation of thanksgiving. “Oh, Arthur! thank God, you are come. Now I shall be able to bear it,” cried his mother. She cried a little upon his breast, and then wiped her eyes and looked up at him with quivering lips. “Oh, Arthur, what my poor darling must have come through!” said Mrs. Vincent, with a wistful appeal to him in her tender eyes. She said nothing of the darker horror. It lay upon her soul a frightful, inarticulate shadow; but in the mean time she could only think of Susan and her fever—that fever which afforded a kind of comfort to the mother—a proof that her child had not lost her innocence lightly, but that the shock had been to Susan a horrible convulsion, shaking earth and heaven. The mother and son went together to the bedside to look at the unhappy cause of all their sorrows—she clinging with her tender hand to his arm, wistful now, and afraid in the depths of her heart lest Arthur, who was only a man, might be hard upon Susan in her terrible abasement. It was more than a year since Vincent had seen his sister. Was it Susan? The grandeur of the stricken form, the features sublimed and elevated, the majestic proportions into which this awful crisis of fate had developed the fair-haired girl of Lonsdale, struck her brother with unspeakable awe and pity. Pity and awe: but yet another feeling mingled in the wonder with which he gazed upon her. A thrill of terror came over him. That frightful, tropical blaze of passion, anguish, and woe which had produced this sudden development, had it developed no unknown qualities in Susan’s heart? As she lay there in the majesty of unconsciousness, she resembled more a woman who could avenge herself, than a soft girl, the sudden victim of a bad man. Vincent turned away from the bed with an involuntary shudder. He would not, could not, look at her again: he left his mother to her unceasing vigil, and himself went to his own room, to try if rest were possible. Rest was not easy in such a terrible complication of affairs; but weariness is omnipotent with youth. He did sleep by snatches, in utter fatigue and exhaustion—slept long enough to secure for himself the unspeakable torture of waking to the renewed horror of a new day.

CHAPTER VI.

NEXT morning the minister rose to the changed life and world which now surrounded his way, if not with much less excitement, at least with a more familiar knowledge of all the troubles which encompassed him. As he sat over the pretended breakfast, for which he had no appetite, and not even heart enough to make a show of eating, hearing close by the voice of his sister’s delirium, sometimes in faint murmurs, sometimes rising into wild outcries of passion, and pondered all the circumstances of this frightful calamity, it is not wonderful that his heart fainted within him. He had found out quickly enough that it was an officer of justice whom Tozer had succeeded, by what means he could not tell, in removing from his house. His landlady knew all the facts sufficiently well to be by times reproachful and by times sympathetic. The other lodgers in the house, some of whom had already left for fear of pollution, were equally aware of all the circumstances of the case; and it was impossible to hope that a tale so exciting, known to so many, could be long of spreading. The minister seemed to himself to look ruin in the face, as he sat in profound dejection, leaning his head in his hands. He had committed his sister’s interests into the hands of the best attorney he could hear of in Dover, that watch and search might be made on the spot for any further information; and now the only thing possible to be done was to secure some still more skilful agent in London to superintend the case, and set all the machinery of detection in motion to discover Mrs. Hilyard. Vincent had nothing in the world but the income which he drew from the liberality of Salem; an income which could ill stand the drain of these oft-repeated journeys, not to speak of the expenses of Susan’s defence. All that the minister had would not be enough to retain a fit defender for her, if she had to undergo the frightful ordeal of a trial. The very thought of it drove her unhappy brother desperate. Would it not be better if she died and escaped that crowning misery, which must kill her anyhow, if she survived to bear it? But these ponderings were as unprofitable as they were painful. When he had seen his mother, who whispered to him accounts of Susan’s illness, which his mind was too much preoccupied to understand, he went away immediately to the railway, and hastened to town. While he stood waiting in the lawyer’s office, he took up listlessly, without knowing what he was doing, the newspaper of the day. There he found the whole terrible tale made into a romance of real life, in which his sister’s name, indeed, was withheld, but no other particular spared. As he stood wiping the heavy dew from his forehead, half frantic with rage and despair, the quick eye of his misery caught a couple of clerks in another corner of the office, talking over another newspaper, full of lively interest and excitement. It was Susan’s story that interested them; the compiler had heightened with romantic details those hideous bare facts which had changed all his life, and made the entire world a chaos to Vincent; and all over the country by this time, newspaper readers were waking up into excitement about this new tale of love, revenge, and crime. The poor minister put down the paper as if it had stung him, and drew back, tingling in every nerve, from the table, where he could almost hear the discussion which was going on about Miss ——; where she could have escaped to, and whether she would be found. It restored him to his senses and self-command when he found himself face to face with the cool lawyer, who waited for his tragic story as a matter of business, and who had nothing to do with the heartbreaks or the disgrace which it involved. He was detained there for some time, giving as full an account as he could of all the circumstances, and describing as well as he could his reasons for suspecting Mrs. Hilyard, and her mysterious appearance at the scene of the murder. Vincent perceived, with a sensation of comfort at his heart, that his story interested the acute attorney, accustomed to the tricks and expedients of crime, who perceived at once the circumstances of suspicion, and understood at once how to go about it, and ferret the secret out. The minister himself grew steadier as he entered into his narrative. No shivers of wonder or pain convulsed the calm lawyer as he listened. Under his touch, Susan’s dreadful position became one not unprecedented, to be dealt with like any other condition of actual life; and when Vincent, after furnishing all the information he could, and satisfying himself that no time was to be lost in the prosecution of the search for the real criminal, left the office to return to Carlingford, it was with a mind somewhat calmed out of its first horror. He went back again by the train, deeply depressed and anxious, but not so susceptible to every glance and word as he had been an hour or two before. He tried, indeed, to take a certain gloomy satisfaction from the idea that now everything was known. Fear of discovery could no longer appal the stricken household; and to meet the horror in the face was less dreadful than to feel themselves skulking under a secret shadow which might at any moment be found out. He set his face sternly, and looked everybody full in the eyes who looked at him, as he once more alighted at the familiar station. He accepted the fact that people were talking of him, pitying him, contemplating him with wonder and fright, as somehow involved in an atmosphere of tragedy and crime. With this feeling he went slowly along George Street on his homeward way, with no susceptibility left in him, so far as he was aware, except as concerned this sudden calamity which had swallowed up his life.

When suddenly the sound of a carriage stopping came dully upon his ears; he would not have noted or heard it but for the sound that followed of some one calling his own name, and the soft rush of footsteps on the pavement; even then he did not turn round to see who called him. It was accordingly with a thrill of strange emotion—a strange, sudden, guilty suffusion of delight over all his tingling frame and aching heart, even in the midst of his suffering, that he felt the light touch of Lady Western’s hand first laid on his arm, then softly stealing within it in the sudden sympathy which possessed her as she looked up into his colourless face. It was pity and natural kindness which prompted the young Dowager to this unwonted familiar touch. She was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart—she would fain have made him amends somehow for the terrible evil which had come upon him. With the natural impulse of a woman to caress or soothe, or cheat a man anyhow out of that look of suffering which it is intolerable to her to see on his face, Lady Western acted instinctively, without thinking what she did. She did her beautiful hand into his arm, clung to him, looked up with her lovely appealing face and eyes full of tears to the pale face of the minister, which that touch moved beyond all expression. If he did not stop and take her into his arms, and lean his great anguish upon her in a sweetness of relief unspeakable and measureless, it was only because ordinary rule and custom are stronger than even passion. He was as much deceived as if he had done it, the poor young deluded soul. Out of the thunder and storm, all at once, without prelude or warning, he thought it was the light of love that broke upon him all radiant and glorious. With that he could brave all, overcome all; for that he could be content to fathom any depths of wretchedness. So he thought, as he looked down from those sudden heights of unhoped-for tremulous blessedness into that lovely face, and saw it trembling with divine compassion and tenderness. So he thought the ice breaking, the depths stirring in his own soul. Hope, deliverance, happiness, a delight more exquisite still, that consolation of love which makes anguish itself sweet, breathed over the poor young Nonconformist as that hand slid within his arm. His very brain grew dizzy with the sweetness of relief, the sudden ease that possessed his soul.

“Oh, Mr. Vincent, my heart is breaking; what shall we do—what shall we do?” cried Lady Western. “If it is true, I shall never dare speak to you again, and I feel for you to the bottom of my heart. Oh, Mr. Vincent, you don’t think she did it? I am sure she did not do it—your sister! It was bad enough before,” cried the lovely creature, crying without restraint, but still holding his arm and gazing up into his face, “but now my heart is broken. Oh, will you tell me what I must do? I will not go to him, for he has been a bad man; and I dare not go to your dear mother as I should like to go; and I feel for you, oh, to the very bottom of my heart!”

“Then I can bear it,” said Vincent. Though he did not speak another word, the sound of his voice, the expression of his face, betrayed him. He put his hand involuntarily upon the little hand that rested on his arm. It was all so sudden that his self-command forsook him. A smile trembled upon his face as he looked down at her with all his heart in his eyes. “Then I can bear it,” said the poor young minister, overwhelmed and penetrated by that exquisite consolation. Lady Western gave a little start of alarm as she read the unmistakable meaning in his face. She withdrew her hand hastily with a flush of radiant colour and downcast look of fright and shame. What had she done? Her confusion, her agitation, her sudden withdrawal, did but increase the spell. To Vincent’s charmed soul it seemed that she had betrayed herself, and that womanly reserve alone drew her back. He attended her to her carriage with a tender devotion which could not express itself in words. When he had put her in, he lingered, gazing at the face, now so troubled and downcast, with a delicious feeling that he had a right to gaze at her. “You have made me strong to bear all things,” he said, in the low tone of passion and secret joy. In the depth of his delusion he saw no other meaning than sudden timidity and womanly reticence in her confused and alarmed looks. When the carriage drove off he stood looking after it with eyes full of dreamy light. Darkness surrounded him on every side, darkness more hideous than a nightmare. The poor young soul believed for that delicious moment that superlative and ineffable, like his misery, was to be his joy.

Harder thoughts regained the mastery when he got within his own house again. It was no longer the orderly, calm, well-regulated house which had taken in the minister of Salem by way of adding yet a finer touch to its own profound respectability. Susan’s unhappy presence pervaded the place. Boxes of other lodgers going away encumbered the hall, where the landlady hovered weeping, and admitted the pastor sullenly with an audible sob.

Though he had imagined himself invested in armour of light against all these petty assaults, Vincent was not strong enough, even in the fictitious strength given him by Lady Western’s kindness, to bear the reality of his position. The very face of his landlady brought before him the whole array of faces at Salem, which he must shortly encounter, all directed towards him in judicial severity—an awful tribunal. When he reached the shelter of his room up-stairs, the ‘Carlingford Gazette’ lay upon his table, folded out so as to show that mysterious story of Miss ——, which some one in the house had certainly identified. The poor minister took it in his hands with an impulse to tear it in pieces—to trample it under foot—to give some outlet, now he was by himself, to the rage and indignation with which he saw his own calamity turned into a romance for the amusement of the public. He checked himself with a bitter smile at his own folly; unconsciously he bethought himself of Tozer’s back-parlour, of Mr. Tufton’s sitting-room, of all the places about where he had seen his people gleaning information and amusement from the ‘Carlingford Gazette.’ How the little paper, generally so harmless, would amuse and excite its readers to-day! What surmises there would be, and how soon the fatal knowledge would ooze out and be talked over on all sides! It was no matter of feeling to him—it was ruin in every way to the poor young minister, whose credit and living depended solely upon the caprice of his “flock.” The sight of the newspaper had so stunned him, that it was some time before he perceived a letter lying under it on the table. When he saw that the post-mark was Dover, he snatched up this letter eagerly and tore it open. It was from the lawyer whom he had consulted there. For the first moment he did not comprehend the information it conveyed. Good news!—what news could be good under his dreadful circumstances? The young man’s mind was stupified, and could not take it in. It was the copy of a doctor’s certificate—the opinion of a famous surgeon who had been summoned from London—to the effect that Colonel Mildmay’s wound was not necessarily fatal, and that if fever did not come on he might recover. The minister read it over again and again before he could comprehend it, and when he did comprehend it, the fact seemed rather an aggravation than a comfort to his misery. He was not dead—this destroyer. Perhaps at this moment, when his unhappy victim lay struggling between life and death, he, with the horrible good fortune of wickedness, was coming back from the edge of the grave. At the first shock it did not seem good news to Vincent. Not dead!—“the cursed villain,” he said through his clenched teeth. The earth was not rid of that pitiless wretch. It looked like another grand injustice in the world, where all the landmarks were overturned, and only evil seemed to prosper. He did not connect it anyhow with possible relief or deliverance to Susan; on the contrary, it raised in his own mind all the resentment and rage which had been quenched by Mildmay’s supposed death. He could scarcely compose himself after that unexpected information. If all went well, it would naturally change the character of the case—perhaps, under the circumstances, there might be no prosecution, said the lawyer’s letter. Vincent was young—excited out of all self-command or prudential considerations. In his soul he resented even this hope, which might still save his sister, and grudged what he felt to be the diabolical good-luck of her destroyer. Not dead!—not going to die!—not punished anyhow. About, after all the misery he had occasioned, to recover, and go on prosperously again, and spread wretchedness and ruin upon others. “He shall render me an account,” cried the minister fiercely to himself. “He shall answer for it to me!” He felt it intolerable, that this guilty soul should escape its punishment.

Thoughts more reasonable, however, came to him after a time. He began to see the importance of the intelligence to Susan—and even to himself. At least she could not be accused of shedding blood—at least she might be hidden somewhere in her shame, poor lost soul, and kept from the cruel eyes of the world. When he began to feel the influence of this gleam of comfort, he ventured to go to the sick-room to tell his mother, whom he had not yet seen; but Mrs. Vincent was deaf and insensible to everything but her child, whose need and danger were too urgent to permit more distant spectres, however terrible, to be visible in her sick-chamber. Mary, already worn out with fatigue, had gone to bed with a headache, with the liveliest conviction in her mind that she had taken the fever too. The widow, who had lived for the past week as though she had no physical frame at all, sat sleepless, with hot eyes and pallid face, by her daughter’s bed. She could still smile—smiles more heart-breaking than any outcry of anguish—and leaned her poor head upon her son, as he came near to her, with a tender pressure of her arms and strain of absolute dependence which went to his heart. She could not speak, or say, as she had said so often, that her boy must take care of his sister—that Susan had no one else to stand by her. Leaning upon him in an unspeakable appeal of love and weakness, smiling on him with her wistful quivering lips, was all the poor mother could do now.

All; for in that room no one could speak. One voice filled its silence. The restless movement of the head on that pillow turning from side to side in search of the rest which was nowhere to be found, stilled every other motion. Not even fever could flush the marble whiteness of her face. Awfully alone, in her mother’s anxious presence, with her brother by her bedside, Susan went on unconscious through the wild distracted world of her own thoughts—through what had been her own thoughts before horror and anguish cast them all astray. Vincent stood aside in breathless attention like the rest, before he had been many minutes in the room. We say to each other how strange it is that no heart can ever fully communicate itself to another; but when that revelation does take place, awful is the spectacle. All unawares, in her dread distraction, Susan opened up her heart.

“What does it matter what they will say?” said Susan; “I will never see them again. Unless—yes, put down her veil; she is pretty, very pretty; but what has Herbert to do with her? He said it was me he wanted; and why did he bring me away if he did not love me? Love me! and deceived me, and told me lies. Oh God, oh God! is it not Carlingford? Where is it? I am taking God’s name in vain. I was not thinking of Him—, I was thinking——. His name is Fordham, Herbert Fordham,—do you hear? What do you mean by Mildmay? I know no Mildmay. Stop and let me think. Herbert—Herbert! Oh, where are you—where are you? Do you think it never could be him, but only a lie? Well! if he did not love me, I could bear it; but why, why did he cheat me, and bring me away? The door is locked; they will not let me get out. Herbert! was there never, never any Herbert in the world? Oh, come back, even if you are only a dream! Locked! If they would only kill me! What do they mean to do with me? Oh God, oh God! but I must marry him if he says so. I must, must marry him, though he has told me lies. I must, whatever he does. Even if I could get through the window and escape; for they will call me wicked. Oh, mamma, mamma! and Arthur a minister, and to bring disgrace on him! But I am not disgraced. Oh no, no; never, never!— I will die first— I will kill him first. Open the door; oh, open the door! Let me go!”

She struggled up in one of her wilder paroxysms. She had thrown herself half out of bed, rising up wildly, and tossing her arms into the air, before her startled brother could rush forward to control her. But as the voice of the unhappy girl rose into frenzy, some unseen attendants stole in and took her out of his unskilful hands. The sight was too painful for unaccustomed eyes—for eyes of love, which could scarcely bear, even for her own sake, to see such means of restraint employed upon Susan. Mrs. Vincent stood by, uttering unconscious cries, imploring the two strong women who held her daughter, oh, not to hurt her, not to grasp her so tightly; while Susan herself beat the air in vain, and entreated, with passionate outcries, to be set free—to be let go. When she was again subdued, and sank into the quiet of exhaustion, Vincent withdrew from this saddest scene of all, utterly depressed and broken-spirited. The wretch lived who had wrought this dread wreck and ruin. What did it matter? Within that room it gave no relief, eased no heart, to say that he was not dead. Forms more terrific still than those of law and public vengeance—madness and death—stood on either side of Susan’s bed; till they had fought out the desperate quarrel, what matter to those most immediately concerned whether a greater or a lesser penalty lowered over her head? The minister went back to his own retirement with an aching heart, utterly dejected and depressed. He threw himself into a chair to think it all over, as he said to himself; but as he sat there, hopeless and solitary, his mind strayed from Susan. Could any one blame him? Who does not know what it is to have one secret spot of personal consolation to fly to in the midst of trouble? Vincent betook himself there in the utter darkness of everything around. Once more he seemed to feel that sudden touch which took away half his burden. No words could have spoken to his heart like that fairy hand upon his arm. He brooded over it, not thinking, only living over again the moment which had made so great a difference in the world. He forgot Fordham; he forgot everything; he took neither reason nor likelihood with him in his self-delusion. A sudden rosy mist suffused once more the cruel earth upon which he was standing; whatever came, he had something of his own to fall back upon, an ineffable secret sweetness, which stanched every wound before it was made. The young minister, out of the very depths of calamity, escaped into this garden of delights; he put aside the intolerable misery of the house; he thrust away from him all the lesser troubles which bristled thick in front of him in the very name of Salem. He fled to that one spot of joy which he thought remained to him in the middle of the waste, doubly sweet and precious. It gave him strength to hold out through his trouble, without being overwhelmed. He escaped to that delicious resting-place almost against his will, not able to resist the charm of the indescribable solace he found there. He alone, of all concerned, had that footbreadth of personal happiness to take refuge in amid the bitter storm. He did not know it was all delusion, self-deception, a woeful miserable blunder. He hugged it to his heart in secret, and took a comfort not to be spoken from the thought. Vanity of vanities; but nothing else in the world could have stolen with such fairy balms of consolation and strength to the heart of the poor minister. It was not long till he was called to face his fate again, and all the heavy front of battle set in array against him; but it was with a feeling of sweet guilt that he started up in the winter twilight, and left his room to see Tozer, who waited for him below. That room henceforward was inhabited by the fairy vision. When he went back to it, Love, the consolatrix, met him again, stealing that visionary hand within his arm. Blank darkness dwelt all around; here, falsest, fairest mirage of imagination, palpitated one delicious gleam of light.

CHAPTER VII.

SOMEHOW the heavy week stole round without any other fluctuations but those terrible ones of Susan’s fever. Dreadful consolation and terrible doubt breathed forth in those heartrending revelations which her poor unconscious soul was continually pouring forth. The unhappy girl showed her heart all naked and undisguised to the watchers round her—a heart bewildered, alarmed, desperate, but not overwhelmed with guilty passion. Through the dreadful haze which enveloped her mind, flashes of indignation, bursts of hope, shone tragical and fierce; but she was not a disgraced creature who lay there, arguing pitifully with herself what she must do; not disgraced—but in an agony of self-preservation could she have snatched up the ready pistol—could it be true? When Vincent went into that room, it was always to withdraw with a shuddering dread. Had she escaped one horror to fall into another yet more horrible? That evidence of which, with Mrs. Hilyard’s face before his eyes, he had been half contemptuous at first, returned upon him with ever-growing probability. Driven to bay, driven mad, reason and self-control scared by the horrible emergency, had the desperate creature resorted to the first wild expedient within her reach to save herself at last? With this hideous likelihood growing in his mind, Vincent had to face the Sunday, which came upon him like a new calamity. He would fain have withdrawn, and, regardless of anything else which might happen, have sent once more for Beecher. To confront the people of Salem, to look down upon those familiar rows of faces, all of them bearing a consciousness of the story in the newspapers, acquainted with all that his landlady could tell, and guessing but too distinctly the terrible misfortune which had befallen his family, seemed more than flesh and blood could bear. He was sitting alone, pondering all this, with a letter which he had commenced to write to Beecher before him, when Tozer, who was now his constant visitor, came in. There could be no doubt of the butterman’s honest and genuine sympathy, but, unfortunately, there was just as little doubt that Tozer took a pleasure in managing the minister’s affairs at this crisis, and piloting him through the troubled waters. Tozer did all but neglect his business to meet the emergency; he carried matters with rather a high hand in the meetings of the managing committee; he took absolute control, or wished to do so, of Vincent’s proceedings. “We’ll tide it over, we’ll tide it over,” he said, rubbing his hands. To go in, in this state of mind, secure in his own resources and in the skill with which he could guide the wavering and half-informed mind of Salem, fluctuating as it did between horror and sympathy, doubtful whether to take up the minister’s cause with zeal, or to cast him off and disown him, and to find the minister himself giving in, deserting his post at the most critical moment, and making useless all that his patron was doing for him, was too much for the deacon’s patience. He sat down in indignant surprise opposite Vincent, and struck his stick against the floor involuntarily, by way of emphasis to his words.

“Mr. Vincent, sir, this ain’t the thing to do— I tell you it ain’t the thing to do. Salem has a right to expect different,” cried Tozer, in the warmth of his disappointment; “a congregation as has never said a word, and office-bearers as have stuck by you and stood up for you whatever folks liked to say! I’m a man as will never desert my pastor in trouble; but I’d like to know what you call this, Mr. Vincent, but a deserting of me? What’s the good of fighting for the minister, if he gives in and sends for another man, and won’t face nothing for himself? It’s next Sunday as is all the battle. Get that over, and things will come straight. When they see you in the pulpit in your old way, and all things as they was, bless you, they’ll get used to it, and won’t mind the papers no more nor—nor I do. I tell you, sir, it’s next Sunday as is the battle. I don’t undertake to answer for the consequences, not if you gives in, and has Mr. Beecher down for next Sunday. It ain’t the thing to do, Mr. Vincent; Salem folks won’t put up with that. Your good mother, poor thing, wouldn’t say no different. If you mean to stay and keep things straight in Carlingford, you’ll go into that pulpit, and look as if nothing had happened. It’s next Sunday as is the battle.”

“Look as if nothing had happened!—and why should I wish to stay in Carlingford, or—or anywhere?” cried Vincent, in a momentary outbreak of dejection. But he threw down his pen, and closed his blotting-book over the half-written letter. He was too wretched to have much resolution one way or another. To argue the matter was worse than to suffer any consequences, however hard they might be.

“I don’t deny it’s natural as you should feel strange,” admitted Tozer. “I do myself, as am only your friend, Mr. Vincent, when folks are a-talking in the shop, and going over one thing and another—asking if it’s true as she belongs to you, and how a minister’s daughter ever come to know the likes of him——”

“For heaven’s sake, no more, no more!—you will drive me mad!” cried Vincent, springing to his feet. Tozer, thus suddenly interrupted, stared a little, and then changed the subject, though without quite finding out how it was that he had startled his sensitive companion into such sudden impatience. “When I was only telling him the common talk!” as he said to his wife in the privacy of their own parlour. In the mean time he had other subjects equally interesting.

“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll begin your coorse all the same,” said Tozer; “it would have a good effect, that would. When folks are in a state of excitement, and a-looking for something, to come down upon them as before, and accordin’ to intimation, would have a wonderful effect, Mr. Vincent. You take my word, sir, it would be very telling—would that. Don’t lose no time, but begin your coorse as was intimated. It’s a providence, is the intimation. I wouldn’t say nothing about what’s happened—not plain out; but if you could bring in a kind of an inference like, nothing as had anything to do with the story in the papers, but just as might be understood——”

The butterman sat quite calmly and at his ease, but really anxious and interested, making his sober suggestions. The unfortunate minister, unable otherwise to subdue his impatience and wretchedness, fell to walking up and down the room, as was natural. When he could bear it no longer, he came back to the table at which Tozer sat in all the pomp of advice and management. He took his unfinished letter and tore it in little pieces, then stopped the calm flow of the deacon’s counsel by a sudden outburst.

“I will preach,” cried the young man, scattering the bits of paper out of his hand unawares. “Is not that enough? don’t tell me what I am to do—the evil is sufficient without that. I tell you I will preach. I would rather cut off my right hand, if that would do as well. I am speaking like a child or a fool: who cares for my right hand, I wonder, or my life, or my senses? No more of this. I will preach—don’t speak of it again. It will not matter a hundred years hence,” muttered the minister, with that sudden adoption of the philosophy of recklessness which misery sometimes plays with. He threw himself into his chair again, and covered his face with his hands. He was thinking of Salem, and all those rows of gazing eyes. He could see them all in their pews, imagination, with a cruel freak like a mocking spirit, depicting all the finery of Mrs. Pigeon and Mrs. Brown upon that vivid canvass. The minister groaned at the thought of them; but to put it down on paper, and record the pang of exasperation and intolerable wretchedness which was thus connected with the fine winter bonnets of the poulterer’s wife and the dairy-woman would make a picture rather grotesque than terrible to unconcerned eyes. It was dreadful earnest to poor Vincent, thinking how he should stand before them on that inexorable Sunday, and preach “as if nothing had happened;” reading all the while, in case his own mind would let him forget them, the vulgarest horrors of all that had happened in all that crowd of eyes.

“And you’ll find a great consolation, take my word, sir, in the thought that you’re a-doing of your duty,” said Tozer, shaking his head solemnly, as he rose to go away; “that’s a wonderful consolation, Mr. Vincent, to all of us; and especially to a minister that knows he’s a-serving his Master and saving souls.”

Saving souls! Heaven help him! the words rang in his ears like mocking echoes long after the butterman had settled into his arm-chair, and confided to his wife and Phœbe that the pastor was a-coming to himself and taking to his duties, and that we’ll tide it over yet. “Saving souls!” the words came back and back to Vincent’s bewildered mind. They formed a measure and cadence in their constant repetition, haunting him like some spiritual suggestion, as he looked over, with senses confused and dizzy, his little stock of sermons, to make preparation for the duty which he could not escape. At last he tossed them all away in a heap, seized his pen, and poured forth his heart. Saving souls! what did it mean? He was not writing a sermon. Out of the depths of his troubled heart poured all the chaos of thought and wonder, which leapt into fiery life under that quickening touch of personal misery and unrest. He forgot the bounds of orthodox speculation—all bounds save those of the drear mortal curtain of death, on the other side of which that great question is solved. He set forth the dark secrets of life with exaggerated touches of his own passion and anguish. He painted out of his own aching fancy a soul innocent, yet stained with the heaviest of mortal crimes: he turned his wild light aside and poured it upon another, foul to the core, yet unassailable by man. Saving souls!—which was the criminal? which was the innocent? A wild confusion of sin and sorrow, of dreadful human complications, misconceptions, of all incomprehensible, intolerable thoughts, surged round and round him as he wrote. Were the words folly that haunted him with such echoes? Could he, and such as he, unwitting of half the mysteries of life, do anything to that prodigious work? Could words help it—vain syllables of exhortation or appeal? God knows. The end of it all was a confused recognition of the One half-known, half-identified, who, if any hope were to be had, held that hope in His hands. The preacher, who had but dim acquaintance with His name, paused, in the half idiocy of his awakened genius, to wonder, like a child, if perhaps his simple mother knew a little more of that far-off wondrous figure—recognised it wildly by the confused lights as the only hope in earth or heaven—and so rose up, trembling with excitement and exhaustion, to find that he had spent the entire night in this sudden inspiration, and that the wintry dawn, cold and piercing to the heart, was stealing over the opposite roofs, and another day had begun.

This was the sermon which startled half the population of Carlingford on that wonderful Sunday. Salem, had never been so full before. Every individual of the Chapel folks was there who could by any means come out, and many other curious inhabitants, full of natural wonder, to see how a man looked, and what he would preach about, concerning whom, and whose family, such mysterious rumours were afloat. The wondering congregation thrilled like one soul under that touch of passion. Faces grew pale, long sobs of emotion burst here and there from the half-terrified excited audience, who seemed to see around them, instead of the every-day familiar world, a throng of those souls whom the preacher disrobed of everything but passion and consciousness and immortality. Just before the conclusion, when he came to a sudden pause all at once, and made a movement forward as if to lay hold of something he saw, the effect was almost greater than the deacons could approve of in chapel. One woman screamed aloud, another fainted, some people started to their feet—all waited with suspended breath for the next words, electrified by the real life which palpitated there before them, where life so seldom appears, in the decorous pulpit. When he went on again the people were almost too much excited to perceive the plain meaning of his words, if any plain meaning had ever been in that passionate outcry of a wounded and bewildered soul. When the services were over, many of them watched the precipitate rush which the young preacher made through the crowd into his vestry. He could not wait the dispersion of the flock, as was the usual custom. It was with a buzz of excitement that the congregation did disperse slowly, in groups, asking each other had such a sermon ever been preached before in Carlingford. Some shook their heads, audibly expressing their alarm lest Mr. Vincent should go too far, and unsettle his mind; some pitied and commented on his looks—women these. He sent them all away in a flutter of excitement, which obliterated all other objects of talk for the moment, even the story in the papers, and left himself in a gloomy splendour of eloquence and uncertainty, the only object of possible comment until the fumes of his wild oration should have died away.

“I said we’d tide it over,” said Tozer, in a triumphant whisper, to his wife. “That’s what he can do when he’s well kep’ up to it, and put on his mettle. The man as says he ever heard anything as was finer, or had more mind in it,” added the worthy butterman to his fellow-deacons, “has had more opportunities nor me; and though I say it, I’ve heard the best preachers in our connection. That’s philosophical, that is—there ain’t a man in the Church as I ever heard of as could match that, and not a many as comes out o’ ’Omerton. We’re not a-going to quarrel with a pastor as can preach a sermon like that, not because he’s had a misfortune in his family. Come into the vestry, Pigeon, and say a kind word—as you’re sorry, and we’ll stand by him. He wants to be kep’ up, that’s what he wants. Mind like that always does. It ain’t equal to doing for itself, like most. Come along with me, and say what’s kind, and cheer him up, as has exerted hisself and done his best.”

“It was rousing up,” said Pigeon, with a little reluctance; “even the missis didn’t go again’ that; but where he’s weak is in the application. I don’t mind just shaking hands——”

“If we was all to go, he might take it kind,” suggested Brown, the dairyman, who had little to say, and not much confidence in his own opinion; and pride and kindness combined won the day. The deacons who were in attendance went in, in a body, to shake hands with the pastor, and express their sympathy, and congratulate him on his sermon, the latter particular being an established point of deacon’s duty in every well-regulated and harmonious community. They went in rather pleased with themselves, and full of the gratification they were about to confer. But the open door of the vestry revealed an empty room, with the preacher’s black gown lying tossed upon the floor, as if it had been thrown down recklessly in his sudden exit. The little procession came to a halt, and stared in each other’s faces. Their futile good intentions flashed into exasperation. They had come to bestow their favour upon him, to make him happy, and behold he had fled in contemptuous haste, without waiting for their approval; even Tozer felt the shock of the failure. So far as the oligarchs of Salem were concerned, the sermon might never have been preached, and the pastor sank deeper than ever into the bad opinion of Mr. Pigeon and Mr. Brown.

In the mean time Vincent had rushed from his pulpit, thrown on his coat, and rushed out again into the cold mid-day, tingling in every limb with the desperate effort of self-restraint, which alone had enabled him to preserve the gravity of the pulpit and conclude the services with due steadiness and propriety. When he made that sudden pause, it was not for nought. Effective though it was, it was no trick of oratory which caught the breath at his lips, and transfixed him for the moment. There, among the crowded pews of Salem, deep in the further end of the chapel, half lost in the throng of listeners, suddenly, all at once, had flashed upon him a face—a face, unchanged from its old expression, intent as if no deluge had descended, no earthquake fallen; listening, as of old, with gleaming keen eyes and close-shut emphatic mouth. The whole building reeled in Vincent’s eyes, as he caught sight of that thin head, dark and silent, gleaming out in all its expressive refinement and intelligence from the common faces round. How he kept still and went on was to himself a kind of miracle. Had she moved or left the place, he could not have restrained himself. But she did not move. He watched her, even while he prayed, with a profanity of which he was conscious to the heart. He watched her with her frightful composure finding the hymn, standing up with the rest to sing. When she disappeared, he rushed from the pulpit—rushed out—pursued her. She was not to be seen anywhere when he got outside, and the first stream of the throng of dispersing worshippers, which fortunately, however, included none of the leading people of Salem, beheld with amazed eyes the minister who darted through them, and took his hurried way to Back Grove Street. Could she have gone there? He debated the question vainly with himself as he hastened on the familiar road. The door was open as of old, the children playing upon the crowded pavement. He flew up the staircase, which creaked under his hasty foot, and knocked again at the well-known door, instinctively pausing before it, though he had meant to burst in and satisfy himself. Such a violence was unnecessary—as if the world had stood still, Mrs. Hilyard opened the door and stood before him, with her little kerchief on her head, her fingers still marked with blue. “Mr. Vincent,” said this incomprehensible woman, admitting him without a moment’s hesitation, pointing him to a chair as of old, and regarding him with the old steady look of half-amused observation, “you have never come to see me on a Sunday before. It is the best day for conversation for people who have work to do. Sit down, take breath; I have leisure, and there is time now for everything we can have to say.”

CHAPTER VIII.

VINCENT put out his hand to seize upon the strange woman who confronted him with a calmness much more confounding than any agitation. But her quick eye divined his purpose. She made the slightest movement aside, extended her own, and had shaken hands with him in his utter surprise before he knew what he was doing. The touch bewildered his faculties, but did not move him from the impulse, which was too real to yield to anything. He took the door from her hand, closed it, placed himself against it. “You are my prisoner,” said Vincent. He could not say any more, but gazed at her with blank eyes of determination. He was no longer accessible to reason, pity, any sentiment but one. He had secured her. He forgot even to be amazed at her composure. She was his prisoner—that one fact was all he cared to know.

“I have been your prisoner the entire morning,” said Mrs. Hilyard, with an attempt at her old manner, which scarcely could have deceived the minister had he preserved his wits sufficiently to notice it, but at the same time betraying a little surprise, recognising instinctively that here she had come face to face with those blind forces of nature upon which no arguments can tell. “You were in much less doubt about your power of saving souls the last time I heard you, Mr. Vincent. Sit down, please. It is not long since we met, but many things have happened. It is kind of you to give me so early an opportunity of talking them over. I am sorry to see you look excited—but after such exertions, it is natural, I suppose——”

“You are my prisoner,” repeated Vincent, without taking any notice of what she said. He was no match for her in any passage of arms. Her words fell upon his ears without any meaning. Only a dull determination possessed him. He locked the door, while she, somewhat startled in her turn, stood looking on; then he went to the window, threw it open, and called to some one below—any one—he did not care who. “Fetch a policeman—quick—lose no time!” cried Vincent. Then he closed the window, turned round, and confronted her again. At last a little agitation was visible in this invulnerable woman. For an instant her head moved with a spasmodic thrill, and her countenance changed. She gave a rapid glance round as if to see whether any outlet was left. Vincent’s eye followed hers.

“You cannot escape—you shall not escape,” he said, slowly; “don’t think it—nothing you can do or say will help you now.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Hilyard, with a startled, panting breath. “You have come to the inexorable,” she said, after a moment; “most men do, one time or another. You decline meeting us on our ground, and take to your own. Very well,” she continued, seating herself by the table where she had already laid down one of the Salem hymn-books; “till this arrival happens, we may have a little conversation, Mr. Vincent. I was about to tell you something which ought to be good news. Though you don’t appreciate my regard for you, I will tell it you all the same. What noise is that? Oh, the boys, I suppose, rushing off for your policeman. I hope you know what you are going to say to that functionary when he comes. In the mean time, wait a little—you must hear my news.”

The only answer Vincent made was to look out again from the window, under which a little group of gazers had already collected. His companion heard the sounds below with a thrill of alarm more real than she had ever felt before. She sat rigidly, with her hand upon the hymn-book, preserving her composure by a wonderful effort, intensely alive and awake to everything, and calculating her chances with a certain desperation. This one thing alone of all that had happened, the Back Grove Street needlewoman, confident in her own powers and influence, had not foreseen.

“Listen!” she cried, with an excitement and haste which she could not quite conceal. “That man is not dead, you know. Come here—shut the window! Young man, do you hear what I say to you? Am I likely to indulge in vain talk now? Come here—here! and understand what I have to say.”

“It does not matter,” said Vincent, closing the window. “What you say can make no difference. There is but one thing possible now.”

“Yes, you are a man!” cried the desperate woman, clasping her hands tight, and struggling with herself to keep down all appearance of her anxiety. “You are deaf, blind! You have turned your back upon reason. That is what it always comes to. Hush! come here—closer; they make so much noise in the street. I believe,” she said, with a dreadful smile, “you are afraid of me. You think I will stab you, or something. Don’t entertain such vulgar imaginations, Mr. Vincent. I have told you before, you have fine manners, though you are only a Dissenting minister. I have something to tell you—something you will be glad to know——”

Here she made another pause for breath—merely for breath—not for any answer, for there was no answer in her companion’s face. He was listening for the footsteps in the street—the steps of his returning messengers. And so was she, as she drew in that long breath, expanding her forlorn bosom with air, which the quick throbs of her heart so soon exhausted. She looked in his eyes with an eager fire in her own, steadily, without once shifting her gaze. The two had changed places. It was he, in his inexorableness, close shut up against any appeal or argument, that was the superior now.

“When you hear what I have to say, you will not be so calm,” she went on, with another involuntary heave of her breast. “Listen! your sister is safe. Yes, you may start, but what I say is true. Don’t go to the window yet. Stop, hear me! I tell you your sister is safe. Yes, it may be the people you have sent for. Never mind, this is more important. You have locked the door, and nobody can come in. I tell you again and again, your sister is safe. That man is not dead—you know he is not dead. And yesterday—hush! never mind!—yesterday,” she said, rising up as Vincent moved, and detaining him with her hand upon his arm, which she clutched with desperate fingers, “he made a declaration that it was not she; a declaration before the magistrates,” continued Mrs. Hilyard, gasping as her strength failed her, and following him, holding his arm as he moved to the window, “that it was not she—not she! do you understand me—not she! He swore to it. He said it was another, and not that girl. Do you hear me?” she cried, raising her voice, and shaking his arm wildly in the despair of the moment, but repeating her words with the clearness of desperation—“He said on his oath it was not she.”

She had followed him to the window, not pleading for herself by a single word, but with her desperate hand upon his arm, her face pinched and pale to the lips, and a horrible anxiety gleaming in the eyes which she never removed from his face. The two stood together there for a moment in that silent encounter; he looking down at the group of people below, she watching his face with her eyes, clutching his arm with her hand, appealing to him with a speechless suspense and terror, which no words can describe. Her fate hung upon the merest thread, and she knew it. She had no more power to move him in her own person than any one of the ragged children who stood gazing up at the window. There he stood, silent, blank, immovable; and she, suffering no expression of her dreadful suspense to escape her, stood clutching his arm, seeing, as she had never seen before, a pale vision of prisons, scaffolds, judgments, obscuring earth and heaven. She was brave, and had dared them all wittingly in the crisis of her fate, but the reality caught the labouring breath from her lips, and turned her heart sick. This morning she had woke with a great burden taken off her mind, and, daring as she was, had faced the only man who had any clue to her secret, confident in his generous nature and her own power over him. But this confidence had failed her utterly, and in the very ease and relief of her mind—a relief more blessed and grateful than she could have acknowledged to any mortal—lo! here arose before her close and real the spectre which she had defied. It approached step by step, while she gazed with wild eyes and panting breath upon the inexorable man who had it in his power to deliver her over to law and justice. She dared not say a word of entreaty to him; she could only watch his eyes, those eyes which never lighted upon her, with speechless dread and anxiety. Many evils she had borne in her life—many she had confronted and overcome—obstinate will and unscrupulous resolution had carried her one way or other through all former dangers. Here for the first time she stood helpless, watching with an indescribable agony the face of the young man at whom she had so often smiled. Some sudden unforeseen touch might still set her free. Her breath came quick in short gasps—her breast heaved—her fate was absolutely beyond her own control, in Vincent’s hands.

Just then there came into the narrow street a sound of carriage-wheels. Instinctively Vincent started. The blank of his determination was broken by this distant noise. Somehow it came naturally into the silence of this room and woke up the echoes of the past in his mind; the past—that past in which Lady Western’s carriage was the celestial chariot, and she the divinest lady of life. Like a gleam of light there suddenly dawned around him a remembrance of the times he had seen her here—the times he had seen her anywhere; the last time—the sweet hand she had laid upon his arm. Vincent’s heart awoke under that touch. With a start he looked down upon the hand which was at this moment on his arm,—not the hand of love,—fingers with the blood pressed down to the very tips, holding with desperation that arm which had the power of life and death. A hurried exclamation came from his lips; he looked at the woman by him, and read vaguely in her face all the passion and agony there. Vaguely it occurred to him that to save or to sacrifice her was in his hands, and that he had but a moment now to decide. The carriage-wheels came nearer, nearer, ringing delicious promises in his ears—nearer too came the servants of that justice he had invoked; and what plea was it, what strange propitiation, which his companion had put forth to him to stay his avenging hand? Only a moment now; he shook her hand off his arm, and in his turn took hold of hers; he held her fast while she faced him in an agony of restrained suspense and terror. How her worn bosom panted with that quick coming breath! Her life was in his hands.

“What was that you said?” asked Vincent, with the haste and brevity of passion, suddenly perceiving how much had to be done in this moment of fate.

The long-restrained words burst from his companion’s lips almost before he had done speaking. “I said your sister was safe!” she cried; “I said he had declared her innocent on his oath. It was not she—he has sworn it, all a man could do. To sacrifice another,” she went on breathlessly with a strong momentary shudder, pausing to listen, “will do nothing for her—nothing! You hear what I say. It was not she; he has sworn upon his solemn oath. Do as you will. She is safe—safe!—as safe as—as— God help me—as safe as my child,—and it was for her sake——”

She stopped—words would serve her no further—and just then there came a summons to the locked door. Vincent dropped her arm, and she recoiled from him with an involuntary movement; unawares she clasped her thin hands and gave one wild look into his face. Not even now could she tell what he was going to do, this dreadful arbiter of fate. The key, as he turned it in the door, rang in her ears like thunder; and his hand trembled as he set open the entrance of the needlewoman’s mean apartment. On the threshold stood no vulgar messenger of fate, but a bright vision, sad, yet sweeter than anything else in earth or almost in heaven to Vincent. He fell back without saying anything before the startled look of that beautiful face. He let in, not law and justice, but love and pity, to this miserable room.

“Oh, Rachel! where have you been? have you seen him? have you heard of him? where have you been?” cried the visitor, going up to the pallid woman, whose eyes were still fixed on Vincent. Mrs. Hilyard could not speak. She dropped upon her knees by the table, shivering and crouching like a stricken creature. She leaned her head upon the hymn-book which lay there so strangely at variance with everything else around it. Pale with fright and horror, Lady Western appealed to Vincent. “She is ill, she is fainting—oh, Mr. Vincent, what have you been saying to her? She was not to blame,” cried the new-comer, in her ignorance. Vincent attempted no reply, offered no help. In his heart he could have snatched away those beautiful hands which embraced and comforted his “prisoner,” thus rescued out of his grasp. It was hard to see her touch that guilty conscious woman whom his own heart refused to pity. He stood by looking on, watching her still; the instinct of vengeance had been awakened within him. He was reluctant to let her go.

“You have been saying something to her,” said Lady Western, with tears in her eyes; “and how could she be to blame? Rachel! Oh, I wonder, I wonder if she loved him after all?” cried the beautiful creature, in the bewilderment of her innocence and ignorance. She stood bending over the kneeling figure, troubled, perplexed almost more than her strange sister-in-law had ever yet perplexed her. She could not account for this extraordinary access of agitation. It was nohow explainable, except upon that supposition which opened at once the warmest sympathies of the gentle young woman’s heart.

“Rachel, dear!” she cried, kissing softly the thin hands worn with toil that covered Mrs. Hilyard’s face—“he is still living, there is hope; perhaps he will get better; and he is showing a better mind too,” she added, after a little tremulous pause. “I came to see if you had come home to tell you; he has sworn that it was not—oh, Mr. Vincent, I sent you word immediately when I got the message—he says it was not your sister; she had nothing to do with it, he says. Now I can look you in the face again. The first thing he was able to do when he came to himself was to clear her; and now she will get better—and your dear mother?”—said Lady Western, looking wistfully into the young man’s face. In that moment, while her attention was directed otherwise, Mrs. Hilyard rose up and took her seat again; took her seat because she was not able to stand, and scarcely able, by all the power of her will, to compose the nerves which, for the first time in her life, had utterly got the better of her. She wiped off the heavy moisture from her face with a furtive hand before the young Dowager turned her eyes again that way. She grasped fast hold of the only thing on the table, the Salem hymn-book, and with a vast effort regained some degree of self-command. For that precious moment she was free from observation, for nothing in the world could have prevented Vincent from returning with his own fascinated eyes the look which Lady Western turned upon him. While the two looked at each other, she was safe; she collected her scattered forces in that invaluable instant. She was herself again when Lady Western looked round, somewhat nervous and embarrassed, from the gaze of passion with which her look of deprecation and sympathy had been met. If a slight shiver now and then thrilled over Mrs. Hilyard’s figure, it was as like to be cold as emotion. Otherwise, she sat with her arm resting on the table and her hand clenched upon the hymn-book, her thin lips clinging spasmodically to each other, and her face pallid, but to an uncritical observer scarcely changed from the grey and vigilant composure of her usual appearance. So many storms had passed over that countenance, that the momentary agony of horror and fright from which she had scarcely yet emerged did not tell as it would have done on a face less worn. Her voice was sharp and strained when she spoke, and she watched Vincent’s eye with a keenness of which he was vividly conscious; but Lady Western, who did not go deep into looks and meanings, found nothing very unusual in what she said.

“I think Mr. Vincent was doubtful of my information,” she said. “I heard it last night from Langridge, the groom, who once belonged to my family, you know, Alice; and—and lets me know if anything more than usual happens,” she said, abruptly stopping to draw breath. “I travelled all night to get here to-day. Mr. Vincent was doubtful of me. Now this matter is cleared up, I daresay he will understand me when I say that I never could have allowed things to go further. I am only a needle-woman, and live in Back Grove Street,” continued Mrs. Hilyard, recovering gradually as she spoke; “but I have certain things still in my power. Mr. Vincent will understand what I mean,” she went on, fixing her eyes upon him, and unable to repress an occasional gasp which interrupted her words, “when I say that I should not have suffered it to go further. I should not have shrunk from any sacrifice. My dear, I have been a little shaken and agitated, as you perceive. Mr. Vincent wants to keep his eye upon me. Take me with you, Alice,” said the bold woman, once more looking Vincent full in the face; “take charge of me, keep me prisoner until all this is cleared up. I am about tired of living a disguised princess. Send up your people for my possessions here, and take me with you. You will find me safe, Mr. Vincent, when you happen to want me, with Lady Western in Grange Lane.”

“Oh, Rachel, I am so glad!” cried Lady Western; “I cannot for my life imagine what you mean by keeping you my prisoner, and all that; but Mr. Vincent may be very sure you will be safe with me;—since he has so much interest in your movements,” continued the young Dowager, turning her perplexed eyes from one to the other. She had not the remotest idea what it all meant. She was perhaps a little surprised to perceive that, after all, Vincent’s interest was less with herself than with this strange woman, whose calmness and agitation were equally confusing and unintelligible. “We shall, of course, always be happy to see Mr. Vincent in Grange Lane,” she concluded, with a somewhat stately courtesy. He did not look at her; he was looking at the other, whose eyes were fixed upon his face. Between these eyes Lady Western, much amazed, could perceive a secret communication passing. What could it mean? The consciousness of this mystery between them which she did not know, annoyed her, notwithstanding her sweet temper. She withdrew her hand instinctively from Mrs. Hilyard’s, which she had taken in momentary enthusiasm, and watched their looks of intelligence with half-offended eyes.

“Yes,” said the needlewoman, speaking with her eyes fixed upon Vincent, though she did not address him, and making a desperate effort after her usual manner; “I do not think Back Grove Street will do any longer. One may as well take advantage of the accident which has brought our family affairs before the world to come alive again. It is a thing one must do sooner or later. So, if your carriage is close, Alice, I will go home with you. I shall miss Salem,” said the audacious woman, “though you are so much less sure about doing good than you used to be, Mr. Vincent. If my soul happens to be saved, however,” she continued, with a strange softening of her fixed and gleaming eyes—“if that is of much importance, or has any merit in it—you will have had some share in the achievement. You will?” She said the words with a keen sharpness of interrogation, much unlike their more obvious meaning. “You will,” she repeated again, more softly—“you will!” Her thin hands came together for a moment in a clasp of mute supplication; her eyes, always hitherto looking down upon him from heights of dark knowledge and experience, looked up in his face with an anguish of entreaty which startled Vincent. Just at that moment the sounds in the street grew louder, and a voice of authority was audible ordering some one to clear the way. Mrs. Hilyard did not speak, but she put out her hand and touched Lady Western’s shawl, lifting its long fringes, and twisting them round those fingers on which the marks of her long labour were still visible. She withdrew as she did this her eyes from his face. Her fate was absolutely in his hands.

“Ladies,” said Vincent, hoarsely, after vainly trying to clear his agitated voice, “it is better you should leave this place at once. I will see you to your carriage. If I do wrong, the consequences will fall hardest on me. Don’t say anything; either way, talking will do little good. You are her shield and defence,” he said, looking at Lady Western, with an excitement which he could not quite keep under. “When she touches you, she becomes sacred. You will keep her safe—safe? you will not let her go?”

“Yes; I will keep her safe,” said the beauty, opening her lovely astonished eyes. “Is she in danger? Oh, Mr. Vincent, your trouble has been too much for you! remember your sister is safe now.”

“Is she?” said the minister; he was bitter in his heart, even though that hand was once more laid on his arm, “Safe!—with a broken heart and a ruined life; but what does that matter? It is all we are good for; though we may go mad and die.”

“Oh, not you! not you!” said Lady Western, gazing at him with the tenderest pity in her sweet eyes. “You must not say so; I should be so unhappy.” Her beautiful hand pressed his arm with the lightest momentary pressure. She could not help herself; to see suffering and not to do what was in her to soothe it was not possible to her soft heart. Whatever harm that temporary opiate might do, nothing in the world could have prevented her gentle kindness from administering it. She went down the humble stairs leaning on his arm, with Mrs. Hilyard following close. The young man put aside the little crowd he himself had collected, and put them in the carriage. He saw them drive away with a kind of despairing exaltation and excitement, and turned to the difficulties which remained to him—to explain himself and send the tardy ministers of justice away. He explained, as he best could, that he had been mistaken, and once more emptied his scanty purse, where there was now little enough left. When he had got rid of the disappointed group about the door, he went home slowly in the reaction of his violence and haste. Susan was safe; was she safe? delivered from this dreadful accusation—allowed to drop back at least with her broken heart into the deep silences of privacy and uninvadable domestic life. Well, it was a mercy, a great mercy, though he could not realise it. He went home slowly, tingling with the strain of these strange hours; was it Sunday still? was it only an hour ago that Salem had thrilled to the discourse in which his passion and despair had found vent? Vincent neither comprehended himself nor the hours, full of strange fate, which were gliding over him. He went home exhausted, as if with a great conflict; conscious of some relief in his heart, but half unwilling to confess to it, or to realise the means by which it had dawned upon him.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN Vincent entered the house, the sensation of quiet in it struck him with a vague consolation which he could scarcely explain. Perhaps only because it was Sunday, but there was no reproachful landlady, no distracting sound from above—all quiet, Sunday leisure, Sunday decorum, as of old. When he went up hurriedly to his sitting-room, he found two letters lying on his table—one a telegraphic despatch from Dover, the other a dainty little note, which he opened as a man opens the first written communication he receives from the woman of all women. He knew what was in it; but he read it as eagerly as if he expected to find something new in the mild little epistle, with its gentle attempt at congratulation. The news was true. Either remorse had seized upon Mildmay in the prospect of death, or the lingering traditions of honour in his heart had asserted themselves on Susan’s behalf. He had declared her entirely innocent; he had even gone farther, he had sworn that it was only as the companion of his daughter that Susan had accompanied them, and as such that he had treated her. The deposition taken by the magistrates was sent to Vincent in an abridged form, but what it conveyed was clear beyond dispute. So far as the words of this apparently dying man could be received, Susan was spotless—without blood on her hand, or speck upon her good fame. The lesser and the greater guilt were both cleared from that young head which had not been strong enough to wait for this vindication. Though he said, Thank God, from the bottom of his heart, an unspeakable bitterness filled Vincent’s soul as he read. Here was a deliverance, full, lavish, unlooked for; but who could tell that the poor girl, crazed with misery, would ever be any the better for it? who could tell whether this vindication might be of any further use than to lighten the cloud upon Susan’s grave?

With this thought in his mind he went to the sick-room, where everything seemed quiet, not quite sure that his mother, absorbed as she was in Susan’s present danger, could be able to realise the wonderful deliverance which had come to them. But matters were changed there as elsewhere. Between the door and the bed on which Susan lay, a large folding-screen had been set up, and in the darkened space between this and the door sat Mrs. Vincent, with Dr. Rider and his wife on each side, evidently persuading and arguing with her on some point which she was reluctant to yield to them. They were talking in whispers under their breath, and a certain air of stillness, of calm and repose, which Vincent could scarcely comprehend, was in the hushed room.

“I assure you, on my word,” said Dr. Rider, lifting his eyes as Vincent opened the door, and beckoning him softly to come in, “that this change is more than I dared hope for. The chances are she will wake up out of danger. Nothing can be done for her but to keep her perfectly quiet; and my wife will watch, if you will rest;—for our patient’s sake!” said the anxious doctor, still motioning Vincent forward, and appealing to him with his eyes.

“Mr. Vincent has something to tell you,” said the quick little woman, impetuous even in her whisper, who was Dr. Rider’s wife. “He must not come and talk here. He might wake her. Take him away. Edward, take them both away. Mrs. Vincent, you must go and hear what he has to say.”

“Oh, Arthur! my dear boy,” cried his mother, looking up to him with moist eyes. “It is I who have something to tell. My child is perhaps to get well, Arthur. Oh! my own boy, after all, she is going to get better. We shall have Susan again. Hush! doctor, please let me go back again; something stirred— I think something stirred; and perhaps she might want something, and the nurse would not observe. Tired?—no, no; I am not tired. I have always watched them when they were ill, all their lives. They never had any nurse in sickness but their mother. Arthur, you know I am not tired. Oh! doctor, perhaps you would order something while he is here, for my son; he has been agitated and anxious, and he is not so strong—not nearly so strong as I am; but, my dear,” said the widow, looking up in her son’s face with a wistful eagerness, “when Susan gets better, all will be—well.”

She said the last words with a trembling, prolonged sigh. Poor mother, in that very moment she had recalled almost for the first time how far from well everything would be. Her face darkened over piteously as she spoke. She rose up, stung into new energy by this dreadful thought, which had been hitherto mercifully obscured by Susan’s danger. “Let me go back—don’t say anything. Nobody can watch my child but me,” said the heartbroken woman; and once more she looked in her son’s face. She wanted to read there what had happened—to ascertain from him, without any one else being the wiser, all the dreadful particulars which now, in the first relief of Susan’s recovery, had burst into sudden shape upon her sight. “Doctor, we will not detain you; her brother and I will watch my child,” said Mrs. Vincent. The light forsook her eyes as she rose in that new and darker depth of anxiety; her little figure tottered trying to stand as she held out her hand to her son. “You and me—only you and me, Arthur—we must never leave her; though everybody is so kind——” said the minister’s mother, turning with her smile of martyrdom, though her eyes were blind and she could not see them, to Dr. Rider and his wife.

Vincent took his mother’s hands and put her tenderly back in her chair. “I have good news, too,” he said; “all will be well, mother dear. This man who has wrought us so much trouble is not dead. I told you, but you did not understand it; and he declares that Susan——”

“Arthur!” cried Mrs. Vincent, with a sharp outcry of alarm and remonstrance. “Oh, God forgive me! I shall wake my child. Arthur! The doctor is very good,” added the widow, looking round upon them always with the instinct of conciliating Arthur’s friends; “and so is Mrs. Rider; but every family has its private affairs,” she concluded, with a wistful, deprecating smile, all the time making signs to Arthur to stop him in his indiscreet revelations. “My dear, you will tell me presently when we are alone.”

“Ah, mother,” said Vincent, with a suppressed groan, “there is nothing private now in our family affairs. Hush! listen— Susan is cleared; he swears she had nothing to do with it; he swears that she was his daughter’s companion only. Mother! Good heavens! doctor, what has happened? She looks as if she were dying. Mother! What have I done? I have killed her with my good news.”

“Hush, hush—she has fainted—all will come right; let us get her away,” cried Dr. Rider under his breath. Between them the two young men carried her out of the room, which Mrs. Rider closed after them with a certain triumph. The widow was not in so deep a faint but the fresher air outside and the motion revived her. It was more a sudden failing of her faculties in the height of emotion than actual insensibility. She made a feeble effort to resist and return into Susan’s room. “You will wake her,” said Dr. Rider in her ear; and the poor mother sank back in their arms, fixing her wistful misty eyes, in which everything swam, upon her son. Her lips moved as she looked at him, though he could not hear her say a word; but the expression in her face, half awakened only from the incomprehension of her swoon, was not to be mistaken or resisted. Vincent bent down over her, and repeated what he had said as he carried her to another room. “Susan is safe—Susan is innocent. It is all over; mother, you understand me?” he said, repeating it again and again. Mrs. Vincent leaned back upon his shoulder with a yielding of all her fatigued frame and worn-out mind. She understood him, not with her understanding as yet, but with her heart, which melted into unspeakable relief and comfort without knowing why. She closed her eyes in that wonderful consciousness of some great mercy that had happened to her; the first time she had closed them voluntarily for many nights and days. When they laid her down on the bed which had been hurriedly prepared for her, her eyes were still closed, and tears stealing softly out under the lids. She could not break out into expressions of thankfulness—the joy went to her heart.

Dr. Rider thought it judicious to leave her so, and retired from the bedside with Vincent, not without some anxious curiosity in his own mind to hear all “the rights” of the matter. Perhaps the hum of their voices, quietly though they spoke, aroused her from her trance of silent gratitude. When she called Arthur faintly, and when they both hurried to her, Mrs. Vincent was sitting up in her bed wiping off the tears from her cheeks. “Arthur dear,” said the widow, “I am quite sure Dr. Rider will understand that what he has heard is in the strictest confidence; for to be sure,” she continued, with a faint smile breaking over her wan face, “nobody could have any doubt about my Susan. It only had to be set right—and I knew when my son came home he would set it right,” said Mrs. Vincent, looking full in Dr. Rider’s face. “It has all happened because I had not my wits about me as I ought to have had, and was not used to act for myself; but when my son came back— Arthur, my own boy, it was all my fault, but I knew you would set it right—and as for my Susan, nobody could have any doubt; and you will both forgive your poor mother. I don’t mind saying this before the doctor,” she repeated again once more, looking in his face; “because he has seen us in all our trouble, and I am sure we may trust Dr. Rider; but, my dear, you know our private affairs are not to be talked of before strangers—especially,” said the widow, with a long trembling sigh of relief and comfort, “when God has been so good to us, and all is to be well.”

The two young men looked at each other in silence with a certain awe. All the dreadful interval which had passed between this Sunday afternoon and the day of Susan’s return, had been a blank to Mrs. Vincent so far as the outer world was concerned. Her daughter’s illness and danger had rapt her altogether out of ordinary life. She took up her burden only where it had dropped off from her in the consuming anxiety for Susan’s life and reason, in which all other fears had been lost. Just at the point where she had forgotten it, where she had still faced the world with the despairing assumption that all would be right when Arthur returned, she bethought herself now of that frightful shadow which had never been revealed in its full horror to her eyes. Now that Arthur’s assurance relieved her heart of that, the widow took up her old position instinctively. She knew nothing of the comments in the newspapers, the vulgar publicity to which poor Susan’s story had come. She wanted to impress upon Dr. Rider’s mind, by way of making up for her son’s imprudence, that he was specially trusted, and that she did not mind speaking before him because he had seen all their trouble. Such was the poor mother’s idea as she sat upon the bed where they had carried her, wiping the tears of joy from her wan and worn face. She forgot all the weary days that had come and gone. She took up the story just at the point where she, after all her martyrdom and strenuous upholding of Arthur’s cause, had suddenly sunk into Susan’s sick-room and left it. Now she reappeared with Arthur’s banner once more in her hands—always strong in that assumption that nobody could doubt as to Susan, and that Arthur had but to come home to set all right. Dr. Rider held up his warning finger when he saw Vincent about to speak. This delusion was salvation to the widow.

“But I must go back to Susan, doctor,” said Mrs. Vincent. “If she should wake and find a stranger there!—though Mrs. Rider is so kind. But I am much stronger than I look—watching never does me any harm; and now that my mind is easy— People don’t require much sleep at my time of life. And, Arthur, when my dear child sees me, she will know that all is well—all is well,” repeated the widow, with trembling lips. “I must go to Susan, doctor; think if she should wake!”

“But she must not wake,” said Dr. Rider; “and if you stay quietly here she will not wake, for my wife will keep everything still. You will have a great deal to do for her when she is awake and conscious. Now you must rest.”

“I shall have a great deal to do for her? Dr. Rider means she will want nursing, Arthur,” said Mrs. Vincent, “after such an illness; but she might miss me even in her sleep, or she might——”

“Mother, you must rest, for Susan’s sake; if you make yourself ill, who will be able to take care of her?” said Vincent, who felt her hand tremble in his, and saw with how much difficulty she sustained the nervous shivering of her frame. She looked up into his face with those anxious eyes which strove to read his without being able to comprehend all the meanings there. Then the widow turned with a feminine artifice to Dr. Rider.

“Doctor, if you will bring me word that my child is still asleep—if you will tell me exactly what you think, and that she is going on well,” said Mrs. Vincent; “you are always so kind. Oh, Arthur, my dear boy,” cried the widow, taking his hand and caressing it between her own, “now that he is gone, tell me. Is it quite true?—is all well again? but you must never bring in Susan’s name. Nobody must have it in their power to say a word about your sister, Arthur dear. And, oh, I hope you have been prudent and not said anything among your people. Hush! he will be coming back; is it quite true, Arthur? Tell me that my dear child has come safe out of it all, and nothing has happened. Tell me! Oh, speak to me, Arthur dear!”

“It is quite true,” said Vincent, meeting his mothers eyes with a strange blending of pity and thankfulness. He did not say enough to satisfy her. She drew him closer, looking wistfully into his face. The winter afternoon was darkening, the room was cold, the atmosphere dreary. The widow held her son close, and fixed upon him her anxious inquiring eyes. “It is quite true, Arthur! There is nothing behind that you are hiding from me?” she said, with her lips almost touching his cheek, and her wistful eyes searching his meaning. “Oh, my dear boy, don’t hide anything from me. I am able to bear it, Arthur. Whatever it is, I ought to know.”

“What I have told you is the simple truth, mother,” said Vincent, not without a pang. “He has made a declaration before the magistrates——”

Mrs. Vincent started so much that the bed on which she sat shook. “Before the magistrates!” she said, with a faint cry. Then after a pause—“But, thank God, it is not here, Arthur, nor at Lonsdale, nor anywhere where we are known. And he said that—that—he had never harmed my child? Oh, Arthur, Arthur—your sister!—that she should ever be spoken of so! And he was not killed? I do not understand it, my dear. I cannot see all the rights of it; but it is a great comfort to have you to myself for a moment, and to feel as if perhaps things might come right again. Hush! I think the doctor must be coming. Speak very low. My dear boy, you don’t mean it, but you are imprudent; and, oh, Arthur, with a troublesome flock like yours you must not commit yourself! You must not let your sister’s name be talked of among the people. Hush, hush, I hear the doctor at the door.”

And the widow put her son away from her, and leant her head upon her hands instead of on his shoulder. She would not even let the doctor suppose that she had seized that moment to inquire further, or that she was anything but sure and confident that all was going well.

“She is in the most beautiful sleep,” said the enthusiastic doctor, “and Nettie is by her. Now, Mrs. Vincent, here is something you must take; and when you wake up again I will take you to your daughter, and I have very little doubt you will find her on the fair way for recovery—recovery in every sense,” added Dr. Rider, incautiously; “twice saved—and I hope you will have no more of such uneasiness as you have suffered on her behalf.”

“Indeed, I have had very little uneasiness with my children,” said Mrs. Vincent, drawing up her little figure on the bed. “Susan never had a severe illness before. When she came here first she was suffering from a—a bad fright, doctor. I told you so at the time; and I was so weak and so alarmed, Arthur dear, that I fear Dr. Rider has misunderstood me. When one is not much used to illness,” said the mother, with her pathetic jesuitry, “one thinks there never was anything so bad as one’s own case, and I was foolish and upset. Yes, I will take it, doctor. Now that I am easy in my mind, I will take anything you please; and you will let me know if she wakes, or if she stirs. Whatever happens, you will let me know that moment? Arthur, you will see that they let me know.”

The doctor promised, anxiously putting the draught into her hands: he would have promised any impossible thing at the moment, so eager was he to get her persuaded to rest.

“I have not talked so much for— I wonder how long it is?” said the widow, with a faint smile. “Oh, Arthur dear, I feel as if somehow a millstone had been on my heart, and God had taken it off. Doctor, it is—it is—all your doing, under Providence,” said the little woman, looking full in his face. Perhaps she believed it—at least she meant him to believe so. She swallowed the draught he gave her with that smile upon her face, and laid down her throbbing head in the quietness and darkness. “Go with the doctor, Arthur dear,” she said, denying the yearning in her heart to question her son farther, lest Dr. Rider might perhaps suppose all was not so well as she said; “and, oh be sure to tell me the very moment that Susan wakes?” She watched them gliding noiselessly out of the room, two dark figures, in the darkness. She lay down alone, throbbing all over with thrills of pain, which were half pleasure. She began to be conscious again of her own body and life; and the wistful curiosity that possessed her was not strong enough to neutralise the positive unmistakable joy. Susan was recovering. Susan was innocent. What trouble could there be heavy enough to take away the comfort out of words like these!

“Now she will sleep. Mr. Vincent, I congratulate you on having such pure blood in your veins; not robust, you know, but far better—such sweet, perfect health as one rarely meets with nowadays,” said the doctor, under his breath, with professional enthusiasm; “all the better for your sister that she came of such a stock. My wife, now, is another example—not robust, as I say—natures delicately organised, but in such exquisite adjustment, and with such elasticity! Mrs. Vincent will go to sleep like a baby, and wake able for—anything that God may please to send her,” said Dr. Rider with reverence. “They will both sleep till to-morrow if all goes well. Hush!— Well, I may be absurd, for neither of them could hear us here; but still it is best to err on the safe side.”

“But Susan—you are not deceiving us—Susan is——” said Vincent, with sudden alarm.

“She is asleep,” said Dr. Rider; “and, if I can, I will remain till she wakes; it is life or death.”

They parted thus—the doctor to the little room below-stairs, where Vincent’s dinner awaited him, and the young minister himself to his own room, where he went into the darkness with a kind of bewildered uncertainty and incomprehension of the events about him. To think that this day, with all its strange encounters and unexpected incidents, was Sunday, as he suddenly remembered it to be—that this morning he had preached, and this evening had to preach again, completed in Vincent’s mind the utter chaos and disturbance of ordinary life. It struck him dumb to remember that by-and-by he must again ascend the pulpit, and go through all his duties. Was he an impostor, doing all this mechanically? He debated the question dully in his own mind, as he sat too much bewildered to do anything else in the dark in his bed-chamber, pondering with a certain confused gravity and consolation over all that had happened. But faculties, which are confused by sudden comfort and relief, are very different from faculties obscured and confounded by suffering. He sat vaguely in the dark, wondering over his strange position. This morning, even in the height of his despair, he had at least some idea what he was going to do in that pulpit of Salem. It was a sacrifice—a martyrdom to accomplish—a wild outcry and complaint to pour forth to the world. This evening he sat wasting the precious moments in the soft darkness, without knowing a word of what he was to say—without being able to realise the fact, that by-and-by he should have to go out through the sharp air echoing with church-bells—to see once more all those watchful faces turned upon him, and to communicate such instruction as was in him to his flock. A sense of exhaustion and satisfaction was in Vincent’s heart. He sat listless in a vague comfort and weariness, his head throbbing with the fumes of his past excitement, yet not aching. It was only now that he realised the rolling off from his head of this dark cloud of horror and shame. Susan was recovering—Susan was innocent. He became aware of the facts much in the same way as his mother became aware of them ere she dropped to sleep in the blessed darkness of the adjoining room. Confused as he was, with his brain still full of the pulsations of the past, he was so far conscious of what had happened. He sat in his reverie, regardless of the time, and everything else that he ought to have attended to. The little maid came and knocked at his door to say his dinner had been waiting for an hour, and he answered, “Yes; he was coming,” but sat still in the darkness. Then the landlady herself, compunctious, beginning to feel the thrills of returning comfort which had entered her house, came tapping softly to say it was near six, and wouldn’t Mr. Vincent take something before it was time for chapel? Mr. Vincent said “Yes” again, but did not move; and it was only when he heard the church-bells tingling into the night air that he got up at last, and, stealing first to the door of Susan’s room, where he ascertained that she still slept, and then to his mother’s, where he could hear her soft regular breathing in the darkness, he went away in an indescribably exalted condition of mind to Salem and his duty. There is a kind of weakness incident to excitement of mind and neglect of body, which is akin to the ecstatic state in which men dream dreams and see visions. Vincent was in that condition to-night. He was not careful what anybody would say or think; he no longer pictured to himself the up-turned faces in Salem, all conscious of the tragedy which was connected with his name. The sense of deliverance in his heart emancipated him, and gave a contrary impulse to his thoughts. In the weakness of an excited and exhausted frame, a certain gleam of the ineffable and miraculous came over the young man. He was again in the world where God stoops down to change with one touch of His finger the whole current of man’s life—the world of childhood, of genius, of faith; that other world, dark sphere of necessity and fate, where nothing could stay the development into dread immortality of the obstinate human intelligence, and where dreary echoes of speculation still questioned whether any change were possible in heart and spirit, or if saving souls were a mere figure of speech, floated away far off over his head, a dark fiction of despair. In this state of mind he went back to the pulpit where, in the morning, he had thrilled his audience with all those wild complications of thought which end in nothing. Salem was again crowded—not a corner of the chapel remained unfilled; and again, many of the more zealous members were driven out of their seats by the influx of the crowd. Vincent, who had no sermon to preach, and nothing except the fulness that was in his heart to say, took up again his subject of the morning. He told his audience with the unpremeditated skill of a natural orator, that while Reason considered all the desperate chances, and concluded that wonderful work impossible, God, with the lifting of His countenance, with the touch of His power, made the darkness light before Him, and changed the very earth and heavens around the wondering soul. Lifted out of the region of reasonableness himself, he explained to his astonished audience how Reason halts in her conclusions, how miracle and wonder are of all occurrences the most natural, and how, between God and man, there are no boundaries of possibility. It was a strange sermon, without any text or divisions, irregular in its form, sometimes broken in its utterance; but the man who spoke was in a “rapture”—a state of fasting and ecstasy. He saw indistinctly that there were glistening eyes in the crowd, and felt what was somewhat an unusual consciousness—that his heart had made communications to other hearts in his audience almost without his knowing it; but he did not observe that nobody came to the vestry to congratulate him, that Tozer looked disturbed, and that the deacons averted their benign countenances. When he had done his work, he went home without waiting to talk to anybody—without, indeed, thinking any more of Salem—through the crowd, in the darkness, passing group after group in earnest discussion of the minister. He went back still in that exalted condition of mind, unaware that he passed Mrs. Tozer and Phœbe, who were much disposed to join him—and was in his own house sooner than most of his congregation. All within was quiet, lost in the most grateful and profound stillness. Sleep seemed to brood over the delivered house. Vincent spoke to the doctor, who still waited, and whose hopes were rising higher and higher, and then ate something, and said his prayers, and went to rest like a child. The family, so worn out with labour, and trial, and sorrow, slept profoundly under the quiet stars. Those hard heavens, from which an indifferent God saw the Innocents murdered and made no sign, had melted into the sweet natural firmament, above which the great Father watches unwearied. The sudden change was more than mere deliverance to the young Nonconformist. He slept and took rest in the sweet surprise and thankfulness of his soul. His life and heart, still young and incapable of despair, had got back out of hard anguishes and miseries which no one could soften, to the sweet miraculous world in which circumstances are always changing, and God interferes for ever.

CHAPTER X.

WHEN Vincent awoke next morning, his mother was standing by his bedside. Her eyes were dewy and moist, a faint tinge of colour was on her sweet old cheek, and her steps tottered a little as she came up to his bed, and stooped to kiss him. “Oh, Arthur, my dear boy, she knows me!” said Mrs. Vincent, putting up her hand to her eyes. “I must not be away from her a moment, but I could not resist coming to tell you. She knows me, dear. Make haste and dress, and come and see your sister, Arthur; and I will give orders about your breakfast as I go back. My dear, I know you have been anxious,” said the widow, putting back his hair fondly with the soft little hand which still trembled; “though men have not the way of showing it, I know you have been very anxious. You looked quite pale and thin as you slept. But I must speak to the landlady now and see about your food. Come to Susan’s room as soon as you are dressed, and I will order your breakfast, my dear boy,” said his mother, going softly out again, with her tender little figure all beautified and trembling with joy. Mrs. Vincent met the landlady near the door, and stopped to speak to her. “My daughter is a great deal better,” said the minister’s mother. “I have been so anxious, I have never been able to thank you as I ought to have done for your kindness and attention. We have been as quiet as if we had been at home. We will all remember your attention, though I have never been able to thank you before; and I am sure it is very gratifying to my son to think it is one of his own flock who has taken so much pains for us. Mr. Vincent has been very anxious about his sister,” continued the widow; “I fear he has not been taking his food, nor keeping his regular time for meals. You would oblige me very much if you would try to have something nice for his breakfast. We were all much shaken yesterday, being so anxious;—some new-laid eggs perhaps—though I know they are scarce in a town at this time of the year—or anything you can think of that will tempt him to eat. I would not say so much,” said Mrs. Vincent, smiling upon the astonished landlady, and leaning to support her own weakness on the rail of the passage upon which the staircase opened, “but that I know your kind interest in your minister. I am sure you will take all the pains you can to get him to attend to his precious health. Thank you. I am very much obliged.”

With this the little woman passed on, feeling indeed too weak to stand longer; and leaving the landlady, who had intended to mingle some statement of her own grievances with her congratulations, with the plea quietly taken out of her hands, and the entire matter disposed of. Mrs. Vincent was moving back again to the sick-room, when the door opened down-stairs, and some one asked for Mr. Vincent, and came up hurriedly. The minister’s mother recognised Tozer’s voice, and made a pause. She was glad of the opportunity to make sure that all was well in the flock. She leant over the railing to shake hands with the butterman, moved to a little effusion of thankfulness by the recollection of the state of anxiety she was in when she saw him last.

“My son is not up yet,” she said. “We were very anxious yesterday. It was the crisis of the fever, and everything depended upon it. I daresay you would see how anxious Mr. Vincent was; but, thank heaven, now all is going on well.”

“You see, ma’am,” said Tozer, “it must have all been on the nerves, and to be sure there ain’t nothing more likely to be serviceable than good news. It’s in the paper this morning. As soon as I see it, I said to my missis, ‘This is why the minister was so pecooliar yesterday.’ I divined it in a moment, ma’am; though it wasn’t to say prudent, Mrs. Vincent, and not as you would have advised no more nor myself, to fly off like that out of chapel, without as much as shaking hands with one o’ the deacons. But I make allowances, I do; and when I see it in the paper, I said to my missis, ‘It’s all along o’ this Mr. Vincent was so queer.’ I don’t doubt as it’ll be quite looked over, and thought no more of, when it’s known what’s the news.”

“What news?” said Mrs. Vincent, faintly, holding fast by the railing. “You mean the news of my dear child’s recovery,” she added, after a breathless pause. “Have they put it in the papers? I am sure it is very good, but I never heard of such a thing before. She has been very ill to be sure—but most people are very ill once in their lives,” said the widow, gasping a little for breath, and fixing her eyes upon the paper which Tozer held in his hand.

“Poor soul!” said the deacon, compassionately, “it ain’t no wonder, considering all things. Phœbe would have come the very first day to say, Could she be of any use? but her mother wasn’t agreeable. Women has their own ways of managing; but they’ll both come to-day, now all’s cleared up, if you’ll excuse me. And now, ma’am, I’ll go on to the minister, and see if there’s anything as he’d like me to do, for Pigeon and the rest was put out, there’s no denying of it; but if things is set straight directly, what with this news, and what with them sermons yesterday, I don’t think as it’ll do no harm. I said to him, as this Sunday was half the battle,” said the worthy butterman, reflectively; “and he did his best— I wouldn’t say as he didn’t do his best; and I’m not the man as will forsake my pastor when he’s in trouble. Good-morning, ma’am; and my best respects to miss, and I hope as she’ll soon be well again. There ain’t no man as could rejoice more nor me at this news.”

Tozer went on to Vincent’s room, at the door of which the minister had appeared summoning him with some impatience and anxiety. “News? what news?” said Mrs. Vincent, faintly to herself, as she held by the rail and felt the light forsaking her eyes in a new mist of sudden dread. She caught the look of the landlady at that moment, a look of half-pity, curiosity, and knowledge, which startled her back to her defences. With sudden firmness she gathered herself together, and went on to the sick-room, leaving behind her, as she closed the door, the whole troubled world, which seemed to know better about her most intimate affairs than she did; and those newspapers, which somehow mentioned Susan’s name, that sweet maiden name which it was desecration to see so much as named in print. Rather the widow carried that uneasy world in with her to the sick-room which she had left a few minutes before in all the effusion of unhoped-for joy. Everything still was not well though Susan was getting better. She sat down by the bedside where Susan lay languid and pale, showing the change in her by little more than quietness and a faint recognition of her mother, and in her troubled heart began to look the new state of affairs in the face, and to make up her mind that more of the causes of Susan’s illness than she had supposed known, must have become public. And then Arthur and his flock, that flock which he evidently had somehow affronted on the previous day. Mrs. Vincent pondered with all the natural distrust of a woman over Arthur’s imprudence. She almost chafed at her necessary confinement by her daughter’s bedside; if she herself, who had been a minister’s wife for thirty years, and knew the ways of a congregation, and how it must be managed, could only get into the field to bring her son out of the difficult passages which she had no faith in his own power to steer through! So the poor mother experienced how, when absorbing grief is removed, a host of complicated anxieties hasten in to fill up its place. She was no longer bowed down under an overwhelming dread, but she was consumed by restless desires to be doing—cravings to know all—fears for what might at the moment be happening out of her range and influence. What might Arthur, always incautious, be confiding to Tozer even now?—perhaps telling him those “private affairs” which the widow would have defended against exposure with her very life—perhaps chafing at Salem and rejecting that yoke which, being a minister, he must bear. It was all Mrs. Vincent could do to keep herself still on her chair, and to maintain that quietness which was necessary for Susan. If only she could have been there to soften his impatience and make the best of his unnecessary confidences! Many a time before this, the widow had been compelled to submit to that female tribulation—to be shut up apart, and leave the great events outside to be transacted by those incautious masculine hands, in which, at the bottom of her heart, a woman seldom has perfect confidence when her own supervising influence is withdrawn. Mrs. Vincent felt instinctively that Arthur would commit himself as she sat resigned but troubled by Susan’s bed.

Tozer went directly to the door of Vincent’s room, where the minister, only half-dressed, but much alarmed to see the colloquy which was going on between his mother and the butterman, was waiting for him. The deacon squeezed the young man’s hand with a hearty pressure. His aspect was so fatherly and confidential, that it brought back to the mind of the young Nonconformist a certain rueful half-comic recollection of the suppers in the back parlour, and all the old troubles of the pastor of Salem, which heavier shadows had driven out of his mind. Tozer held up triumphantly the paper in his hand.

“You’ve seen it, sir?” said the butterman; “first thing I did this morning was to look up whether there wasn’t nothing about it in the latest intelligence; for the ‘Gazette’ has been very particular, knowing, at Carlingford, folks would be interested—and here it is sure enough, Mr. Vincent; and we nigh gave three cheers, me and the lads in the shop.”

To this Vincent listened with a darkening brow and an impatience which he did not attempt to conceal. He took the paper with again that quick sense of the intolerable which prompted him to tear the innocent broadsheet in pieces and tread it under foot. The ‘Gazette’ contained, with a heading in large characters, the following paragraph:—

“THE DOVER TRAGEDY.

“Our reader will be glad to hear that the unfortunate young lady whose name has been so unhappily mixed up in this mysterious affair, is likely to be fully exonerated from the charge rashly brought against her. In the deposition of the wounded man, which was taken late on Saturday night, by Mr. Everett, the stipendiary magistrate of Dover, he distinctly declares that Miss —— was not the party who fired the pistol, nor in any way connected with it—that she had accompanied his daughter merely as companion on a hasty journey, and that, in short, instead of the romantic connection supposed to subsist between the parties, with all the passions of love and revenge naturally involved, the ties between them were of the simplest and most temporary character. We are grieved to add, that the fright and horror of her awful position had overpowered Miss —— some time before this deposition was made, and brought on a brain-fever, which, of course, made the unfortunate young lady, who is understood to possess great personal attractions, quite unable to explain the suspicious circumstances surrounding her. We have now only to congratulate her respectable family and friends on her exoneration from a very shocking charge, and hope her innocence will soon be confirmed by full legal acquittal. Our readers will find Colonel Mildmay’s deposition on another page. It will be perceived that he obstinately refuses to indicate who was the real perpetrator of the deed. Suspicion has been directed to his groom, who accompanied him, in whom, however, the wounded man seems to repose perfect confidence. He is still in a precarious state, but little doubt is entertained of his ultimate recovery.”

“There, Mr. Vincent, that’s gratifying, that is,” said Tozer, as Vincent laid down the paper; “and I come over directly I see it, to let you know. And I come to say besides,” continued the butterman with some diffidence, “as I think if you and me was to go off to Mr. Brown the solicitor, and give him his orders as he was to put in bail for Miss —— or anything else as might be necessary—not meaning to use no disagreeable words, as there ain’t no occasion now,” said the good deacon; “but only to make it plain, as you and me is responsible for her, if so be as she was ever to be called for again. It would be the thing to do, that would, sir, if you take my advice. It ain’t altogether my own notion, but was put into my head by one as knows. The gentleman as come here from Dover inquiring into the business was the one as suggested it to me. He turned out uncommon obliging, and wasn’t to say no trouble in the house; and when word came as the Colonel wasn’t dead, he went away as civil as could be. I’ll go with you cheerful to Mr. Brown, if you’ll take my advice, afore Mrs. Vincent gets moving about again, or the young lady knows what’s a-going on; that’s what I’d do, sir, if it was me.”

Vincent grasped the exultant butterman’s hand in an overflow of gratitude and compunction. “I shall never forget your kindness,” he said, with a little tremor in his voice. “You have been a true friend. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will go at once, and accept this other great kindness from you. I shall never forget what I owe to you as long as I live.”

“I never was the man to forsake my pastor in trouble—not to say a young man like you as is a credit to the connection, and the best preacher I may say as I ever heard in Salem,” said Tozer, with effusion, returning the grasp; “but we ain’t a-going a step till you’ve had your breakfast. Your good mother, Mrs. Vincent, as is a real lady, sir, and would never advise you different from what I would myself, being for your own interests, would have little opinion of me if I took you out on a Monday mornin’ after your labours without so much as a bit o’ breakfast to sustain you. I’ll sit by you while you’re a-eating of your bacon. There’s a deal to consider of concerning Salem as I couldn’t well bring before you as long as you were in such trouble. Them were uncommon sermons, sir, yesterday, I don’t know as I ever heard anything as was just to be compared with the mornin’ discourse, and most of the flock was of my opinion; but what is the good of standing up for the pastor—I ask you candid, Mr. Vincent—when he’ll not take no pains to keep things square? I’m speaking plain, for you can’t mistake me as it’s anything but your own interests I am a-thinking of. We was all marching in, deacons and committee and all, to say as we was grateful to you for your instructions, and wishing you well out of your trouble—and I was in great hopes as matters might have been made up—when behold, what we finds was the vestry empty and the pastor gone! Now, I ain’t a-finding fault. Them news would explain anything; but I don’t deny as Pigeon and the rest was put out; and if you’ll be guided by one as wishes you well, Mr. Vincent, when you’ve done our business as is most important of all, you’ll go and make some visits, sir, and make yourself agreeable, if you’ll excuse me. It ain’t with no selfish thoughts as I speak,” said Tozer, energetically. “It’s not like asking of you to come a-visiting to me, nor setting myself forward as the minister’s great friend—though we was remarking as the pastor was unknown in our house this fortnight and more—but it’s for peace and union, Mr. Vincent, and the good of the flock, sir, and to keep—as your good mother well knows ain’t easy in a congregation—all things straight.”

When this little peroration was delivered, Vincent was seated at table, making what he could of the breakfast, in which both his mother and Tozer had interested themselves. It was with a little effort that the young man accepted this advice as the character and intentions of his adviser deserved. He swallowed what was unpalatable in the counsel, and received the suggestion “in as sweet a frame of mind as I could wish to see,” as Tozer afterwards described.

“I will go and make myself agreeable,” said the minister, with a smile. “Thank heaven! it is not so impossible to-day as it might have been yesterday; I left the chapel so hurriedly, because——”

“I understand, sir,” said Tozer, benevolently interposing as Vincent paused, finding explanation impossible. “Pigeon and the rest was put out, as I say, more nor I could see was reasonable—not as Pigeon is a man that knows his own mind. It’s the women as want the most managing. Now, Mr. Vincent, I’m ready, sir, if you are, and we won’t lose no time.”

Before going out, however, Vincent went to his sister’s room. She was lying in an utter quietness which went to his heart;—silent, no longer uttering the wild fancies of a disordered brain, recovering, as the doctor thought; but stretched upon her white couch, marble white, without any inclination apparently to lift the heavy lids of her eyes, or to notice anything that passed before her—a very sad sight to see. By her sat her mother, in a very different condition, anxious, looking into Arthur’s eyes, whispering counsels in his ears. “Oh, my dear boy, be very careful,” said Mrs. Vincent; “your dear papa always said that a minister’s flock was his first duty; and now that Susan is getting better, O Arthur! you must not let people talk about your sister;—and have patience, O have patience, dear!” This was said in wistful whispers, with looks which only half confided in Arthur’s prudence; and the widow sank into her chair when he left her, folding her hands in a little agony of self-restraint and compulsory quietness. She felt equal for it herself, if she had been at liberty to go out upon the flock once more in Arthur’s cause; but who could tell how he might commit himself, he who was a young man, and took his own way, and did not know, as Tozer said, how to keep all things straight? When Mrs. Vincent thought of her son in personal conflict with Mrs. Pigeon, she lost faith in Arthur. She herself might have conquered that difficult adversary, but what weapons had he to bring forth against the deacon’s wife, he who was only a minister and a man?

CHAPTER XI.

“AND now that’s settled, as far as we can settle it now,” said Tozer, as they left the magistrate’s office, where John Brown, the famous Carlingford solicitor, had accompanied them, “you’ll go and see some of the chapel folks, Mr. Vincent? It’ll be took kind of you to lose no time, especially if you’d say a word just as it’s all over, and let them know the news is true.”

“I will go with you first,” said Vincent, who contemplated the butterman’s shop at that moment through a little halo of gratitude and kindness. He went into the back parlour with the gratified deacon, where Mrs. Tozer sat reading over again the same ‘Gazette’ in which poor Susan’s history was summed up and ended. It seemed like a year to Vincent since he had dined with his mother at this big table, amid the distant odours of all the bacon and cheese. Mrs. Tozer put down the paper, and took off her spectacles as her visitor came in. “It’s Mr. Vincent, Phœbe,” she said, with a little exclamation. “Dear, dear, I never thought as the pastor would be such a strange sight in my house—not as I was meaning nothing unkind, Tozer, so there’s no occasion to look at me. I’m as glad as ever I can be to see the minister; and what a blessing as it’s all settled, and the poor dear getting well, too. Phœbe, you needn’t be a-hiding behind me, child, as if the pastor was thinking of how you was dressed. She has on her morning wrapper, Mr. Vincent, as she was helping her mother in, and we didn’t expect no visitors. Don’t be standing there, as if it was any matter to the minister how you was dressed.”

“Oh, ma, as if I ever thought of such a thing!” said Phœbe, extending a pink uncovered arm out of the loose sleeve of her morning dress to Vincent, and averting her face; “but to see Mr. Vincent is so like old times—and everything has seemed so different—and it is so pleasant to feel as if it were all coming back again. Oh ma! to imagine that I ever supposed Mr. Vincent could notice my dress, or think of poor me!” added Phœbe, in a postscript under her breath. The minister heard the latter words quite as well as the first. After he had shaken the pink, plump hand, he sat down on the opposite side of the table, and saw Phoebe, relieved against the light of the window, wiping a tender tear from her eye. All at once out of the darker and heavier trials which had abstracted him from common life, the young Nonconformist plunged back into the characteristic troubles of his position. As usual, he made no response to Phœbe, found nothing civil to say, but turned with desperation to Mrs. Tozer, who was luckily about to speak.

“Don’t pay no attention to her, Mr. Vincent; she’s a deal too feelin’. She oughtn’t to be minded, and then she’ll learn better,” said Mrs. Tozer. “I am sure it wasn’t no wish of ours as you should ever stop away. If we had been your own relations we couldn’t have been more took up; and where should a minister seek for sympathy if it isn’t in his own flock? There ain’t nobody so safe to put your trust in, Mr. Vincent, as Salem folks. There’s a many fine friends a young man may have when he’s in a prosperous way, but it ain’t to be supposed they would stand by him in trouble; and it’s then as you find the good of your real friends,” continued Mrs. Tozer, looking with some significance at her husband. Tozer, for his own part, rubbed his hands and stationed himself with his back to the fire, as is the custom of Englishmen of all degrees. The husband and wife contemplated Vincent with complacence. With the kindest feelings in the world, they could not altogether restrain a little triumph. It was impossible now that the minister could mistake who were his true friends.

But just then, strangely enough, a vision of a tender smile, a glance up in his face, the touch of a soft hand, came to Vincent’s mind. His fine friends! he had but one, and she had stood by him in his trouble. From Tozer’s complacence the minister’s mind went off with a bound of relief to that sweet, fruitless sympathy which was dearer than help. From her soft perfumy presence to Mrs. Tozer’s parlour, with that pervading consciousness in it of the shop hard by and its store of provisions, what a wonderful difference! It was not so easy to be grateful as he had at first thought.

“Mr. Tozer has been my real friend indeed, and a most honest and thorough one,” said Vincent. “But I don’t think I have any other in Salem so sure and steady,” added the minister, after a little pause, half gratefully, half in bitterness. This sentiment was not, however, resented by the assembled family. Phœbe leaned over her mother’s chair, and whispered, “Oh, ma, dear! didn’t I always say he was full of feeling?” somewhat to the discomfiture of the person commented on; while Tozer himself beamed upon the minister from before the blazing fire.

“I said as we’d pull you through,” said Tozer, “and I said as I’d stand by you; and both I’ll do, sir, you take my word, if you’ll but stick to your duty; and as for standing bail in a hundred pound or two,” continued the butterman, magnanimously, “for a poor young creature as couldn’t be nothing but innocent, I don’t mind that, nor a deal more than that, to keep all things straight. It’s nothing but my duty. When a man is a responsible man, and well-known in a place, it’s his business to make use of his credit, Mr. Vincent, sir, and his character, for the good of his friends.”

“It may be your duty, but you know there ain’t a many as would have done it,” said his straight-forward wife, “as Mr. Vincent sees himself, and no need for nobody a-telling of him. There ain’t a many as would have stood up for the pastor, right and wrong, and finished off with the likes of this, and the minister don’t need us to say so. Dear, dear, Mr. Vincent, you ain’t a-going away already, and us hasn’t so much as seen you for I can’t tell how long? I made sure you’d stop and take a bit of dinner at least, not making no ceremony,” said Mrs. Tozer, “for there’s always enough for a friend, and you can’t take us wrong.”

Vincent had risen hurriedly to his feet, under the strong stimulant of the butterman’s self-applause. Conscious as he was of all that Tozer had really done, the minister found it hard to listen and echo, with due humility and gratitude, the perfect satisfaction of the pair over their own generosity. He had no thanks to say when thus forestalled. “Oh, ma, how can you make so much of it?” cried Phœbe. “The minister will think us so selfish; and, oh, please Mr. Vincent, when you go home, will you speak to your mother, and ask her to let me come and help with her nursing? I should do whatever she told me, and try to be a comfort to her—oh, I should indeed!” said Phœbe, clasping those pink hands. “Nobody could be more devoted than I should be.” She cast down her eyes, and stood the image of maidenly devotedness between Vincent and the window. She struck him dumb, as she always did. He never was equal to the emergency where Phœbe was concerned. He took up his hat in his hands, and tried to explain lamely how he must go away—how he had visits to make—duties to do—and would have stuck fast, and lost Mrs. Tozer’s favour finally and for ever, had not the butterman interposed.

“It’s me as is to blame,” said the worthy deacon. “If it hadn’t have been as the pastor wouldn’t pass the door without coming in, I’d not have had him here to-day; and if you women would think, you’d see. We’re stanch—and Mr. Vincent ain’t no call to trouble himself about us; but Pigeon and them, you see, as went off in a huff yesterday—that’s what the minister has got to do. You shan’t be kep’ no longer, sir, in my house. Duty afore pleasure, that’s my maxim. Good mornin’, and I hope as you won’t meet with no unpleasantness; but if you should, Mr. Vincent, don’t be disheartened, sir—we’ll pull you through.”

With this encouraging sentiment, Vincent was released from Mrs. Tozer’s parlour. He drew a long breath when he got out to the fresh air in the street, and faced the idea of the Pigeons and other recusants whom he was now bound to visit. While he thought of them, all so many varieties of Mrs. Tozer’s parlour, without the kindness which met him there, the heart of the young Nonconformist failed him. Nothing but gratitude to Tozer could have sent him forth at all on this mission of conciliation; but now on the threshold of it, smarting from even Tozer’s well-intentioned patronage, a yearning for a little personal comfort seized upon Vincent’s mind. It was his duty to go away towards Grove Street, where the poulterer’s residence was; but his longing eyes strayed towards Grange Lane, where consolation dwelt. And, besides, was it not his duty to watch over the real criminal, for whose mysterious wickedness poor Susan had suffered? It was not difficult to foresee how that argument would conclude. He wavered for a few minutes opposite Masters’s shop, gave a furtive glance back towards the butterman’s, and then, starting forward with sudden resolution, took his hasty way to Lady Western’s door; only for a moment; only to see that all was safe, and his prisoner still in custody. Vincent sighed over the thought with an involuntary quickening of his heart. To be detained in such custody, the young man thought, would be sweeter than heaven; and the wild hope which came and went like a meteor about his path, sprang up with sudden intensity, and took the breath from his lips, and the colour from his cheek, as he entered at that green garden door.

Lady Western was by herself in the drawing-room—that room divided in half by the closed doors which Vincent remembered so well. She rose up out of the low chair in which she reposed, like some lovely swan amid billows of dark silken drapery, and held out her beautiful hand to him—both her beautiful hands—with an effusion of kindness and sympathy. The poor young Nonconformist took them into his own, and forgot the very existence of Salem. The sweetness of the moment took all the sting out of his fate. He looked at her without saying anything, with his heart in his eyes. Consolation! It was all he had come for. He could have gone away thereafter and met all the Pigeons in existence; but more happiness still was in store for him—she pointed to a chair on the other side of her work-table. There was nobody else near to break the charm. The silken rustle of her dress, and that faint perfume which she always had about her, pervaded the rosy atmosphere. Out of purgatory, out of bitter life beset with trouble, the young man had leaped for one moment into paradise; and who could wonder that he resigned himself to the spell?

“I am so glad you have come,” said Lady Western. “I am sure you must have hated me, and everything that recalled my name; but it was impossible for any one to be more grieved than I was, Mr. Vincent. Now, will you tell me about Rachel? She sits by herself in her own room. When I go in she gives me a look of fright which I cannot understand. Fright! Can you imagine Rachel frightened, Mr. Vincent—and of me!”

“Ah, yes. I would not venture to come into the presence of the angels if I had guilt on my hands,” said Vincent, not very well knowing what he said.

“Mr. Vincent! what can you mean? You alarm me very much,” said the young Dowager; “but perhaps it is about her little girl. I don’t think she knows where her daughter is. Indeed,” said Lady Western, with a cloud on her beautiful face, “you must not think I ever approved of my brother’s conduct; but when he was so anxious to have his child, I think she might have given in to him a little—don’t you think so? The child might have done him good perhaps. She is very lovely, I hear. Did you see her? Oh, Mr. Vincent, tell me about it. I cannot understand how you are connected with it at all. She trusted in you so much, and now she is afraid of you. Tell me how it is. Hush! she is ringing her bell. She has seen you come into the house.”

“But I don’t want to see Mrs.—Mrs. Mildmay,” said Vincent, rising up. “I don’t know why I came at all, if it were not to see the sun shining. It is dark down below where I am,” said the young man, with an involuntary outburst of the passion which at that moment suddenly appeared to him in all its unreasonableness. “Forgive me. It was only a longing I had to see the light.”

Lady Western looked up with her sweet eyes in the minister’s face. She was not ignorant of the condition of mind he was in, but she was sorry for him to the bottom of her heart. To cheer him a little could not harm any one. “Come back soon,” she said, again holding out her hand with a smile. “I am so sorry for your troubles; and if we can do anything to comfort you, come back soon again, Mr. Vincent.” When the poor Nonconformist came to himself after these words, he was standing outside the garden door, out of paradise, his heart throbbing, and his pulse beating in a kind of sweet delirium. In that very moment of delight he recognised, with a thrill of exaltation and anguish, the madness of his dream. No matter. What if his heart broke after? Now, at least, he could take the consolation. But if it was hard to face Mrs. Pigeon before, it may well be supposed that it was not easy now, with all this world of passionate fancies throbbing in his brain, to turn away from his elevation, and encounter Salem and its irritated deacons. Vincent went slowly up Grange Lane, trying to make up his mind to his inevitable duty. When he was nearly opposite the house of Dr. Marjoribanks, he paused to look back. The garden door was again open, and somebody else was going into the enchanted house. Somebody else;—a tall slight figure, in a loose light-coloured dress, which he recognised instinctively with an agony of jealous rage. A minute before he had allowed to himself, in an exquisite despair, that to hope was madness; but the sight of his rival awoke other thoughts in the mind of the minister. With quick eyes he identified the companion of his midnight journey—he in whose name all Susan’s wretchedness had been wrought—he whom Lady Western could trust “with life—to death.” Vincent went back at the sight of him, and found the door now close shut, through which his steps had passed. Close shut—enclosing the other—shutting him out in the cold external gloom. He forgot all he had to do for himself and his friends—he forgot his duty, his family, everything in the world but hopeless love and passionate jealousy, as he turned again to Lady Western’s door.

CHAPTER XII.

THUS while Mrs. Vincent sat in Susan’s sick-room, with her mind full of troubled thoughts, painfully following her son into an imaginary and unequal conflict with the wife of the rebellious deacon; and while the Salem congregation in general occupied itself with conjectures how this internal division could be healed, and what the pastor would do, the pastor himself was doing the very last thing he ought to have done in the circumstances—lingering down Grange Lane in the broad daylight with intent to pass Lady Western’s door—that door from which he had himself emerged a very few minutes before. Why did he turn back and loiter again along that unprofitable way? He did not venture to ask himself the question; he only did it in an utterly unreasonable access of jealousy and rage. If he had been Lady Western’s accepted lover instead of the hopeless worshipper afar off of that bright unattainable creature, he could still have had no possible right to forbid the entrance of Mr. Fordham at that garden gate. He went back with a mad, unreasoning impulse, only excusable in consideration of the excited state of mind into which so many past events had concurred to throw him. But the door opened again as he passed it. Instinctively Vincent stood still, without knowing why. It was not Mr. Fordham who came out. It was a stealthy figure, which made a tremulous pause at sight of him, and, uttering a cry of dismay, fixed eyes which still gleamed, but had lost all their steadiness, upon his face. Vincent felt that he would not have recognised her anywhere but at this door. Her thin lips, which had once closed so firmly, and expressed with such distinctness the flying shades of amusement and ridicule, hung apart loosely, with a perpetual quiver of hidden emotion. Her face, always dark and colourless, yet bearing such an unmistakable tone of vigour and strength, was haggard and ghastly; her once assured and steady step furtive and trembling. She gave him an appalled look, and uttered a little cry. She shivered as she looked at him, making desperate vain efforts to recover her composure and conceal the agitation into which his sudden appearance had thrown her. But nature at last had triumphed over this woman who had defied her so long. She had not strength left to accomplish the cheat. “You!” she cried, with a shrill tone of terror and confusion in her voice, “I did not look for you!” It was all her quivering lips would say.

The sight of her had roused Vincent. “You were going to escape,” he said. “Do you forget your word? Must I tell her everything, or must I place you in surer custody? You have broken your word.”

“My word! I did not give you my word,” she cried, eagerly. “No. I—I never said—: and,” after a pause, “if I had said it, how do you imagine I was going to escape? Escape! from what? That is the worst—one cannot escape,” said the miserable woman, speaking as if by an uncontrollable impulse, “never more; especially if one keeps quiet in one place and has nothing to do,” she continued after a pause, recovering herself by strange gleams now and then for a moment; “that is why I came out, to escape, as you say, for half an hour, Mr. Vincent. Besides, I don’t have news enough—not nearly enough. How do you think I can keep still when nobody sends me any news? How long is it since I saw you last? And I have heard nothing since then—not a syllable! and you expect me to sit still, because I have given my word? Besides,” after another breathless pause, and another gleam of self-recovery, “the laws of honour don’t extend to women. We are weak, and we are allowed to lie.”

“You are speaking wildly,” said Vincent, with some compassion and some horror, putting his hand on her arm to guide her back to the house. Mrs. Hilyard gave a slight convulsive start, drew away from his touch, and gazed upon him with an agony of fright and terror in her eyes.

“We agreed that I was to stay with Alice,” she said. “You forget I am staying with Alice: she—she keeps me safe, you know. Ah! people change so; I am sometimes—half afraid—of Alice, Mr. Vincent. My child is like her—my child—she did not know me!” cried the wretched woman, with a sob that came out of the depths of her heart; “after all that happened, she did not know me! To be sure, that was quite natural,” she went on again, once more recovering her balance for an instant, “she could not know me! and I am not beautiful, like Lady Western, to please a child’s eye. Beauty is good—very good. I was once pretty myself; any man would have forgiven me as you did when Alice came with her lovely face; but I daresay your mother would not have minded had it been she. Ah, that reminds me,” said Mrs. Hilyard, gradually acquiring a little more steadiness, “that was why I came out: to go to your mother—to ask if perhaps she had heard anything—from my child.”

“This is madness,” said Vincent; “you know my mother could not possibly hear about your child; you want to escape— I can see it in your eyes.”

“If you will tell me what kind of things people can escape from, I will answer you,” said his strange companion, still becoming more composed. “Hush! I said what was true. The governess, you know, had your address. Is it very long since yesterday when I got that news from Dover? Never mind. I daresay I am asking wild questions that cannot have any answer. Do you remember being here with me once before? Do you remember looking through the grating and seeing——? Ah, there is Mr. Fordham now with Alice! Poor young man!” said Mrs. Hilyard, turning once more to look at him, still vigilant and anxious, but with a softened glance. “Poor minister! I told you not to fall in love with her lovely face. I told you she was kind, too kind—she does not mean any harm. I warned you. Who could have thought then that we should have so much to do with each other?” she resumed, shrinking from him, and trying to conceal how she shrank with another convulsive shiver; “but you were going to visit your people or something. I must not keep you, Mr. Vincent; you must go away.”

“Not till you have returned to the house; and given me your word of honour,” said Vincent, “not to escape, or to attempt to escape; or else I must tell her everything, or give you up into stronger hands. I will not leave you here.”

“My word! but women are not bound by their honour; our honour means—not our word,” cried Mrs. Hilyard, wildly; “my parole, he means; soldiers, and heroes, and men of honour give their parole; you don’t exact it from women. Words are not kept to us, Mr. Vincent; do you expect us to keep them? Yes, yes; I know I am talking wildly. Is it strange, do you think? But what if I give you my word, and nobody sends me any further news—nothing about my child? Women are only wild animals when their children are taken from them. I will forget it, and go away for news—news! That is what I want. Escape!” she repeated, with a miserable cry; “who can escape? I do not understand what it means.”

“But you must not leave this house,” said Vincent, firmly. “You understand what I mean. You must not leave Lady Western. Go with her where she pleases; but unless you promise on your honour to remain here, and with her, I shall be obliged——”

“Hush!” she said, trembling—“hush! My honour!—and you still trust in it? I will promise,” she continued, turning and looking anxiously round into the dull winter daylight, as if calculating what chance she had of rushing away and eluding him. Then her eyes returned to the face of the young man, who stood firm and watchful beside her—agitated, yet so much stronger, calmer, even more resolute than she; then shrinking back, and keeping her eyes, with a kind of fascinated gaze, upon his face, she repeated the words slowly, “I promise—upon my honour. I will not go away—escape, as you call it. If I should go mad, that will not matter. Yes, ring the bell for me. You are the stronger now. I will obey you and go back. You have taken a woman’s parole, Mr. Vincent,” she went on, with a strange spasmodic shadow of that old movement of her mouth; “it will be curious to note if she can keep it. Good-bye—good-bye.” She spoke with a trembling desperation of calmness, mastering herself with all her power. She did not remove her eyes from his face till the door had been opened. “I promise, on my honour,” she repeated, with again a gleam of terror, as Vincent stood watching. Then the door closed, shutting in that tragic, wretched figure. She was gone back to her prison, with her misery, from which she could not escape. In that same garden, Vincent, with the sharp eyes of love and despair, even while watching her, had caught afar off a vision of two figures together, walking slowly, one leaning on the other, with the lingering steps of happiness. The sight went to his heart with a dull pang of certainty, which crushed down in a moment the useless effervescence of his former mood. His prisoner and he parted, going in and out, one scarcely less miserable at that moment than the other. In full sight of them both lingered for the same moment these two in the tenderest blessedness of life. Vincent turned sharp round, and went away the whole length of the long road past St. Roque’s, past the farthest village suburb of Carlingford, stifling his heart that it should say nothing. He had forgotten all about those duties which brought him there. Salem had vanished from his horizon. He saw nothing in heaven or earth but that miserable woman going back to her prison, interwoven with the vision of these two in their garden of paradise. The sight possessed him heart and spirit; he could not even feel that he felt it, his heart lying stifled in his bosom. It was, and there was no more to say.

CHAPTER XIII.

MRS. VINCENT made many pilgrimages out of the sick-room that day; her mind was disturbed and restless; she could not keep still by Susan’s side. She went and strayed through her son’s rooms, looked at his books, gave a furtive glance at his linen; then went back and sat down for a little, until a renewed access of anxiety sent her wandering forth once more. Then she heard him come in, and went out to see him. But he was gloomy and uncommunicative, evidently indisposed to satisfy her in any way, absorbed in his own thoughts. Mrs. Vincent came and sat by him while he dined, thinking, in her simplicity, that it would be a pleasure to Arthur. But Arthur, with the unsocial habits of a man accustomed to live alone, had already set up a book before him while he ate, leaving his mother to wonder by herself behind what was the world of unknown thought that rapt her son, and into which her wistful wonder could not penetrate. But the widow was wise in her generation: she would not worry him with questions which it was very apparent beforehand that he did not mean to answer. She admitted to herself with a pang of mingled pain, curiosity, and resignation, that Arthur was no longer a boy having no secrets from his mother. Once more the little woman looked at the unreasonable male creature shut up within itself, and decided, with a feminine mixture of pity and awe, that it must be allowed to take its own time and way of disclosing itself, and that to torture it into premature utterance would be foolish, not to say impracticable. She left him, accordingly, to himself, and went away again, returning, however, ere long, in her vague restlessness, as she had been doing all day. The early winter evening had closed in, and the lamp was lighted—the same lamp which had smoked and annoyed Mrs. Vincent’s nice perceptions the first evening she was in Carlingford. Vincent had thrown himself on a sofa with a book, not to read, but as a disguise under which he could indulge his own thoughts, when his mother came quietly back into the room. Mrs. Vincent thought it looked dark and less cheerful than it ought. She poked the fire softly not to disturb Arthur, and made it blaze. Then she turned to the lamp, which flared huskily upon the table. “It smokes more than ever,” said Mrs. Vincent, half apologetically, in case Arthur should observe her proceedings as she took off the globe. He, as was natural, put down his book and gazed at her with a certain impatient wonder, half contemptuous of that strange female development which amid all troubles could carry through, from one crisis of life to another, that miraculous trifling, and concern itself about the smoking of a lamp. As she screwed it up and down and adjusted the wick, with the smoky light flaring upon her anxious face, and magnifying the shadow of her little figure against the wall behind, her son looked on with a feeling very similar to that which had moved Mrs. Vincent when she watched him eating his dinner with his book set up before him. These were points upon which the mother and son could not understand each other. But the sight disturbed his thoughts and touched his temper; he got up from the sofa and threw down his unread book.

“You women are incomprehensible,” said the young man, with an irritation he could not subdue—“what does it matter about the lamp? but if the world were going to pieces you must still be intent upon such trifles—leave that to the people of the house.”

“But, my dear, the people of the house don’t understand it,” said Mrs. Vincent. “Oh Arthur, it is often the trifles that are the most important. I have had Mrs. Tozer calling upon me to-day, and Mrs. Tufton. I don’t wonder, dear, if you find them a little tiresome; but that is what every pastor has to expect. I daresay you have been worried to-day paying so many visits. Hush, there is some one coming up-stairs. It is Mr. Tozer, Arthur. I can hear his voice.”

Upon which the minister, conscious of not being prepared for Tozer’s questions, gave vent to an impatient ejaculation. “Never a moment’s respite! And now I shall have to give an account of myself,” said the unfortunate Nonconformist. Mrs. Vincent, who had just then finished her operations with the lamp, looked up reproachfully over the light at her son.

“Oh Arthur, consider how kind he has been! Your dear father would never have used such an expression—but you have my quick temper,” said the widow, with a little sigh. She shook hands very cordially with the good butterman when he made his appearance. “I was just going to make tea for my son,” said Mrs. Vincent. “I have scarcely been able to sit with him at all since Susan took ill. Arthur, ring the bell—it is so kind of you to come; you will take a cup of tea with us while my son and you talk matters over—that is, if you don’t object to my presence?” said the minister’s mother with a smile. “Your dear papa always liked me to be with him, Arthur; and until he has a wife, Mr. Tozer, I daresay his mother will not be much in the way when it is so kind a friend as you he has to talk over his business with. Bring tea directly, please. I fear you have forgotten what I said to you about the lamp, which burns quite nicely when you take a little pains. Arthur, will you open the window to clear the atmosphere of that smoke? and perhaps Mr. Tozer will take a seat nearer the fire.”