THE ATHELINGS

OR

THE THREE GIFTS
BY MARGARET OLIPHANT

“I’ the cave wherein they bow, their thoughts do hit
The roofs of palaces; and nature prompts them,
In simple and low things, to prince it much
Beyond the trick of others.”
CYMBELINE

IN THREE VOLUMES
VOL. II.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MDCCCLVII
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN BLACKWOOD’S MAGAZINE.
THE ATHELINGS
BOOK II.—THE OLD WOOD LODGE

THE ATHELINGS.

BOOK II—CHAPTER I.
THE WILLOWS.

The Willows was a large low house, with no architectural pretensions, but bright as villa could be upon the sunniest side of the Thames. The lawn sloped to the river, and ended in a deep fringe and border of willows, sweeping into the water; while half-way across the stream lay a little fairy island, half enveloped in the same silvery foliage, but with bowers and depths of leaves within, through which some stray sunbeam was always gleaming. The flower-beds on the lawn were in a flush with roses; the crystal roof of a large conservatory glistened in the sun. Flowers and sunshine, fragrance and stillness, the dew on the grass, and the morning light upon the river—no marvel that to eyes so young and inexperienced, this Richmond villa looked like a paradise on earth.

It was early morning—very early, when nobody seemed awake but themselves in the great house; and Agnes and Marian came down stairs softly, and, half afraid of doing wrong, stole out upon the lawn. The sun had just begun to gather those blobs of dew from the roses, but all over the grass lay jewels, bedded deep in the close-shorn sod, and shining in the early light. An occasional puff of wind came crisp across the river, and turned to the sun the silvery side of all those drooping willow-leaves, and the willows themselves swayed and sighed towards the water, and the water came up upon them now and then with a playful plunge and flow. The two girls said nothing to each other as they wandered along the foot of the slope, looking over to the island, where already the sun had penetrated to his nest of trees. All this simple beauty, which was not remarkable to the fashionable guests of Mrs Edgerley, went to the very heart of these simple children of Bellevue. It moved them to involuntary delight—joy which could give no reason, for they thought there had never been such a beautiful summer morning, or such a scene.

And by-and-by they began to talk of last night—last night, their first night at the Willows, their first entrance into the home life of “the great.” They had no moral maxims at their finger-ends, touching the vanity of riches, nor had the private opinion entertained by Papa and Mamma, that “the country” paid for the folly of “the aristocracy,” and that the science of Government was a mere piece of craft for the benefit of “the privileged classes,” done any harm at all to the unpolitical imaginations of Agnes and Marian. They were scarcely at their ease yet, and were a great deal more timid than was comfortable; yet they took very naturally to this fairy life, and found an unfailing fund of wonder and admiration in it. They admired everything indeed, had a certain awe and veneration for everybody, and could not sufficiently admire the apparent accomplishments and real grace of their new associates.

“Agnes!—I wonder if there is anything I could learn?” said Marian, rather timidly; “everybody here can do something; it is very different from doing a little of everything, like Miss Tavistock at Bellevue—and we used to think her accomplished!—but do you think there is anything I could learn?”

“And me!” said Agnes, somewhat disconsolately.

“You? no, indeed, you do not need it,” said Marian, with a little pride. “You can do what none of them can do;—but they can talk about everything these people, and every one of them can do something. There is that Sir Langham—you would think he was only a young gentleman—but Mrs Edgerley says he makes beautiful sketches. We did not understand people like these when we were at home.”

“What do you think of Sir Langham, May?” asked Agnes seriously.

“Think of him? oh, he is very pleasant,” said Marian, with a smile and a slight blush: “but never mind Sir Langham; do you think there is anything I could learn?”

“I do not know,” said Agnes; “perhaps you could sing. I think you might sing, if you would only take courage and try.”

“Sing! oh no, no!”; said Marian; “no one could venture to sing after the young lady—did you hear her name, Agnes?—who sang last night. She did not speak to any one, she was more by herself than we were. I wonder who she could be.”

“Mrs Edgerley called her Rachel,” said Agnes. “I did not hear any other name. I think it must be the same that Mrs Edgerley told mamma about; you remember she said——”

“I am here,” said a low voice suddenly, close beside them. The girls started back, exceedingly confused and ashamed. They had not perceived a sort of little bower, woven among the willows, from which now hastily appeared the third person who spoke. She was a little older than Agnes, very slight and girlish in her person—very dark of complexion, with a magnificent mass of black hair, and large liquid dark eyes. Nothing else about her was remarkable; her features were small and delicate, her cheeks colourless, her very lips pale; but her eyes, which were not of a slumbrous lustre, but full of light, rapid, earnest, and irregular, lighted up her dark pallid face with singular power and attractiveness. She turned upon them quickly as they stood distressed and irresolute before her.

“I did not mean to interrupt you,” said this new-comer; “but you were about to speak of me, and I thought it only honest to give you notice that I was here.”

“Thank you,” said Agnes with humility. “We are strangers, and did not know—we scarcely know any one here; and we thought you were nearly about our own age, and perhaps would help us—” Here Agnes stopped short; she was not skilled in making overtures of friendship.

“No, indeed no,” cried their new acquaintance, hurriedly. “I never make friends. I could be of no use. I am only a dependent, scarcely so good as that. I am nothing here.”

“And neither are we,” said Agnes, following shyly the step which this strange girl took away from them. “We never were in a house like this before. We do not belong to great people. Mrs Edgerley asked us to come, because we met her at Mr Burlington’s, and she has been very kind, but we know no one. Pray, do not go away.”

The thoughtful eyes brightened into a sudden gleam. “We are called Atheling,” said Marian, interposing in her turn. “My sister is Agnes, and I am Marian—and you Miss——”

“My name is Rachel,” said their new friend, with a sudden and violent blush, making all her face crimson. “I have no other—call me so, and I will like it. You think I am of your age; but I am not like you—you do not know half so much as I know.”

“No—that is very likely,” said Agnes, somewhat puzzled; “but I think you do not mean education,” said the young author immediately, seeing Marian somewhat disposed to resent on her behalf this broad assertion. “You mean distress and sorrow. But we have had a great deal of grief at home. We have lost dear little children, one after another. We are not ignorant of grief.”

Rachel looked at them with strange observation, wonder, and uncertainty. “But you are ignorant of me—and I am ignorant of you,” she said slowly, pausing between her words. “I suppose you mean just what you say, do you? and I am not much used to that. Do you know what I am here for?—only to sing and amuse the people—and you still want to make friends with me!”

“Mrs Edgerley said you were to be a singer, but you did not like it,” said Marian; “and I think you are very right.”

“Did she say so?—and what more?” said Rachel, smiling faintly. “I want to hear now, though I did not when I heard your voices first.”

“She said you were a connection of the family,” said Agnes.

The blood rushed again to the young stranger’s brow. “Ah! I understand,” she said; “she implied—yes. I know how she would do. And you will still be friends with me?”

At that moment it suddenly flashed upon the recollection of both the girls that Mamma had disapproved of this prospective acquaintance. They both blushed with instant consciousness, and neither of them spoke. In an instant Rachel became frozen into a haughtiness far exceeding anything within the power of Mrs Edgerley. Little and slight as she was, her girlish frame rose to the dignity of a young queen. Before Agnes could say a word, she had left them with a slight and lofty bow. Without haste, but with singular rapidity, she crossed the dewy lawn, and went into the house, acknowledging, with a stately inclination of her head, some one who passed her. The girls were so entirely absorbed, watching her progress, that they did not perceive who this other person was.

CHAPTER II.
AN EMBARRASSING COMPANION.

“Strange creature!” said Sir Langham Portland, who had joined the girls almost before they were aware; “Odd girl! If Lucifer had a sister, I should know where to find her; but a perfect siren so far as music is concerned. Did you hear her sing last night—that thing of Beethoven’s—what is the name of it? Do you like Beethoven, though? She, I suppose, worships him.”

“We know very little about music,” said Marian. She thought it proper to make known the fact, but blushed in spite of herself, and was much ashamed of her own ignorance. Marian was quite distressed and impatient to find herself so much behind every one else.

“Oh!” said Sir Langham—which meant that the handsome guardsman was a good deal flattered by the blush, and did not care at all for the want of information—in fact, he was cogitating within himself, being no great master of the art of conversation, what to speak of next.

“I am afraid Miss—Rachel was not pleased,” said Agnes; “we disturbed her here. I am afraid she will think we were rude.”

“Eh!” said Sir Langham, with a look of astonishment. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself—she’s accustomed to that. Pretty place this. Suppose a fellow on the island over there, what a capital sketch he could make;—with two figures instead of three, the effect would be perfect!”

“We were two figures before you came,” said Marian, turning half away, and with a smile.

“Ah! quite a different suggestion,” said Sir Langham. “Your two figures were all white and angelical—maiden meditation—mine would be—Elysium. Happy sketcher! happier hero!—and you could not suppose a more appropriate scene.”

But Agnes and Marian were much too shy and timid to answer this as they might have answered Harry Oswald under the same circumstances. Agnes half interrupted him, being somewhat in haste to change the conversation. “You are an artist yourself?” said Agnes.

“No,” said Sir Langham; “not at all,—no more than everybody else is. I have no doubt you know a hundred people better at it than I.”

“I do not think, counting every one,” said Marian, “that we know a hundred, or the half of a hundred, people altogether; and none of them make sketches. Mrs Edgerley said yours were quite remarkable.”

“A great many things are quite remarkable with Mrs Edgerley,” said Sir Langham through his mustache. “But what an amazing circle yours must be! One must do something with one’s spare time. That old fellow is the hardest rascal to kill of any I know—don’t you find him so?”

“No—not when we are at home,” said Marian.

“Ah! in the country, I suppose; and you are Lady Bountifuls, and attend to all the village,” said Sir Langham. He had quite made up his mind that these young girls, who were not fashionable nor remarkable in any way, save for the wonderful beauty of the youngest, were daughters of some squire in Banburyshire, whom it was Lord Winterbourne’s interest to do a service to.

“No, indeed, we have not any village—we are not Lady Bountifuls; but we do a great many things at home,” said Marian. Something restrained them both, however, from their heroic purpose of declaring at once their “rank in life;” they shrank, with natural delicacy, from saying anything about themselves to this interrogator, and were by no means clear that it would be right to tell Sir Langham Portland that they lived in Bellevue.

“May we go through the conservatory, I wonder?” said Agnes;—the elder sister, remembering the parting charge of her mother, began to be somewhat uneasy about their handsome companion—he might possibly fall in love with Marian—that was not so very dreadful a hypothesis,—for Agnes was human, and did not object to see the natural enemies of womankind taken captive, subjugated, or even entirely slain. But Marian might fall in love with him! That was an appalling thought; two distinct lines of anxiety began to appear in Agnes’s forehead; and the imagination of the young genius instantly called before her the most touching and pathetic picture, of a secret love and a broken heart.

“Marian, we may go into the conservatory,” repeated Agnes; and she took her sister’s hand and led her to where the Scotch gardener was opening the windows of that fairy palace. Sir Langham still gave them his attendance, following Marian as she passed through the ranks of flowers, and echoing her delight. Sir Langham was rather relieved to find them at last in enthusiasm about something. This familiar and well-known feature of young ladyhood set him much more at his ease.

And the gardener, with benign generosity, gathered some flowers for his young visitors. They thanked him with such thoroughly grateful thanks, and were so respectful of his superior knowledge, that this worthy functionary brightened under their influence. Sir Langham followed surprised and amused. He thought Marian’s simple ignorance of all those delicate splendid exotic flowers, as pretty as he would have thought her acquaintance with them had she been better instructed; and when one of her flowers fell from her hand, lifted it up with the air of a paladin, and placed it in his breast. Marian, though she had turned aside, saw him do it by some mysterious perception—not of the eye—and blushed with a secret tremor, half of pleasure, half of amusement. Agnes regarded it a great deal more seriously. Agnes immediately discovered that it was time to go in. She was quite indifferent, we are grieved to say, to the fate of Sir Langham, and thought nothing of disturbing the peace of that susceptible young gentleman; but her protection and guardianship of Marian was a much more serious affair. Their windows were in the end of the house, and commanded no view—so Mrs Edgerley, with a hundred regrets, was grieved to tell them—but these windows looked over an orchard and a clump of chestnuts, where birds sang and dew fell, and the girls were perfectly contented with the prospect; they had three rooms—a dressing-room, and two pretty bedchambers—into all of which the morning sun threw a sidelong glance as he passed; and they had been extremely delighted with their pretty apartments last night.

“Well!” said Agnes, as they arranged their flowers and put them in water, “everything is very pretty, May, but I almost wish we were at home.”

“Why?” said Marian; but the beautiful sister had so much perception of the case, that she did not look up, nor show any particular surprise.

“Why?—because—because people don’t understand what we are, nor who we belong to, nor how different—— Marian, you know quite well what is the cause!”

“But suppose people don’t want to know?” said Marian, who was provokingly calm and at her ease; “we cannot go about telling everybody—no one cares. Suppose we were to tell Sir Langham, Agnes? He would think we meant that he has to come to Bellevue; and I am sure you would not like to see him there!”

This was a very conclusive argument, but Agnes had made up her mind to be annoyed.

“And there was Rachel,” said Agnes, “I wonder why just at that moment we should have thought of mamma—and now I am sure she will not speak to us again.”

“Mamma did not think it quite proper,” said Marian doubtfully;—“I am sure I cannot tell why—but we were very near making up friendship without thinking; perhaps it is better as it is.”

“It is never proper to hurt any one’s feelings—and she is lonely and neglected and by herself,” said Agnes. “Mamma cannot be displeased when I tell her; and I will try all I can to-day to meet with Rachel again. I think Rachel would think better of our house than of the Willows. Though it is a beautiful place, it is not kindly; it never could look like home.”

“Oh, nonsense! if we had it to ourselves, and they were all here!” cried Marian. That indeed was a paradisaical conception. Agnes’s uneasy mood could not stand against such an idea, and she arranged her hair with renewed spirits, having quite given up for the moment all desire for going home.

CHAPTER III.
SOCIETY.

But Rachel did not join the party either in their drives, their walks, or their conversations. She was not to be seen during the whole day, either out of doors or in, and did not even make her appearance at the dinner-table; and Agnes could not so much as hear any allusion made to her except once, when Mrs Edgerley promised a new arrival, “some really good music,” and launched forth in praise of an extraordinary little genius, whom nothing could excuse for concealing her gift from the world. But if Rachel did not appear, Sir Langham did, following Marian with his eyes when he could not follow in person, and hovering about the young beauty like a man bewitched. The homage of such a cavalier was not to be despised; in spite of herself, the smile and the blush brightened upon the sweet face of Marian—she was pleased—she was amused—she was grateful to Sir Langham—and besides had a certain mischievous pleasure in her power over him, and loved to exercise the sway of despotism. Marian new little about coquetry, though she had read with attention Mrs Edgerley’s novel on the subject; but, notwithstanding, had “a way” of her own, and some little practice in tantalising poor Harry Oswald, who was by no means so superb a plaything as the handsome guardsman. The excitement and novelty of her position—the attentions paid to her—the pretty things around her—even her own dress, which never before had been so handsome, brightened, with a variable and sweet illumination, the beauty which needed no aggravating circumstance. Poor Sir Langham gave himself up helpless and unresisting, and already, in his honest but somewhat slow imagination, made formal declarations to the supposititious Banburyshire Squire.

Agnes meanwhile sat by Marian’s side, rather silent, eagerly watching for the appearance of Rachel—for now it was evening, and the really good music could not be long deferred, if it was to come to-night. Agnes was not neglected, though she had no Sir Langham to watch her movements. Mrs Edgerley herself came to the young genius now and then to introduce some one who was “dying to know the author of Hope Hazlewood;” and half disconcerted, half amused, Agnes began to feel herself entering upon the enjoyment of her reputation. No one could possibly suppose anything more different from the fanciful and delicate fame which charms the young poetic mind with imaginary glories, than these drawing-room compliments and protestations of interest and delight, to which, at first with a deep blush and overpowering embarrassment, and by-and-by with an uneasy consciousness of something ridiculous, the young author sat still and listened. The two sisters kept always close together, and had not courage enough to move from the corner in which they had first established themselves. Agnes, for the moment, had become the reigning whim in the brain of Mrs Edgerley. She came to her side now and then to whisper a few words of caressing encouragement, or to point out to her somebody of note; and when she left her young guest, Mrs Edgerley flew at once to the aforesaid somebody to call his or her attention to the pair of sisters, one of whom had such genius, and the other such beauty. Marian, occupied with her own concerns, took all this very quietly. Agnes grew annoyed, uneasy, displeased; she did not remember that she had once been mortified at the neglect of her pretty hostess, nor that Mrs Edgerley’s admiration was as evanescent as her neglect. She began to think everybody was laughing at her claims to distinction, and that she amused the people, sitting here uneasily receiving compliments, immovable in her chair—and she was extremely grateful to Mr Agar, her former acquaintance, when he came, looking amused and paying no compliments, to talk to her, and to screen her from observation. Mr Agar had been watching her uneasiness, her embarrassment, her self-annoyance. He was quite pleased with the “study;” it pleased him as much as a Watteau, or a cabinet of old china; and what could connoisseur say more?

“You must confide your annoyance to me. I am your oldest acquaintance,” said Mr Agar. “What has happened? Has your pretty sister been naughty—eh? or are all the people so much delighted with your book?”

“Yes,” said Agnes, holding down her head a little, with a momentary shame that her two troubles should have been so easily found out.

“And why should they not be delighted?” said the ancient beau. “You would have liked me a great deal better had I been the same, when I first saw you; do you not like it now?”

“No,” said Agnes.

“Yes; no. Your eyes do not talk in monosyllables,” said the old gentleman, “eh? What has poor Sir Langham done to merit that flash of dissatisfaction? and I wonder what is the meaning of all these anxious glances towards the door?”

“I was looking for—for the young lady they call Rachel,” said Agnes. “Do you know who she is, sir?—can you tell me? I am afraid she thought we were rude this morning, when we met her; and I wish very much to see her to-night.”

“Ah! I know nothing of the young lady, but a good deal of the voice,” said Mr Agar; “a fine soprano,—a good deal of expression, and plenty of fire. Yes, she needs nothing but cultivation to make a great success.”

“I think, sir,” said Agnes, suddenly breaking in upon this speech, “if you would speak to Mrs Edgerley for her, perhaps they would not teaze her about being a singer. She hates it. I know she does; and it would be very good of you to help her, for she has no friends.”

Mr Agar looked at the young pleader with a smile of surprised amusement. “And why should I interfere on her behalf? and why should she not be a singer? and how do you suppose I could persuade myself to do such an injury to Art?”

“She dislikes it very much,” said Agnes. “She is a woman—a girl—a delicate mind; it would be very cruel to bring her before the world; and indeed I am sure if you would speak to Mrs Edgerley—”

“My dear young lady,” cried Mr Agar, with a momentary shrug of his eyebrows, and look of comic distress, “you entirely mistake my rôle. I am not a knight-errant for the rescue of distressed princesses. I am a humble servant of the beautiful; and a young lady’s tremors are really not cause enough to induce me to resign a fine soprano. No. I bow before my fair enslavers,” said the ancient Corydon, with a reverential obeisance, which belonged, like his words, to another century; “but my true and only mistress is Art.”

Agnes was silenced in a moment; but whether by this declaration, or by the entrance of Rachel, who suddenly appeared, gliding in at a side-door, could not be determined. Rachel came in, so quickly, and with such a gliding motion, that anybody less intently on the watch could not have discovered the moment of her appearance. She was soon at the piano, and heard immediately; but she came there in a miraculous manner to all the other observers, as if she had dropped from heaven.

And while the connoisseur stood apart to listen undisturbed, and Mrs Edgerley’s guests were suddenly stayed in their flutter of talk and mutual criticism by the “really good music” which their hostess had promised them, Agnes sat listening, moved and anxious,—not to the song, but to the singer. She thought the music—pathetic, complaining, and resentful—instead of being a renowned chef-d’œuvre of a famous composer, was the natural outcry of this lonely girl. She thought she could hear the solitary heart, the neglected life, making its appeal indignant and sorrowful to some higher ear than all these careless listeners. She bent unconsciously towards the singer, forgetting all her mother’s rules of manners, and, leaning forward, supported her rapt and earnest face with her hand. Mrs Edgerley paused to point out to some one the sweet enthusiasm, the delightful impressionable nature of her charming young friend; but to tell the truth, Agnes was not thinking at all of the music. It seemed to her a strange impassioned monologue,—a thing of which she was the sole hearer,—an irrepressible burst of confidence, addressed to the only one here present who cared to receive the same.

When it was over she raised herself almost painfully from her listening posture; she did not join in any of the warm expressions of delight which burst from her neighbours; and with extreme impatience Agnes listened to the cool criticism of Mr Agar, who was delivering his opinion very near her. Her heart ached as she saw the musician turn haughtily aside, and heard her say, “I am here when you want me again;” and Rachel withdrew to a sofa in a corner, and, shading her delicate small face entirely with her hand, took up a book and read, or pretended to read. Agnes looked on with eager interest, while several people, one after another, approached the singer to offer her some of the usual compliments, and retreated immediately, disconcerted by their reception. Leaning back in her corner, with her book held obstinately before her, and the small pale hand shading the delicate face, it was impossible to intrude upon Rachel. Agnes sat watching her, quite absorbed and sad—thinking in her own quick creative mind, many a proud thought for Rachel—and fancying she could read in that unvarying and statue-like attitude a world of tumultuous feelings. She was so much occupied that she took no notice of Sir Langham; and even Marian, though she appealed to her twenty times, did not get more than a single word in reply.

“Is she not the most wonderful little genius?” cried Mrs Edgerley, making one of her sudden descents upon Agnes. “I tell everybody she is next to you—quite next to you in talent. I expect she will make quite a furor next season when she makes her début.”

“But she dislikes it so much,” said Agnes.

“What, music? Oh, you mean coming out: poor child, she does not know what is for her own advantage,” said Mrs Edgerley. “My love, in her circumstances, people have no right to consult their feelings; and a successful singer may live quite a fairy life. Music is so entrancing—these sort of people make fortunes immediately, and then, of course, she could retire, and be as private as she pleased. Oh, yes, I am sure she will be delighted to gratify you, Mr Agar: she will sing again.”

It scarcely required a word from Mrs Edgerley—scarcely a sign. Rachel seemed to know by intuition when she was wanted, and, putting down her book, went to the piano again;—perhaps Agnes was not so attentive this time, for she felt herself suddenly roused a few minutes after by a sudden tremor in the magnificent voice—a sudden shake and tremble, having the same effect upon the singing which a start would have upon the frame. Agnes looked round eagerly to see the cause—there was no cause apparent—and no change whatever in the company, save for the pale spasmodic face of Lord Winterbourne, newly arrived, and saluting his daughter at the door.

Was it this? Agnes could not wait to inquire, for immediately the music rose and swelled into such a magnificent burst and overflow that every one held his breath. To the excited ear of Agnes, it sounded like a glorious challenge and defiance, irrestrainable and involuntary; and ere the listeners had ceased to wonder, the music was over, and the singer gone.

“A sudden effect—our young performer is not without dramatic talent,” said Mr Agar. Agnes said nothing; but she searched in the corner of the sofa with her eyes, watched the side-door, and stole sidelong looks at Lord Winterbourne. He never seemed at his ease, this uncomfortable nobleman; he had a discomfited look to-night, like a man defeated, and Agnes could not help thinking of Charlie, with his sudden enmity, and the old acquaintance of her father, and all the chances connected with Aunt Bridget’s bequest; for the time, in her momentary impulse of dislike and repulsion, she thought her noble neighbour, ex-minister and peer of the realm as he was, was not a match for the big boy.

“Agnes, somebody says Lord Winterbourne is her father—Rachel’s father—and she cannot bear him. Was that what Mrs Edgerley meant?” whispered Marian in her ear with a look of sorrow. “Did you hear her voice tremble—did you see how she went away? They say she is his daughter—oh, Agnes, can it be true?”

But Agnes did not know, and could not answer: if it was true, then it was very certain that Rachel must be right; and that there were depths and mysteries and miseries of life, of which, in spite of all their innocent acquaintance with sorrow, these simple girls had scarcely heard, and never knew.

CHAPTER IV.
MAKING FRIENDS.

The next morning, and the next again, Agnes and Marian vainly sought the little bower of willows looking for Rachel. Once they saw her escape hastily out of the shrubbery as they returned from their search, and knew by that means that she wished to avoid them; but though they heard her sing every night, they made no advance in their friendship, for that was the only time in which Rachel was visible, and then she defied all intrusion upon her haughty solitude. Mr Agar himself wisely kept aloof from the young singer. The old gentleman did not choose to subject himself to the chance of a repulse.

But if Rachel avoided them, Sir Langham certainly did not. This enterprising youth, having discovered their first early walk, took care to be in the way when they repeated it, and on the fourth morning, without saying anything to each other, the sisters unanimously decided to remain within the safe shelter of their own apartments. From a corner of their window they could see Sir Langham in vexation and impatience traversing the slope of the lawn, and pulling off the long ashy willow-leaves to toss them into the river. Marian laughed to herself without giving a reason, and Agnes was very glad they had remained in the house; but the elder sister, reasoning with elaborate wisdom, made up her mind to ask no further questions about Sir Langham, how Marian liked him, or what she thought of his attentions. Agnes thought too many inquiries might “put something into her head.”

Proceeding upon this astute line of policy, Agnes took no notice whatever of all the assiduities of the handsome guardsman, not even his good-natured and brotherly attentions to herself. They were only to remain a fortnight at the Willows—very little harm, surely, could be done in that time, and they had but a slender chance of meeting again. So the elder sister, in spite of her charge of Marian, quieted her conscience and her fears—and in the mean time the two girls, with thorough and cordial simplicity, took pleasure in their holiday, finding everybody kind to them, and excusing with natural humbleness any chance symptom of neglect.

They had been a week at the Willows, and every day had used every means in their power to see Rachel again, when one morning, suddenly, without plot or premeditation, Agnes encountered her in a long passage which ran from the hall to the morning-room of Mrs Edgerley. There was a long window at the end of this passage, against which the small rapid figure, clothed in a dark close-fitting dress, without the smallest relief of ornament, stood out strangely, outlined and surrounded by the light. Agnes had some flowers in her hand, the gift of her acquaintance the gardener. She fancied that Rachel glanced at them wistfully, and she was eager of the opportunity. “They are newly gathered—will you take some?” said Agnes, holding out her hands to her. The young stranger paused, and looked for an instant distrustfully at her and the flowers. Agnes hoped nothing better than to be dismissed with a haughty word of thanks; but while Rachel lingered, the door of the morning-room was opened, and an approaching footstep struck upon the tiled floor. The young singer did not look behind her, did not pause to see who it was, but recognising the step, as it seemed, with a sudden start and tremor, suddenly laid her hand on Agnes’s arm, and drew her hurriedly in within a door which she flung open. As soon as they were in, Rachel closed the door with haste and force, and stood close by it with evident agitation and excitement. “I beg your pardon—but hush, do not speak till he is past,” she said in a whisper. Agnes, much discomposed and troubled, went to the window, as people generally do in embarrassment, and looked out vacantly for a moment upon the kitchen-garden and the servants’ “offices,” the only prospect visible from it. She could not help sharing a little the excitement of her companion, as she thought upon her own singular position here, and listened with an involuntary thrill to the slow step of the unknown person from whom they had fled, pacing along the long cool corridor to pass this door.

But he did not pass the door; he made a moment’s pause at it, and then entered, coming full upon Rachel as she stood, agitated and defiant, close upon the threshold. Agnes scarcely looked round, yet she could see it was Lord Winterbourne.

“Good morning, Rachel. I trust you get on well here,” said the new-comer in a soft and stealthy tone: “is this your sitting-room? Ah, bare enough, I see. Your are in splendid voice, I am glad to hear; some one is coming to-night, I understand, whose good opinion is important. You must take care to do yourself full justice. Are you well, child?”

He had approached close to her, and bestowed a cold kiss upon the brow which burned under his touch. “Perfectly well,” said Rachel, drawing back with a voice unusually harsh and clear. Her agitation and excitement had for the moment driven all the music from her tones.

“And your brother is quite well, and all going on in the usual way at Winterbourne,” continued the stranger. “I expect to have the house very full in a few weeks, and you must arrange with the housekeeper where to bestow yourselves. You, of course, I shall want frequently. As for Louis, I suppose he does nothing but fish and mope as usual. I have no desire to see more than I can help of him.”

“There is no fear; his desire is as strong as yours,” cried Rachel suddenly, her face varying from the most violent flush to a sudden passionate paleness. Lord Winterbourne answered by his cold smile of ridicule.

“I know his amiable temper,” he said. “Now, remember what I have said about to-night. Do yourself justice. It will be for your advantage. Good-by. Remember me to Louis.”

The door opened again, and he was gone. Rachel closed it almost violently, and threw herself upon a chair. “We owe him no duty—none. I will not believe it,” cried Rachel. “No—no—no—I do not belong to him! Louis is not his!”

All this time, in the greatest distress and embarrassment, Agnes stood by the window, grieved to be an unwilling listener, and reluctant to remind Rachel of her presence by going away. But Rachel had not forgotten that she was there. With a sudden effort this strange solitary girl composed herself and came up to Agnes. “Do you know Lord Winterbourne?” she said quickly; “have you heard of him before you came here?”

“I think—— but, indeed, I may be mistaken,” said Agnes timidly; “I think papa once knew him long ago.”

“And did he think him a good man?” said Rachel.

This was a very embarrassing question. Agnes turned away, retreated uneasily, blushed, and hesitated. “He never speaks of him; I cannot tell,” said Agnes.

“Do you know,” said Rachel, eagerly, “they say he is my father—Louis’s father; but we do not believe it, neither I nor he.”

To this singular statement Agnes made no answer, save by a look of surprise and inquiry; the frightful uncertainty of such a position as this was beyond the innocent comprehension of Agnes Atheling. She looked with a blank and painful surprise into her young companion’s face.

“And I will not sing to-night; I will not, because he bade me!” said Rachel. “Is it my fault that I can sing? but I am to be punished for it; they make me come to amuse them; and they want me to be a public singer. I should not care,” cried the poor girl suddenly, in a violent burst of tears, passing from her passion and excitement to her natural character—“I would not mind it for myself, if it were not for Louis. I would do anything they bade me myself; I do not care, nothing matters to me; but Louis—Louis! he thinks it is disgrace, and it would break his heart!”

“Is that your brother?” said Agnes, bending over her, and endeavouring to soothe her excitement. Rachel made no immediate answer.

“He has disgrace enough already, poor boy,” said Rachel. “We are nobody’s children; or we are Lord Winterbourne’s; and he who might be a king’s son—and he has not even a name! Yes, he is my brother, my poor Louis: we are twins; and we have nobody but each other in the whole world.”

“If he is as old as you,” said Agnes, who was only accustomed to the usages of humble houses, and knew nothing of the traditions of a noble race, “you should not stay at Winterbourne: a man can always work—you ought not to stay.”

“Do you think so?” cried Rachel eagerly. “Louis says so always, and I beg and plead with him. When he was only eighteen he ran away: he went and enlisted for a soldier—a common man—and was away a year, and then they bought him off, and promised to get him a commission; and I made him promise to me—perhaps it was selfish, for I could not live when he was gone—I made him promise not to go away again. And there he is at Winterbourne. I know you never saw any one like him; and now all these heartless people are going there, and Lord Winterbourne is afraid of him, and never will have him seen, and the whole time I will be sick to the very heart lest he should go away.”

“But I think he ought to go away,” said Agnes gravely.

Her new friend looked up in her face with an earnest and trembling scrutiny. This poor girl had a great deal more passion and vehemence in her character than had ever been called for in Agnes, but, an uninstructed and ill-trained child, knew nothing of the primitive independence, and had never been taught to think of right and wrong.

“We have a little house there,” said Agnes, with a sudden thought. “Do you know the Old Wood Lodge? Papa’s old aunt left it to him, and they say it is very near the Hall.”

At the name Rachel started suddenly, rose up at once with one of her quick inconsiderate movements, and, throwing her arms round Agnes, kissed her cheek. “I knew I ought to know you,” said Rachel, “and yet I did not think of the name. Dear old Miss Bridget, she loved Louis. I am sure she loved him; and we know every room in the house, and every leaf on the trees. If you come there, we will see you every day.”

“We are coming there—and my mother,” said Agnes. “I know you will be pleased to see mamma,” said the good girl, her face brightening, and her eyes filling in spite of herself; “every one thinks she is like their own mother—and when you come to us you will think you are at home.”

“We never had any mother,” said Rachel, sadly; “we never had any home; we do not know what it is. Look, this is my home here.”

Agnes looked round the large bare apartment, in which the only article of furniture worth notice was an old piano, and which looked only upon the little square of kitchen-garden and the servants’ rooms. It was somewhat larger than both the parlours in Bellevue, and for a best room would have rejoiced Mrs Atheling’s ambitious heart; but Agnes was already a little wiser than she had been in Islington, and it chilled her heart to compare this lonely and dreary apartment with all the surrounding luxuries, which Rachel saw and did not share.

“Come up with me and see Marian,” said Agnes, putting her arm through her companion’s; “you are not to avoid us now any more; we are all to be friends after to-day.”

And Rachel, who did not know what friendship was, yielded, thinking of Louis. Had she been wrong throughout in keeping him, by her entreaties, so long at Winterbourne? A vision of a home, all to themselves, burst once in a great delight upon the mind of Rachel. If Louis would only consent to it! With such a motive before her as that, the poor girl fancied she “would not mind” being a singer after all.

CHAPTER V.
CONFIDENTIAL.

When the first ice was broken, Rachel became perfectly confidential with her new friends—perfectly confidential—far more so than they, accustomed to the domestic privateness of humble English life, could understand. This poor girl had no restraint upon her for family pride or family honour; no compensation in family sympathy; and her listeners, who had very little skill in the study of character, though one of them had written a novel, were extremely puzzled with a kind of doubleness, perfectly innocent and unconscious, which made Rachel’s thoughts and words at different moments like the words and the thoughts of two different people. At one time she was herself, humble, timid, and content to do anything which any authority bade her do; but in a moment she remembered Louis; and the change was instantaneous—she became proud, stately, obdurate, even defiant. She was no longer herself, but the shadow and representative of her brother; and in this view Rachel resisted and defied every influence, anchoring her own wavering will upon Louis, and refusing, with unreasonable and unreasoning obstinacy, all injunctions and all persuasions coming from those to whom her brother was opposed. She seemed, indeed, to have neither plan nor thought for herself: Louis was her inspiration. She seemed to have been born for no other purpose but to follow, to love, and to serve this brother, who to her was all the world. As she sat on the pretty chintz sofa in that sunny little dressing-room where Agnes and Marian passed the morning, running rapidly over the environs of the Old Wood Lodge, and telling them about their future neighbours, they were amazed and amused to find the total absence of personal opinion, and almost of personal liking, in their new acquaintance. She had but one standard, to which she referred everything, and that was Louis. They saw the very landscape, not as it was, but as it appeared to this wonderful brother. They became acquainted with the village and its inhabitants through the medium of Louis’s favourites and Louis’s aversions. They were young enough and simple enough themselves to be perfectly ready to invest any unknown ideal person with all the gifts of fancy; and Louis immediately leaped forth from the unknown world, a presence and an authority to them both.

“The Rector lives in the Old Wood House,” said Rachel, for the first time pausing, and looking somewhat confused in her rapid summary. “I am sure I do not know what to think—but Louis does not like him. I suppose you will not like him; and yet,”—here a little faint colour came upon the young speaker’s pale face—“sometimes I have fancied he would have been a friend if we had let him; and he is quite sure to like you.”

Saying this, she turned a somewhat wistful look upon Agnes—blushing more perceptibly, but with no sunshine or brightness in her blush. “Yes,” said Rachel slowly, “he will like you—he will do for you; and you,” she added, turning with sudden eagerness to Marian, “you are for Louis—remember! You are not to think of any one else till you see Louis. You never saw any one like him; he is like a prince to look at, and I know he is a great genius. Your sister shall have the Rector, and Louis shall be for you.”

All this Rachel said hurriedly, but with the most perfect gravity, even with a tinge of sadness—grieved, as they could perceive, that her brother did not like the Rector, but making no resistance against a doom so unquestionable as the dislike of Louis: but her timid heart was somehow touched upon the subject; she became thoughtful, and lingered over it with a kind of melancholy pleasure. “Perhaps Louis might come to like him if he was connected with you,” said Rachel meditatively; and the faint colour wavered and flickered on her face, and at last passed away with a low but very audible sigh.

“But they are all Riverses,” she continued, in her usual rapid way. “The Rector of Winterbourne is always a Rivers—it is the family living; and if Lord Winterbourne’s son should die, I suppose Mr Lionel would be the heir. His sister lives with him, quite an old lady: and then there is another Miss Rivers, who lives far off, at Abingford all the way. Did you ever hear of Miss Anastasia? But she does not call herself Miss—only the Honourable Anastasia Rivers. Old Miss Bridget was once her governess. Lord Winterbourne will never permit her to see us; but I almost think Louis would like to be friends with her, only he will not take the trouble. They are not at all friends with her at Winterbourne.”

“Is she a relation?” said Agnes. The girls by this time were so much interested in the family story that they did not notice this admirable reason for the inclination of Louis towards this old lady unknown.

“She is the old lord’s only child,” said Rachel. “The old lord was Lord Winterbourne’s brother, and he died abroad, and no one knew anything about him for a long time before he died. We want very much to hear about him; indeed, I ought not to tell you—but Louis thinks perhaps he knew something about us. Louis will not believe we are Lord Winterbourne’s children; and though we are poor disgraced children any way, and though he hates the very name of Rivers, I think he would almost rather we belonged to the old lord; for he says,” added Rachel with great seriousness, “that one cannot hate one’s father, if he is dead.”

The girls drew back a little, half in horror; but though she spoke in this rebellious fashion, there was no consciousness of wrong in Rachel’s innocent and quiet face.

“And we have so many troubles,” burst forth the poor girl suddenly. “And I sometimes sit and cry all day, and pray to God to be dead. And when anybody is kind to me,” she continued, some sudden remembrance moving her to an outburst of tears, and raising the colour once more upon her colourless cheek, “I am so weak and so foolish, and would do anything they tell me. I do not care, I am sure, what I do—it does not matter to me; but Louis—no, certainly, I will not sing to-night.”

“I wish very much,” said Agnes, with an earnestness and courage which somewhat startled Marian—“I wish very much you could come home with us to our little house in Bellevue.”

“Yes,” said Marian doubtfully; but the younger sister, though she shared the generous impulse, could not help a secret glance at Agnes—an emphatic reminder of Mamma.

“No, I must make no friends,” said Rachel, rising under the inspiration of Louis’s will and injunctions. “It is very kind of you, but I must not do it. Oh, but remember you are to come to Winterbourne, and I will try to bring Louis to see you; and I am sure you know a great deal better, and could talk to him different from me. Do you know,” she continued solemnly, “they never have given me any education at all, except to sing? I have never been taught anything, nor indeed Louis either, which is much worse than me—only he is a great genius, and can teach himself. The Rector wanted to help him; that is why I am always sure, if Louis would let him, he would be a friend.”

And again a faint half-distinguishable blush came upon Rachel’s face. No, it meant nothing, though Agnes and Marian canvassed and interpreted after their own fashion this delicate suffusion; it only meant that the timid gentle heart might have been touched had there been room for more than Louis; but Louis was supreme, and filled up all.

CHAPTER VI.
THREE FRIENDS.

That night, faithful to her purpose, Rachel did not appear in the drawing-room. How far her firmness would have supported her, had she been left to herself, it is impossible to tell; but she was not left to herself. “Mrs Edgerley came, saying just the same things as Lord Winterbourne,” said Rachel, “and I knew I should be firm. Louis cannot endure Mrs Edgerley.” She said this with the most entire unconsciousness that she revealed the whole motive and strength of her resistance in the words. Rachel, indeed, was perfectly unaware of the entire subjection in which she kept even her thoughts and her affections to her brother; but she could not help a little anxiety and a little nervousness as to whether “Louis would like” her new acquaintances. She herself brightened wonderfully under the influence of these companions—expanded out of her dull and irritable solitude, and with girlish eagerness forecast their fortunes, seizing at once, in idea, upon Marian as the destined bride of Louis, and with a voluntary self-sacrifice making over, with a sigh and a secret thrill of pride, the only person who had ever wakened any interest in her own most sisterly bosom, to Agnes. She pleased herself greatly with these visions, and built them on a foundation still more brittle than that of Alnaschar—for it was possible that all her pleasant dreams might be thrown into the dust in a moment, if—dreadful possibility!—“Louis did not like” these first friends of poor Rachel’s youth.

And when she brightened under this genial influence, and softened out of the haughtiness and solitary state which, indeed, was quite foreign to her character, Rachel became a very attractive little person. Even the sudden change in her sentiments and bearing when she returned to her old feeling of representing Louis, added a charm. Her large eyes troubled and melting, her pale small features which were very fine and regular, though so far from striking, her noble little head and small pretty figure, attracted in the highest degree the admiration of her new friends. Marian, who rather suspected that she herself was rather pretty, could not sufficiently admire the grace and refinement of Rachel; and Agnes, though candidly admitting that there was “scarcely any one” so beautiful as Marian, notwithstanding bestowed a very equal share of her regard upon the attractions of their companion. And the trio fell immediately into all the warmth of girlish friendship. The Athelings went to visit Rachel in her great bare study, and Rachel came to visit them in their pretty little dressing-room; and whether in that sun-bright gay enclosure, or within the sombre and undecorated walls of the room which looked out on the kitchen-garden, a painter would have been puzzled to choose which was the better scene. They were so pretty a group anywhere—so animated—so full of eager life and intelligence—so much disposed to communicate everything that occurred to them, that Rachel’s room brightened under the charm of their presence as she herself had done. And this new acquaintanceship made a somewhat singular revolution in the drawing-room—where the young musician, after her singing, was instantly joined by her two friends. She was extremely reserved and shy of every one else, and even of them occasionally, under the eyes of Mrs Edgerley; but she was no longer the little tragical princess who buried herself in the book and the corner, and neither heard nor saw anything going around her. And the fact that they had some one whose position was even more doubtful and uneasy than their own, to give heart and courage to, animated Agnes and Marian, as nothing else could have done. They recovered their natural spirits, and were no longer overawed by the great people surrounding them; they had so much care for Rachel that they forgot to be self-conscious, or to trouble themselves with inquiries touching their own manners and deportment, and what other people thought of the same; and on the whole, though their simplicity was not quite so amusing as at first, “other people” began to have a kindness for the fresh young faces, always so honest, cloudless, and sincere.

But Agnes’s “reputation” had died away, and left very little trace behind it. Mrs Edgerley had found other lions, and at the present moment held in delusion an unfortunate young poet, who was much more like to be harmed by the momentary idolatry than Agnes. The people who had been dying to know the author of Hope Hazlewood, had all found out that the shy young genius did not talk in character—had no gift of conversation, and, indeed, did nothing at all to keep up her fame; and if Agnes chanced to feel a momentary mortification at the prompt desertion of all her admirers, she wisely kept the pang to herself, and said nothing about it. They were not neglected—for the accomplished authoress of Coquetry and the Beau Monde had some kindness at her heart after all, and had always a smile to spare for her young guests when they came in her way; they were permitted to roam freely about the gardens and the conservatory; they were by no means hindered in their acquaintance with Rachel, whom Mrs Edgerley was really much disposed to bring out and patronise; and one of them, the genius or the beauty, as best suited her other companions, was not unfrequently honoured with a place in Mrs Edgerley’s barouche—a pretty shy lay figure in that rustling, radiant, perfumy bouquet of fine ladies, who talked over her head about things and people perfectly unknown to the silent auditor, and impressed her with a vague idea that this elegant and easy gossip was brilliant “conversation,” though it did not quite sound, after all, like that grand unattainable conversation to be found in books. After this fashion, liking their novel life wonderfully well, and already making a home of that sunny little dressing-room, they drew gradually towards the end of their fortnight. As yet nothing at all marvellous had happened to them, and even Agnes seemed to have forgotten the absolute necessity of letting everybody know that they “did not belong to great people,” but instead of a rural Hall, or Grange of renown, lived only in Number Ten, Bellevue.

CHAPTER VII.
A TERRIBLE EVENT.

For Agnes, we are grieved to confess, had fallen into all the sudden fervour of a most warm and enthusiastic girlish friendship. She forgot to watch over her sister, though Mrs Atheling’s letters did not fail to remind her of her duty; she forgot to ward off the constant regards of Sir Langham. She began to be perfectly indifferent and careless of the superb sentinel who mounted guard upon Marian every night. For the time, Agnes was entirely occupied with Rachel, and with the new world so full of a charmed unknown life, which seemed to open upon them all in this Old Wood Lodge; she spent hours dreaming of some discovery which might change the position of the unfortunate brother and sister; she took up with warmth and earnestness their dislike to Lord Winterbourne. If it sometimes occurred to her what a frightful sentiment this was on the part of children to their father, she corrected herself suddenly, and declared in her own mind, with heart and energy, that he could not be their father—that there was no resemblance between them. But this, it must be confessed, was a puzzling subject, and offered continual ground for speculation; for princes and princesses, stolen away in their childhood, were extremely fictitious personages, even to an imagination which had written a novel; and Agnes could not help a thrill of apprehension when she thought of Louis and Marian, of the little romance which Rachel had made up between them, and how her own honourable father and mother would look upon this unhappy scion of a noble house—this poor boy who had no name.

This future, so full of strange and exciting possibilities, attracted with an irresistible power the imaginative mind of Agnes. She went through it chapter by chapter—through earnest dialogues, overpowering emotions, many a varying and exciting scene. The Old Wood Lodge, the Old Wood House, the Hall, the Rector, the old Miss Rivers, the unknown hero, Louis—these made a little private world of persons and places to the vivid imagination of the young dreamer. They floated down even upon Mrs Edgerley’s drawing-room, extinguishing its gay lights, its pretty faces, and its hum of conversation; but with still more effect filled all her mind and meditations, as she rested, half reclining, upon the pretty chintz sofa in the pretty dressing-room, in the sweet summer noon with which this sweet repose was so harmonious and suitable. The window was open, and the soft wind blowing in fluttered all the leaves of that book upon the little table, which the sunshine, entering too, brightened into a dazzling whiteness with all its rims and threads of gold. A fragrant breath came up from the garden, a hum of soft sound from all the drowsy world out of doors. Agnes, in the corner of the sofa, laying back her head among its pretty cushions, with the smile of fancy on her lips, and the meditative inward light shining in her eyes, playing her foot idly on the carpet, playing her fingers idly among a little knot of flowers which lay at her side, and which, in this sweet indolence, she had not yet taken the trouble to arrange in the little vase—was as complete a picture of maiden meditation—of those charmed fancies, sweet and fearless, which belong to her age and kind, as painter or poet could desire to see.

When Marian suddenly broke in upon the retirement of her sister, disturbed, fluttered, a little afraid, but with no appearance of painfulness, though there was a certain distress in her excitement. Marian’s eyes were downcast, abashed, and dewy, her colour unusually bright, her lips apart, her heart beating high. She came into the little quiet room with a sudden burst, as if she had fled from some one; but when she came within the door, paused as suddenly, put up her hands to her face, blushed an overpowering blush, and dropped at once with the shyest, prettiest movement in the world, into a low chair which stood behind the door. Agnes, waking slowly out of her own bright mist of fancy, saw all this with a faint wonder—noticing scarcely anything more than that Marian surely grew prettier every day, and indeed had never looked so beautiful all her life.

“May! you look quite——” lovely, Agnes was about to say; but she paused in consideration of her sister’s feelings, and said “frightened” instead.

“Oh, no wonder! Agnes, something has happened,” said Marian. She began to look even more frightened as she spoke; yet the pretty saucy lip moved a little into something that resembled suppressed and silent laughter. In spite, however, of this one evidence of a secret mixture of amusement, Marian was extremely grave and visibly afraid.

“What has happened? Is it about Rachel?” asked Agnes, instantly referring Marian’s agitation to the subject of her own thoughts.

“About Rachel! you are always thinking about Rachel,” said Marian, with a momentary sparkle of indignation. “It is something a great deal more important; it is—oh, Agnes! Sir Langham has been speaking to me——”

Agnes raised herself immediately with a start of eagerness and surprise, accusing herself. She had forgotten all about this close and pressing danger—she had neglected her guardianship—she looked with an appalled and pitying look upon her beautiful sister. In Agnes’s eyes, it was perfectly visible already that here was an end of Marian’s happiness—that she had bestowed her heart upon Sir Langham, and that accordingly this heart had nothing to do but to break.

“What did he say?” asked Agnes solemnly.

“He said—— oh, I am sure you know very well what he was sure to say,” cried Marian, holding down her head, and tying knots in her little handkerchief; “he said—he liked me—and wanted to know if I would consent. But it does not matter what he said,” said Marian, sinking her voice very low, and redoubling the knots upon the cambric; “it is not my fault, indeed, Agnes. I did not think he would have done it; I thought it was all like Harry Oswald; and you never said a word. What was I to do?”

“What did you say?” asked Agnes again, with breathless anxiety, feeling the reproach, but making no answer to it.

“I said nothing: it was in Mrs Edgerley’s morning-room, and she came in almost before he was done speaking; and I was so very glad, and ran away. What could I do?” said again the beautiful culprit, becoming a little more at her ease; but during all this time she never lifted her eyes to her sister’s face.

“What will you say, then? Marian, you make me very anxious; do not trifle with me,” said Agnes.

“It is you who are trifling,” retorted the young offender; “for you know if you had told the people at once, as you said you would—but I don’t mean to be foolish either,” said Marian, rising suddenly, and throwing herself half into her sister’s arms; “and now, Agnes, you must go and tell him—indeed you must—and say that we never intended to deceive anybody, and meant no harm.”

“I must tell him!” said Agnes, with momentary dismay; and then the elder sister put her arm round the beautiful head which leaned on her shoulder, in a caressing and sympathetic tenderness. “Yes, May,” said Agnes sadly, “I will do anything you wish—I will say whatever you wish. We ought not to have come here, where you were sure to meet with all these perils. Marian! for my mother’s sake you must try to keep up your heart when we get home.”

The answer Marian made to this solemn appeal was to raise her eyes, full of wondering and mischievous brightness, and to draw herself immediately from Agnes’s embrace with a low laugh of excitement. “Keep up my heart! What do you mean?” said Marian; but she immediately hastened to her own particular sleeping-room, and, lost within its mazy muslin curtains, waited for no explanation. Agnes, disturbed and grave, and much overpowered by her own responsibility, did not know what to think. Present appearances were not much in favour of the breaking of Marian’s heart.

CHAPTER VIII.
AN EXPLANATION.

“But what am I to say?”

To this most difficult question Agnes could not find any satisfactory answer. Marian, though so nearly concerned in it, gave her no assistance whatever. Marian went wandering about the three little rooms, flitting from one to another with unmistakable restlessness, humming inconsistent snatches of song, sometimes a little disposed to cry, sometimes moved to smiles, extremely variable, and full of a sweet and pleasant agitation. Agnes followed her fairy movements with grave eyes, extremely watchful and anxious—was she grieved?—was she pleased? was she really in love?

But Marian made no sign. She would not intrust her sister with any message from herself. She was almost disposed to be out of temper when Agnes questioned her. “You know very well what must be said,” said Marian; “you have only to tell him who we are—and I suppose that will be quite enough for Sir Langham. Do you not think so, Agnes?”

“I think it all depends upon how he feels—and how you feel,” said the anxious sister; but Marian turned away with a smile and made no reply. To tell the truth, she could not at all have explained her own sentiments. She was very considerably flattered by the homage of the handsome guardsman, and fluttered no less by the magnificent and marvellous idea of being a ladyship. There was nothing very much on her part to prevent this beautiful Marian Atheling from becoming as pretty a Lady Portland, and by-and-by, as affectionate a one, as even the delighted imagination of Sir Langham could conceive. But Marian was still entirely fancy free—not at all disinclined to be persuaded into love with Sir Langham, but at present completely innocent of any serious emotions—pleased, excited, in the sweetest flutter of girlish expectation, amusement, and triumph—but nothing more.

And from that corner of the window from which they could gain a sidelong glance at the lawn and partial view of the shrubbery, Sir Langham was now to be descried wandering about as restlessly as Marian, pulling off stray twigs and handfuls of leaves in the most ruthless fashion, and scattering them on his path. Marian drew Agnes suddenly and silently to the window, and pointed out the impatient figure loitering about among the trees. Agnes looked at him with dismay. “Am I to go now—to go out and seek him?—is it proper?” said Agnes, somewhat horrified at the thought. Marian took up the open book from the table, and drew the low chair into the sunshine. “In the evening everybody will be there,” said Marian, as she began to read, or to pretend to read. Agnes paused for a moment in the most painful doubt and perplexity. “I suppose, indeed, it had better be done at once,” she said to herself, taking up her bonnet with very unenviable feelings. Poor Agnes! her heart beat louder and louder, as she tied the strings with trembling fingers, and prepared to go. There was Marian bending down over the book on her knees, sitting in the sunshine with the full summer light burning upon her hair, and one cheek flushed with the pressure of her supporting hand. She glanced up eagerly, but she said nothing; and Agnes, very pale and extremely doubtful, went upon her strange errand. It was the most perplexing and uncomfortable business in the world—and was it proper? But she reassured herself a little as she went down stairs—if any one should see her going out to seek Sir Langham! “I will tell Mrs Edgerley the reason,” thought Agnes—she supposed at least no one could have any difficulty in understanding that.

So she hastened along the garden paths, very shyly, looking quite pale, and with a palpitating heart. Sir Langham knew nothing of her approach till he turned round suddenly on hearing the shy hesitating rapid step behind. He thought it was Marian for a moment, and made one eager step forward; then he paused, half expecting, half indignant. Agnes, breathless and hurried, gave him no time to address her—she burst into her little speech with all the eager temerity of fear.

“If you please, Sir Langham, I have something to say to you,” said Agnes. “You must have been deceived in us—you do not know who we are. We do not belong to great people—we have never before been in a house like Mrs Edgerley’s. I came to tell you at once, for we did not think it honest that you should not know.”

“Know—know what?” cried Sir Langham. Never guardsman before was filled with such illimitable amaze.

Agnes had recovered her self-possession to some extent. “I mean, sir,” she said earnestly, her face flushing as she spoke, “that we wish you to know who we belong to, and that we are not of your rank, nor like the people here. My father is in the City, and we live at Islington, in Bellevue. We are able to live as we desire to live,” said Agnes with a little natural pride, standing very erect, and blushing more deeply than ever, “but we are what people at the Willows would call poor.”

Her amazed companion stood gazing at her with a blank face of wonder. “Eh?” said Sir Langham. He could not for his life make it out.

“I suppose you do not understand me,” said Agnes, who began now to be more at her ease than Sir Langham was, “but what I have said is quite true. My father is an honourable man, whom we have all a right to be proud of, but he has only—only a very little income every year. I meant to have told every one at first, for we did not want to deceive—but there was no opportunity, and whenever Marian told me, we made up our minds that you ought to know. I mean,” said Agnes proudly, with a strange momentary impression that she was taller than Sir Langham, who stood before her biting the head of his cane, with a look of the blankest discomfiture—“I mean that we forget altogether what you said to my sister, and understand that you have been deceived.”

She was somewhat premature, however, in her contempt. Sir Langham, overpowered with the most complete amazement, had yet, at all events, no desire whatever that Marian should forget what he had said to her. “Stop,” said the guardsman, with his voice somewhat husky; “do you mean that your father is not a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s? He is a squire in Banburyshire—I know all about it—or how could you be here?”

“He is not a squire in Banburyshire; he is in an office in the City—and they asked us here because I had written a book,” said Agnes, with a little sadness and great humility. “My father is not a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s; but yet I think he knew him long ago.”

At these last words Sir Langham brightened a little. “Miss Atheling, I don’t want to believe you,” said the honest guardsman; “I’ll ask Lord Winterbourne.”

“Lord Winterbourne knows nothing of us,” said Agnes, with an involuntary shudder of dislike; “and now I have told you, Sir Langham, and there is nothing more to say.”

As she turned to leave him, the dismayed lover awoke out of his blank astonishment. “Nothing more—not a word—not a message; what did she say?” cried Sir Langham, reddening to his hair, and casting a wistful look at the house where Marian was. He followed her sister with an appealing gesture, yet paused in the midst of it. The unfortunate guardsman had never been in circumstances so utterly perplexing; he could not, would not, give up his love—and yet!

“Marian said nothing—nothing more than I have been obliged to say,” said Agnes. She turned away now, and left him with a proud and rapid step, inspired with injured pride and involuntary resentment. Agnes did not quite know what she had expected of Sir Langham, but it surely was something different from this.

CHAPTER IX.
AN EXPERIMENT.

But there was a wonderful difference between this high-minded and impetuous girl, as she crossed the lawn with a hasty foot, which almost scorned to sink into its velvet softness, and the disturbed and bewildered individual who remained behind her in the bowery path where this interview had taken place. Sir Langham Portland had no very bigoted regard for birth, and no avaricious love of money. He was a very good fellow after his kind, as Sir Langhams go, and would not have done a dishonourable thing, with full knowledge of it, for the three kingdoms; but Sir Langham was a guardsman, a man of fashion, a man of the world; he was not so blinded by passion as to be quite oblivious of what befalls a man who marries a pretty face; he was not wealthy enough or great enough to indulge such a whim with impunity, and the beauty which was enough to elevate a Banburyshire Hall, was not sufficient to gild over the unmentionable enormity of a house in Islington and a father in the City. Fathers in the City who are made of gold may be sufficiently tolerable, but a City papa who was poor, and had “only a very small income every year,” as Agnes said, was an unimaginable monster, scarcely realisable to the brilliant intellect of Sir Langham. This unfortunate young gentleman wandered about Mrs Edgerley’s bit of shrubbery, tearing off leaves and twigs on every side of him, musing much in his perturbed and cloudy understanding, and totally unable to make it out. Let nobody suppose he had given up Marian; that would have made a settlement of the question. But Sir Langham was not disposed to give up his beauty, and not disposed to make a mésalliance; and between the terror of losing her and the terror of everybody’s sneer and compassion if he gained her, the unhappy lover vibrated painfully, quite unable to come to any decision, or make up his mighty mind one way or the other. He stripped off the leaves of the helpless bushes, but it did him no service; he twisted his mustache, but there was no enlightenment to be gained from that interesting appendage; he collected all his dazzled wits to the consideration of what sort of creature a man might be who was in an office in the City. Finally, a very brilliant and original idea struck upon the heavy intelligence of Sir Langham. He turned briskly out of the byways of the shrubbery, and said to himself with animation, “I’ll go and see!”

When Agnes entered again the little dressing-room where her beautiful sister still bent over her book, Marian glanced up at her inquiringly, and finding no information elicited by that, waited a little, then rose, and came shyly to her side. “I only want to know,” said Marian, “not because I care; but what did he say?”

“He was surprised,” said Agnes proudly, turning her head away; and Agnes would say nothing more, though Marian lingered by her, and tried various hints and measures of persuasion. Agnes was extremely stately, and, as Marian said, “just a little cross,” all day. It was rather too bad to be cross, if she was so, to the innocent mischief-maker, who might be the principal sufferer. But Agnes had made up her mind to suffer no talk about Sir Langham; she had quite given him up, and judged him with the most uncompromising harshness. “Yes!” cried Agnes (to herself), with lofty and poetic indignation, “this I suppose is what these fashionable people call love!”

She was wrong, as might have been expected; for that poor honest Sir Langham, galloping through the dusty roads in the blazing heat of an August afternoon, was quite as genuine in this proof of his affection as many a knight of romance. It was quite a serious matter to this poor young man of fashion, before whose tantalised and tortured imagination some small imp of an attendant Cupid perpetually held up the sweetest fancy-portrait of that sweetest of fair faces. This visionary tormentor tugged at his very heart-strings as the white summer dust rose up in a cloud, marking his progress along the whole long line of the Richmond road. He was not going to slay the dragon, the enemy of his princess—that would have been easy work. He was, unfortunate Sir Langham! bound on a despairing enterprise to find out the house which was not a hall in Banburyshire, to make acquaintance, if possible, with the papa who was in the City, and to see “if it would do.”

He knew as little, in reality, about the life which Agnes and Marian lived at home, and about their father’s house and all its homely economics and quiet happiness, as if he had been a New Zealand chief instead of a guardsman—and galloped along as gravely as if he were going to a funeral, with, all the way, that wicked little imp of a Cupidon tugging at his heart.

Mrs Atheling was alone with her two babies, sighing a little, and full of weariness for the return of the girls; but Susan, better instructed this time, ushered the magnificent visitor into the best room. He stood gazing upon it in blank amazement; upon the haircloth sofa, and the folded leaf of the big old mahogany table in the corner; and the coloured glass candlesticks and flower-vases on the mantel-shelf. Mrs Atheling, who was a little fluttered, and the rosy boy, who clung to her skirts, and, spite of her audible entreaties in the passage, would not suffer her to enter without him, rather increased the consternation of Sir Langham. She was comely; she had a soft voice; a manner quite unpretending and simple, as good in its natural quietness as the highest breeding; yet Sir Langham, at sight of her, heaved from the depths of his capacious bosom a mighty sigh. It would not do; that little wretch of a Cupid, what a wrench it gave him as he tried to cast it out! If it had been a disorderly house or a slatternly mother, Sir Langham might have taken some faint comfort from the thought of rescuing his beautiful Marian from a family unworthy of her; but even to his hazy understanding it became instantly perceptible that this was a home not to be parted with, and a mother much beloved. Marian, a prince might have been glad to marry; but Sir Langham could not screw his fortitude to the pitch of marrying all that little, tidy, well-ordered house in Bellevue.

So he made a great bungle of his visit, and invented a story about being in town on business, and calling to carry the Miss Athelings’ messages for home; and made the best he could of so bad a business by a very expeditious retreat. Anything that he did say was about Agnes; and the mother, though a little puzzled and startled by the visit, was content to set it down to the popularity of her young genius. “I suppose he wanted to see what kind of people she belonged to,” said Mrs Atheling, with a smile of satisfaction, as she looked round her best room, and drew back with her into the other parlour the rosy little rogues who held on by her gown. She was perfectly correct in her supposition; but, alas! how far astray in the issue of the same.

Sir Langham went to his club—went to the opera—could not rest anywhere, and floundered about like a man bewitched. It would not do—it would not do; but the merciless little Cupid hung on by his heart-strings, and would not be off for all the biddings of the guardsman. He did not return to Richmond; he was heartily ashamed of himself—heartily sick of all the so-called pleasures with which he tried to cheat his disappointment. But Sir Langham had a certain kind of good sense though he was in love, so he applied himself to forgetting “the whole business,” and made up his mind finally that it would not do.

The sisters at the Willows, when they found that Sir Langham did not appear that night, and that no one knew anything of him, made their own conclusions on the subject, but did not say a word even to each other. Agnes sat apart silently indignant, and full of a sublime disdain. Marian, with, a deeper colour than usual on her cheek, was, on the contrary, a great deal more animated than was her wont, and attracted everybody’s admiration. Had anybody cared to think of the matter, it would have been the elder sister, and not the younger, whom the common imagination could have supposed to have lost a lover; but they went to rest very early that night, and spent no pleasant hour in the pleasant gossip which never failed between them. Sir Langham was not to be spoken of; and Agnes lay awake, wondering what Marian’s feelings were, long after Marian, forgetting all about her momentary pique and anger, was fast and sweet asleep.

CHAPTER X.
GOING HOME.

And now it had come to an end—all the novelty, the splendour, and the excitement of this first visit—and Agnes and Marian were about to go home. They were very much pleased, and yet a little disappointed—glad and eager to return to their mother, yet feeling it would have been something of a compliment to be asked to remain.

Rachel, who was a great deal more vehement and demonstrative than either of them, threw herself into their arms with violent tears. “I have been so happy since ever I knew you,” said Rachel—“so happy, I scarcely thought it right when I was not with Louis—and I think I could almost like to be your servant, and go home with you. I could do anything for you.”

“Hush!” said Agnes.

“No; it is quite true,” cried poor Rachel—“quite true. I should like to be your servant, and live with your mother. Oh! I ought to say,” she continued, raising herself with a little start and thrill of terror, “that if we were in a different position, and could meet people like equals, I should be so glad—so very glad to be friends.”

“But how odd Rachel would think it to live in Bellevue,” said Marian, coming to the rescue with a little happy ridicule, which did better than gravity, “and to see no one, even in the street, but the milkman and the greengrocer’s boy! for Rachel only thinks of the Willows and Winterbourne; she does not know in the least how things look in Bellevue.”

Rachel was beguiled into a laugh—a very unusual indulgence. “When you say that, I think it is a very little cottage like one of the cottages in the village; but you know that is all wrong. Oh, when do you think you will go to Winterbourne?”

“We will write and tell you,” said Agnes, “all about it, and how many are going; for I do not suppose Charlie will come, after all; and you will write to us—how often? Every other day?”

Rachel turned very red, then very pale, and looked at them with considerable dismay. “Write!” she said, with a falter in her voice; “I—I never thought of that—I never wrote to any one; I daresay I should do it very badly. Oh no; I shall be sure to find out whenever you come to the Old Wood Lodge.”

“But we shall hear nothing of you,” said Agnes. “Why should you not write to us? I am sure you do to your brother at home.”

“I do not,” said Rachel, once more drawing herself up, and with flashing eyes. “No one can write letters to us, who have no name.”

She was not to be moved from this point; she repeated the same words again and again, though with a very wistful and yielding look in her face. All for Louis! Her companions were obliged to give up the question, after all.

So there was another weeping, sobbing, vehement embrace, and Rachel disappeared without a word into the big bare room down stairs—disappeared to fall again, without a struggle, into her former forlorn life—to yield on her own account, and to struggle with fierce haughtiness for the credit of Louis—leaving the two sisters very thoughtful and compassionate, and full of a sudden eager generous impulse to run away with and take her home.

“Home—to mamma! It would be like heaven to Rachel,” said Agnes, in a little enthusiasm, with tears in her eyes.

“Ay, but it would not be like the Willows,” said the most practical Marian; and they both looked out with a smile and a sigh upon the beautiful sunshiny lawn, the river in an ecstasy of light and brightness, the little island with all its ruffled willow-leaves, and bethought themselves, finding some amusement in the contrast, of Laurel House, and Myrtle Cottage, and the close secluded walls of Bellevue.

Mrs Atheling had sent the Fly for her daughters—the old Islingtonian fly, with the old white horse, and the coachman with his shiny hat. This vehicle, which had once been a chariot of the gods, looked somewhat shabby as it stood in the broad sunshine before the door of the Willows, accustomed to the fairy coach of Mrs Edgerley. They laughed to themselves very quietly when they caught their first glimpse of it, yet in a momentary weakness were half ashamed; for even Agnes’s honest determination to let everybody know their true “rank in life” was not troubled by any fear lest this respectable vehicle should be taken for their own carriage now.

“Going, my love?” cried Mrs Edgerley; “the fatal hour—has it really come so soon?—You leave us all desolée, of course; how shall we exist to-day? And it was so good of you to come. Remember! we shall be dying till we have a new tale from the author of Hope Hazlewood. I long to see it. I know it will be charming, or it could not be yours.—And, my love, you look quite lovely—such roses! I think you quite the most exquisite little creature in the world. Remember me to your excellent mamma. Is your carriage waiting? Ah, I am miserable to part with you. Farewell—that dreadful word—farewell!”

Again that light perfumy touch waved over one blushing cheek and then another. Mrs Edgerley continued to wave her hand and make them pretty signals till they reached the door, whither they hastened as quickly and as quietly as possible, not desiring any escort; but few were the privileged people in Mrs Edgerley’s morning-room, and no one cared to do the girls so much honour. Outside the house their friend the gardener waited with two bouquets, so rare and beautiful that the timid recipients of the same, making him their humble thanks, scarcely knew how to express sufficient gratitude. Some one was arriving as they departed—some one who, making the discovery of their presence, stalked towards them, almost stumbling over Agnes, who happened to be nearest to him. “Going away?” said a dismayed voice at a considerable altitude. Mr Endicott’s thin head positively vibrated with mortification; he stretched it towards Marian, who stood before him smiling over her flowers, and fixed a look of solemn reproach upon her. “I am aware that beauty and youth flee often from the presence of one who looks upon life with a studious eye. This disappointment is not without its object. You are going away?”

“Yes,” said Marian, laughing, but with a little charitable compassion for her own particular victim, “and you are just arriving? It is very odd—you should have come yesterday.”

“Permit me,” said Mr Endicott moodily;—“no; I am satisfied. This experience is well—I am glad to know it. To us, Miss Atheling,” said the solemn Yankee, as he gave his valuable assistance to Agnes—“to us this play and sport of fortune is but the proper training. Our business is not to enjoy; we bear these disappointments for the world.”

He put them into their humble carriage, and bowed at them solemnly. Poor Mr Endicott! He did not blush, but grew green as he stood looking after the slow equipage ere he turned to the disenchanted Willows. Though he was about to visit people of distinction, the American young gentleman, being in love, did not care to enter upon this new scene of observation and note-making at this moment; so he turned into the road, and walked on in the white cloud of dust raised by the wheels of the fly. The dust itself had a sentiment in it, and belonged to Marian; and Mr Endicott began the painful manufacture of a sonnet, expressing this “experience,” on the very spot.

“But you ought not to laugh at him, Marian, even though other people do,” said Agnes, with superior virtue.

“Why not?” said the saucy beauty; “I laughed at Sir Langham—and I am sure he deserved it,” she added in an under-tone.

“Marian,” said Agnes, “I think—you have named him yourself, or I should not have done it—we had better not say anything about Sir Langham to mamma.”

“I do not care at all who names him,” said Marian, pouting; but she made no answer to the serious proposition: so it became tacitly agreed between them that nothing was to be said of the superb runaway lover when they got home.

CHAPTER XI.
HOME.

And now they were at home—the Fly dismissed, the trunks unfastened, and Agnes and Marian sitting with Mamma in the old parlour, as if they had never been away. Yes, they had been away—both of them had come in with a little start and exclamation to this familiar room, which somehow had shrunk out of its proper proportions, and looked strangely dull, dwarfed, and sombre. It was very strange; they had lived here for years, and knew every corner of every chair and every table—and they had only been gone a fortnight—yet what a difference in the well-known room!

“Somebody has been doing something to the house,” said Marian involuntarily; and Agnes paused in echoing the sentiment, as she caught a glimpse of a rising cloud on her mother’s comely brow.

“Indeed, children, I am grieved to see how soon you have learned to despise your home,” said Mrs Atheling; and the good mother reddened, and contracted her forehead. She had watched them with a little jealousy from their first entrance, and they, to tell the truth, had been visibly struck with the smallness and the dulness of the family rooms.

“Despise!” cried Marian, kneeling down, and leaning her beautiful head and her clasped arms upon her mother’s knee. “Despise!” said Agnes, putting her arm over Mrs Atheling’s shoulder from behind her chair; “oh, mamma, you ought to know better!—we who have learned that there are people in the world who have neither a mother nor a home!”

“Well, then, what is the matter?” said Mrs Atheling; and she began to smooth the beautiful falling hair, which came straying over her old black silk lap, like Danae’s shower of gold.

“Nothing at all—only the room is a little smaller, and the carpet a little older than it used to be,” said Agnes; “but, mamma, because we notice that, you do not think surely that we are less glad to be at home.”

“Well, my dears,” said Mrs Atheling, still a little piqued; “your great friend, when he called the other day, did not seem to think there was anything amiss about the house.”

“Our great friend!” The girls looked at each other with dismay—who could it be?

“His card is on the mantelpiece,” said Mrs Atheling. “He had not very much to say, but he seemed a pleasant young man—Sir Something—Sir Langham; but, indeed, my dear, though, of course, I was pleased to see him, I am not at all sure how far such acquaintances are proper for you.”

“He was scarcely my acquaintance, mamma,” said Agnes, sorrowfully looking down from behind her mother’s chair upon Marian, who had hid her face in Mrs Atheling’s lap, and made no sign.

“For our rank in life is so different,” pursued the prudent mother; “and even though I might have some natural ambition for you, I do not think, Agnes, that it would really be wishing you well to wish that you should form connections so far out of the sphere of your own family as that.”

“Mamma, it was not me,” said Agnes again, softly and under her breath.

“It was no one!” cried Marian, rising up hastily, and suddenly seizing and clipping into an ornamental cross Sir Langham’s card, which was upon the mantelpiece. “See, Agnes, it will do to wind silk upon; and nobody cares the least in the world for Sir Langham. Mamma, he used to be like Harry Oswald—that is all—and we were very glad when he went away from the Willows, both Agnes and I.”

At this statement, made as it was with a blush and a little confusion, Mrs Atheling herself reddened slightly, and instantly left the subject. It was easy enough to warn her children of the evils of a possible connection with people of superior condition; but when such a thing fluttered really and visibly upon the verge of her horizon, Mrs Atheling was struck dumb. To see her pretty Marian a lady—a baronet’s wife—the bride of that superb Sir Langham—it was not in the nature of mortal mother to hear without emotion of such an extraordinary possibility. The ambitious imagination kindled at once in the heart of Mrs Atheling: she held her peace.

And the girls, to tell the truth, were very considerably excited about this visit of Sir Langham’s. What did it mean? After a little time they strayed into the best room, and stood together looking at it with feelings by no means satisfactory. The family parlour was the family parlour, and, in spite of all that it lacked, possessed something of home and kindness which was not to be found in all the luxurious apartments of the Willows. But, alas! there was nothing but meagre gentility, blank good order, and unloveliness, in this sacred and reserved apartment, where Bell and Beau never threw the charm of their childhood, nor Mrs Atheling dispersed the kindly clippings of her work-basket. The girls consulted each other with dismayed looks—even Rachel, if she came, could not stand against the chill of this grim parlour. Marian pulled the poor haircloth sofa into another position, and altered with impatience the stiff mahogany chairs. They scarcely liked to say to each other how entirely changed was their ideal, or how they shrank from the melancholy state of the best room. “Sir Langham was here, Agnes,” said Marian; and within her own mind the young beauty almost added, “No wonder he ran away!”

“It is home—it is our own house,” said Agnes, getting up for the occasion a little pride.

Marian shrugged her pretty shoulders. “But Susan had better bring any one who calls into the other room.”

Yes, the other room, when they returned to it, had brightened again marvellously. Mrs Atheling had put on her new gown, and had a pink ribbon in her cap. As she sat by the window with her work-basket, she was pleasanter to look at than a dozen pictures; and the sweetest Raphael in the world was not so sweet as these two little lovely fairies playing upon the faded old rug at the feet of Mamma. Not all the luxuries and all the prettinesses of Mrs Edgerley’s drawingrooms, not even the river lying in the sunshine, and the ruffled silvery willows drooping round their little island, were a fit balance to this dearest little group, the mother and the children, who made beautiful beyond all telling the sombre face of home.

CHAPTER XII.
A NEW ERA.

It came to be rather an exciting business to Agnes and Marian making their report of what had happened at the Willows—for it was difficult to distract Mamma’s attention from Sir Langham, and Papa was almost angrily interested in everything which touched upon Lord Winterbourne. Rachel, of course, was a very prominent figure in their picture; but Mrs Atheling was still extremely doubtful, and questioned much whether it was proper to permit such an acquaintance to her daughters. She was very particular in her inquiries concerning this poor girl—much approved of Rachel’s consciousness of her own equivocal position—thought it “a very proper feeling,” and received evidence with some solemnity as to her “manners” and “principles.” The girls described their friend according to the best of their ability; but as neither of them had any great insight into character, we will not pretend to say that their audience were greatly enlightened,—and extremely doubtful was the mind of Mrs Atheling. “My dear, I might be very sorry for her, but it would not be proper for me to forget you in my sympathy for her,” said Mamma, gravely and with dignity. Like so many tender-hearted mothers, Mrs Atheling took great credit to herself for an imaginary severity, and made up her mind that she was proof to the assaults of pity—she who at the bottom was the most credulous of all, when she came to hear a story of distress.

And Papa, who had been moved at once to forbid their acquaintance with children of Lord Winterbourne’s, changed his mind, and became very much interested when he heard of Rachel’s horror of the supposed relationship. When they came to this part of the story, Mrs Atheling was scandalised, but Papa was full of pity. He said “Poor child!” softly, and with emotion; while Charlie pricked his big ear to listen, though no one was favoured with the sentiments on this subject of the big boy.

“And about the Rector and the old lady who lives at Abingford—papa, why did you never tell us about these people?” said Marian; “for I am sure you must know very well who Aunt Bridget’s neighbours were in the Old Wood Lodge.”

“I know nothing about the Riverses,” said Papa hastily—and Mr Atheling himself, sober-minded man though he was, grew red with an angry glow—“there was a time when I hated the name,” he added in an impetuous and rapid undertone, and then he looked up as though he was perfectly aware of the restraining look of caution which his wife immediately turned upon him.

“Such neighbours as are proper for us you will find out when we get there,” said Mrs Atheling quietly. “Papa has not been at Winterbourne for twenty years, and we have had too many things to think of since then to remember people whom we scarcely knew.”

“Then, I suppose, since papa hated the name once, and Rachel hates it now, they must be a very wicked family,” said Marian; “but I hope the Rector is not very bad, for Agnes’s sake.”

This little piece of malice called for instant explanation, and Marian was very peremptorily checked by father and mother. “A girl may say a foolish thing to other girls,” said Mamma, “and I am afraid this Rachel, poor thing, must have been very badly brought up; but you ought to know better than to repeat a piece of nonsense like that.”

“When are we to go, mamma?” said Agnes, coming in to cover the blush, half of shame and half of displeasure, with which Marian submitted to this reproof; “it is August now, and soon it will be autumn instead of summer: we shall be going out of town when all the fashionable people go—but I would rather it was May.”

“It cannot be May this year,” said Mrs Atheling, involuntarily brightening; “but papa is to take a holiday—three weeks; my dears, I do not think I have been so pleased at anything since Bell and Beau.”

Since Bell and Beau! what an era that was! And this, too, was a new beginning, perhaps more momentous, though not such a sweet and great revulsion, out of the darkness into the light. Mamma’s manner of dating her joys cast them all back into thought and quietness; and Agnes’s heart beat high with a secret and mercenary pleasure, exulting like a miser over her hundred and fifty pounds. At this moment, and at many another moment when the young author had clean forgotten Hope Hazlewood, the thought came upon her with positive delight of the little hoard in Papa’s hands, safely laid up in the office, one whole hundred pounds’ worth of family good and gladness still; for she had not the same elevated regard for art as her sister’s American admirer—she was not, by any means, in her own estimation, or in anybody else’s, a representative woman; and Agnes, who began already to think rather meanly of Hope Hazlewood, and press on with the impatience of genius towards a higher excellence, had the greatest satisfaction possible in the earnings of her gentle craft—was it an ignoble delight?

The next morning the two girls, with prudence and caution, began an attack upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer touching the best room. At first Mrs Atheling was entirely horrified at their extravagant ideas. The best room!—what could be desired that was not already attained in that most respectable apartment? but the young rebels held their ground. Mamma put down her work upon her knee, and listened to them quietly. It was not a good sign—she made no interruption as they spoke of mirrors and curtains, carpets and ottomans, couches and easy-chairs: she heard them all to the end with unexampled patience—she only said, “My dears, when you are done I will tell you what I have to say.”

What she did say was conclusive upon the subject, though it was met by many remonstrances. “We are going to the Old Wood Lodge,” said Mrs Atheling, “and I promise you you shall go into Oxford when we are there, and get some things to make old Aunt Bridget’s parlour look a little more like yourselves: but even a hundred pounds, though it is quite a little fortune, will not last for ever—and to furnish two rooms! My dears, you do not know any better; but, of course, it is quite ridiculous, and cannot be done.”

Thus ended at present their plan for making a little drawing-room out of the best room; for Mamma’s judgment, though it was decisive, was reasonable, and they could make no stand against it. They did all they could do under the circumstances; for the first time, and with compunction, they secretly instructed Susan against the long-standing general order of the head of the house. Strangers were no longer to be ushered into the sacred stranger’s apartment; but before Susan had any chance of obeying these schismatical orders, Agnes and Marian themselves were falling into their old familiarity with the old walls and the sombre furniture, and were no longer disposed to criticise, especially as all their minds and all their endeavours were at present set upon the family holiday—the conjoint household visit to the country—the glorious prospect of taking possession of the Old Wood Lodge.

In Bellevue, Charlie alone was to be left behind—Charlie, who had not been long enough in Mr Foggo’s office to ask for a holiday, and who did not want one very much, if truth must be told; for neither early hours nor late hours told upon the iron constitution of the big boy. When they pitied him who must stay behind, the young gentleman said, “Stuff! Susan, I suppose, can make my coffee as well as any of you,” said Charlie; but nobody was offended that he limited the advantages of their society to coffee-making; and even Mrs Atheling, in spite of her motherly anxieties, left her house and her son with comfortable confidence. Harm might happen to the house, Susan being in it, who was by no means so careful as she ought to be of her fire and her candle; but nobody feared any harm to the heir and hope of the house.

CHAPTER XIII.
THE OLD WOOD LODGE.

And it was late in August, a sultry day, oppressive and thundery, when this little family of travellers made their first entry into the Old Wood Lodge.

It stood upon the verge of a wood, and the side of a hill, looking down into what was not so much a valley as a low amphitheatre, watered by a maze of rivers, and centred in a famous and wonderful old town. The trees behind the little house had burning spots of autumn colour here and there among the masses of green—colour which scarcely bore its due weight and distinction in the tremulous pale atmosphere which waited for the storm; and the leaves cowered and shivered together, and one terrified bird flew wildly in among them, seeking refuge. Under the shadow of three trees stood the low house of two stories, half stone and half timber, with one quaint projecting window in the roof, and a luxuriant little garden round it. But it was impossible to pause, as the new proprietors intended to have done, to note all the external features of their little inheritance. They hurried in, eager to be under shelter before the thunder; and as Mrs Atheling, somewhat timid of it, hurried over the threshold, the first big drops fell heavily among the late roses which covered the front of the house. They were all awed by the coming storm; and they were not acquainted any of them with the louder crash and fiercer blaze of a thunderstorm in the country. They came hastily into Miss Bridget’s little parlour, scarcely seeing what like it was, as the ominous still darkness gathered in the sky, and sat down, very silently, in corners, all except Mr Atheling, whose duty it was to be courageous, and who was neither so timid as his wife, nor so sensitive as his daughters. Then came the storm in earnest—wild lightning rending the black sky in sheets and streams of flames—fearful cannonades of thunder, nature’s grand forces besieging some rebellious city in the skies. Then gleams of light shone wild and ghastly in all the pallid rivers, and lighted up with an eerie illumination the spires and pinnacles of the picturesque old town; and the succeeding darkness pressed down like a positive weight upon the Old Wood Lodge and its new inmates, who scarcely perceived yet the old furniture of the old sitting-room, or the trim old maid of Miss Bridget Atheling curtsying at the door.

“A strange welcome!” said Papa, hastily retreating from the window, where he had just been met and half blinded by a sudden flash; and Mamma gathered her babies under her wings, and called to the girls to come closer to her, in that one safe corner which was neither near the window, the fireplace, nor the door.

Yes, it was a strange welcome—and the mind of Agnes, imaginative and rapid, threw an eager glance into the future out of that corner of safety and darkness. A thunderstorm, a convulsion of nature! was there any fitness in this beginning? They were as innocent a household as ever came into a countryside; but who could tell what should happen to them there?

Some one else seemed to share the natural thought. “I wonder, mamma, if this is all for us,” whispered Marian, half frightened, half jesting. “Are we to make a great revolution in Winterbourne? It looks like it, to see this storm.”

But Mrs Atheling, who thought it profane to show any levity during a thunderstorm, checked her pretty daughter with a peremptory “Hush, child!” and drew her babies closer into her arms. Mrs Atheling’s thoughts had no leisure to stray to Winterbourne; save for Charlie—and it was not to be supposed that this same thunder threatened Bellevue—all her anxieties were here.

But as the din out of doors calmed down, and even as the girls became accustomed to it, and were able to share in Papa’s calculations as to the gradual retreat of the thunder as it rolled farther and farther away, they began to find out and notice the room within which they had crowded. It had only one window, and was somewhat dark, the small panes being over-hung and half obscured by a wild forest of clematis, and sundry stray branches, still bristling with buds, of that pale monthly rose with evergreen leaves, which covered half the front of the house. The fireplace had a rather fantastic grate of clear steel, with bright brass ornaments, so clear and so resplendent as it only could be made by the labour of years, and was filled, instead of a fire, with soft green moss, daintily ornamented with the yellow everlasting flowers. Hannah did not know that these were immortelles, and consecrated to the memory of the dead. It was only her rural and old-maidenly fashion of decoration, for the same little rustling posies, dry and unfading, were in the little flower-glasses on the high mantel-shelf, before the little old dark-complexioned mirror, with little black-and-white transparencies set in the slender gilding of its frame, which reflected nothing but a slope of the roof, and one dark portrait hanging as high up as itself upon the opposite wall. It put the room oddly out of proportion, this mirror, attracting the eye to its high strip of light, and deluding the unwary to many a stumble; and Agnes already sat fixedly looking at it, and at the dark and wrinkled portrait reflected from the other wall.

Before the fireplace, where there was no fire, stood a large old-fashioned easy-chair, with no one in it. Are you very sure there is no one in it?—for Papa himself has a certain awe of that strangely-placed seat, which seems to have stood before that same fireplace for many a year. In the twilight, Agnes, if you were alone—you, who of all the family are most inclined to a little visionary superstition, you would find it very hard to keep from trembling, or to persuade yourself that Miss Bridget was not there, where she had spent half a lifetime, sitting in that heavy old easy-chair.

The carpet was a faded but rich and soft old Turkey carpet, the furniture was slender and spider-legged, made of old bright mahogany, as black and as polished as ebony. There was an old cabinet in one corner, with brass rings and ornaments; and in another an old musical instrument, of which the girls were not learned enough to know the precise species, though it belonged to the genus piano. The one small square table in the middle of the room was covered with a table-cover, richly embroidered, but the silk was faded, and the bits of gold were black and dull; and there were other little tables, round and square, with spiral legs and a tripod of feet, one holding a china jar, one a big book, and one a case of stuffed birds. On the whole, the room had somewhat the look of a rather refined and very prim old lady. The things in it were all of a delicate kind and antique fashion. It was not in the slightest degree like these fair and fresh young girls, but on the whole it was a place of which people like those, with a wholesome love of ancestry, had very good occasion to be proud.

And at the door stood Hannah, in a black gown and great white apron, smoothing down the same with her hands, and bobbing a kindly curtsy. Hannah’s eyes were running over with delight and anxiety to get at Bell and Beau. She passed over all the rest of the family to yearn over the little ones. “Eh, bless us!” cried Hannah, as, the thunder over, Mrs Atheling began to bestir herself—“children in the house!” It was something almost too ecstatic for her elderly imagination. She volunteered to carry them both up-stairs with the most eager attention. “I ain’t so much used to childer,” said Hannah, “but, bless ye, ma’am, I love ’um all the same;” and with an instinctive knowledge of this love, Beau condescended to grasp Hannah’s spotless white apron, and Bell to mount into her arms. Then the whole family procession went up-stairs to look at the bedrooms—the voices of the girls and the sweet chorus of the babies making the strangest echoes in the lonely house. Hannah acknowledged afterwards, that, half with grief for Miss Bridget, and half for joy of this new life beginning, it would have been a great relief to her to sit down upon the attic stairs and have “a good cry.”

CHAPTER XIV.
WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

The upper floor of the Old Wood Lodge consisted of three rooms; one as large as the parlour down stairs, one smaller, and one, looking to the back, very small indeed. The little one was a lumber-room, and quite unfurnished; the other two were in perfect accordance with the sitting-room. The best bedroom contained a bed of state, with very slender fluted pillars of the same black ebony-like wood, lifting on high a solemn canopy of that ponderous substance called moreen, and still to be found in country inns and seaside lodgings—the colour dark green, with a binding of faded violet. Hangings of the same darkened the low broad lattice window, and chairs of the same were ranged like ghosts along the wall. It was rather a funereal apartment, and the eager investigators were somewhat relieved to find an old-fashioned “tent,” with hangings of old chintz, gay with gigantic flowers, in the next room. But the windows!—the broad plain lying low down at their feet, twinkling to the first faint sun-ray which ventured out after the storm—the cluster of spires and towers over which the light brightened and strengthened, striking bold upon the heavy dome which gave a ponderous central point to the landscape, and splintering into a million rays from the pinnacles of Magdalen and St Mary’s noble spire, all wet and gleaming with the thunder rain. What a scene it was!—how the passing light kindled all the wan waters, and singled out, for a momentary illumination, one after another of the lesser landmarks of that world unknown. These gazers were not skilled to distinguish between Gothic sham and Gothic real, nor knew much of the distinguishing differences of noble and ignoble architecture. After all, at this distance, it did not much matter—for one by one, as the sunshine found them out, they rose up from the gleaming mist, picturesque and various, like the fairy towers and distant splendours of a morning dream.

“I told you it was pretty, Agnes,” said Mr Atheling, who felt himself the exhibitor of the whole scene, and looked on with delight at the success of his private view. Papa, who was to the manner born, felt himself applauded in the admiration of his daughters, and carried Beau upon his shoulder down the creaking narrow staircase, with a certain pride and exultation, calling the reluctant girls to follow him. For lo! upon Miss Bridget’s centre table was laid out “such a tea!” as Hannah in all her remembrance had never produced before. Fresh home-made cakes, fresh little pats of butter from the nearest farm—cream! and to crown all, a great china dish full of the last of the strawberries, blushing behind their fresh wet leaves. Hannah, when she had lingered as long as her punctilious good-breeding would permit, and long enough to be very wrathful with Mrs Atheling for intercepting a shower of strawberries from the plates of Bell and Beau, retired to her kitchen slowly, and drawing a chair before the fire, though the evening still was sultry, threw her white apron over her head, and had her deferred and relieving “cry.” “Bless you, I’ll love ’um all,” said Hannah, with a succession of sobs, addressing either herself or some unseen familiar, with whom she was in the habit of holding long conversations. “But it ain’t Miss Bridget—that’s the truth!”

The ground was wet, the trees were damp, everything had been deluged with the shower of the thunderstorm, and Mrs Atheling did not at all think it prudent that her daughters should go out, though she yielded to them. They went first through the fertile garden, where Marian thought “everything” grew—but were obliged to pause in their researches and somewhat ignorant guesses what everything was, by the unknown charm of that sweet rural atmosphere “after the rain.” Though it was very near sunset, the birds were all a-twitter in the neighbouring trees, and everywhere around them rose such a breath of fragrance—open-air fragrance, fresh and cool and sweet, as different from the incense of Mrs Edgerley’s conservatory as it was from anything in Bellevue. Running waters trickled somewhere out of sight—it was only the “running of the paths after rain;” and yonder, like a queen, sitting low in a sweet humility, was the silent town, with all its crowning towers. The sunshine, which still lingered on Hannah’s projecting window in the roof, had left Oxford half an hour ago—and down over the black dome, the heaven-y-piercing spire and lofty cupola, came soft and grey the shadow of the night.

But behind them, through a thick network of foliage, there were gleams and sparkles of gold, touching tenderly some favourite leaves with a green like the green of spring, and throwing the rest into a shadowy blackness against the half-smothered light. Marian ran into the house to call Hannah, begging her to guide them up into the wood. Agnes, less curious, stood with her hand upon the gate, looking down over this wonderful valley, and wondering if she had not seen it some time in a dream.

“Bless you, miss, if it was to the world’s end!” cried Hannah; “but it ain’t fit for walking, no more nor a desert; the roads is woeful by Badgeley; look you here!—nought in this wide world but mud and clay.”

Marian looked in dismay at the muddy road. “It will not be dry for a week,” said the disappointed beauty; “but, Hannah, come here, now that I have got you out, and tell us what every place is—Agnes, here’s Hannah—and, if you please, which is the village, and which is the Hall, and where is the Old Wood House?”

“Do you see them white chimneys—and smokes?” said Hannah; “they’re a-cooking their dinner just, though tea-time’s past—that’s the Rector’s. But, bless your heart, you ain’t likely to see the Hall from here. There’s all the park and all the trees atween us and my lord’s.”

“Do the people like him, Hannah?” asked Agnes abruptly, thinking of her friend.

Hannah paused with a look of alarm. “The people—don’t mind nothink about him,” said Hannah slowly. “Bless us, miss, you gave me such a turn!”

Agnes looked curiously in the old woman’s face, to see what the occasion of this “turn” might be. Marian, paying no such attention, leaned over the low mossy gate, looking in the direction of the Old Wood House. They were quite disposed to enjoy the freedom of the “country,” and were neither shawled nor bonneted, though the fresh dewy air began to feel the chill of night. Marian leaned out over the gate, with her little hand thrust up under her hair, looking into the distance with her beautiful smiling eyes. The road which passed this gate was a grassy and almost terraced path, used by very few people, and disappearing abruptly in an angle just after it had passed the Lodge. Suddenly emerging from this angle, with a step which fell noiselessly on the wet grass, meeting the startled gaze of Marian in an instantaneous and ghostlike appearance, came forth what she could see only as, against the light, the figure of a man hastening towards the high-road. He also seemed to start as he perceived the young unknown figures in the garden, but his course was too rapid to permit any interchange of curiosity. Marian did not think he looked at her at all as she withdrew hastily from the gate, and he certainly did not pause an instant in his rapid walk; but as he passed he lifted his hat—a singular gesture of courtesy, addressed to no one, like the salutation of a young king—and disappeared in another moment as suddenly as he came. Agnes, attracted by her sister’s low unconscious exclamation, saw him as well as Marian—and saw him as little—for neither knew anything at all of his appearance, save so far as a vague idea of height, rapidity—and the noble small head, for an instant uncovered, impressed their imagination. Both paused with a breathless impulse of respect, and a slight apprehensiveness, till they were sure he must be out of hearing, and then both turned to Hannah, standing in the shadow and the twilight, and growing gradually indistinct all but her white apron, with one unanimous exclamation, “Who is that?”

Hannah smoothed down her apron once more, and made another bob of a curtsy, apparently intended for the stranger. “Miss,” said Hannah, gravely, “that’s Mr Louis—bless his heart!”

Then the old woman turned and went in, leaving the girls by themselves in the garden. They were a little timid of the great calm and silence; they almost fancied they were “by themselves,”—not in the garden only, but in this whole apparent noiseless world.

CHAPTER XV.
THE PARLOUR.

And with an excitement which they could not control, the two girls hastened in to the Old Lodge, and to Miss Bridget’s dim parlour, where the two candles shed their faint summer-evening light over Mr Atheling reading an old newspaper, and Mamma reclining in the great old easy-chair. The abstracted mirror, as loftily withdrawn from common life as Mr Endicott, refused to give any reflection of these good people sitting far below in their middle-aged and respectable quietness, but owned a momentary vision of Agnes and Marian, as they came in with a little haste and eagerness at the half-open door.

But, after all, to be very much excited, to hasten in to tell one’s father and mother, with the heart beating faster than usual against one’s breast, and to have one’s story calmly received with an “Indeed, my dear!” is rather damping to youthful enthusiasm; and really, to tell the truth, there was nothing at all extraordinary in the fact of Louis passing by a door so near the great house which was his own distasteful home. It was not at all a marvellous circumstance; and as for his salutation, though that was remarkable, and caught their imagination, Marian whispered that she had no doubt it was Louis’s “way.”

They began, accordingly, to look at the slender row of books in one small open shelf above the little cabinet. The books were in old rich bindings, and were of a kind of reading quite unknown to Agnes and Marian. There were two (odd) volumes of the Spectator, Rasselas, the Poems of Shenstone, the Sermons of Blair; besides these, a French copy of Thomas-à-Kempis, the Holy Living and Dying of Jeremy Taylor, and one of the quaint little books of Sir Thomas Browne. Thrust in hastily beside these ancient and well-attired volumes were two which looked surreptitious, and which were consequently examined with the greatest eagerness. One turned out, somewhat disappointingly, to be a volume of Italian exercises, an old, old school-book, inscribed, in a small, pretty, but somewhat faltering feminine handwriting—handwriting of the last century—with the name of Anastasia Rivers, with a B. A. beneath, which doubtless stood for Bridget Atheling, though it seemed to imply, with a kindly sort of blundering comicality sad enough now, that Anastasia Rivers, though she was no great hand at her exercises, had taken a degree. The other volume was of more immediate interest. It was one of those good and exemplary novels, ameliorated Pamelas, which virtuous old ladies were wont to put into the hands of virtuous young ones, and which was calculated to “instruct as well as to amuse” the unfortunate mind of youth. Marian seized upon this Fatherless Fanny with an instant appropriation, and in ten minutes was deep in its endless perplexities. Agnes, who would have been very glad of the novel, languidly took down the Spectator instead. Yes, we are obliged to confess—languidly; for, with an excited mind upon a lovely summer night, with all the stars shining without, and only two pale candles within, and Mamma visibly dropping to sleep in the easy-chair—who, we demand, would not prefer, even to Steele and Addison, the mazy mysteries of the Minerva Press?

And Agnes did not get on with her reading; she saw visibly before her eyes Marian skimming with an eager interest the pages of her novel. She heard Papa rustling his newspaper, watched the faint flicker of the candles, and was aware of the very gentle nod by which Mamma gave evidence of the condition of her thoughts. Agnes’s imagination, never averse to wandering, strayed off into speculations concerning the old lady and her old pupil, and all the life, unknown and unrecorded, which had happed within these quiet walls. Altogether it was somewhat hard to understand the connection between the Athelings and the Riverses—whether some secret of family history lay involved in it, or if it was only the familiar bond formed a generation ago between teacher and child. And this Louis!—his sudden appearance and disappearance—his princely recognition as of new subjects. Agnes made nothing whatever of her Spectator—her mind was possessed and restless—and by-and-by, curious, impatient, and a little excited, she left the room with an idea of hastening up-stairs to the chamber window, and looking out upon the night. But the door of the kitchen stood invitingly open, and Hannah, who had been waiting, slightly expectant of some visit, was to be seen within, rising up hastily with old-fashioned respect and a little wistfulness. Agnes, though she was a young lady of literary tastes, and liked to look out upon moon and stars with the vague sentiment of youth, had, notwithstanding, a wholesome relish for gossip, and was more pleased with talk of other people than we are disposed to confess; so she had small hesitation in changing her course and joining Hannah—that homely Hannah bobbing her odd little curtsy, and smoothing down her bright white apron, in the full glow of the kitchen-fire.

The kitchen was indeed the only really bright room in the Old Wood Lodge, having one strip of carpet only on its white and sanded floor, a large deal table, white and spotless, and wooden chairs hard and clear as Hannah’s own toil-worn but most kindly hands. There was an old-fashioned settle by the chimney corner, a small bit of looking-glass hanging up by the window, and gleams of ruddy copper, and homely covers of white metal, polished as bright as silver, ornamenting the walls. Hannah wiped a chair which needed no wiping, and set it directly in front of the fire for “Miss,” but would not on any account be so “unmannerly” as to sit down herself in the young lady’s presence. Agnes wisely contented herself with leaning on the chair, and smiled with a little embarrassment at Hannah’s courtesy; it was not at all disagreeable, but it was somewhat different from Susan at home.

“I’ve been looking at ’um, miss,” said Hannah, “sleeping like angels; there ain’t no difference that I can see; they look, as nigh as can be, both of an age.”

“They are twins,” said Agnes, finding out, with a smile, that Hannah’s thoughts were taken up, not about Louis and Rachel, but Bell and Beau.

At this information Hannah brightened into positive delight. “Childer’s ne’er been in this house,” said Hannah, “till this day; and twins is a double blessing. There ain’t no more, miss? But bless us all, the time between them darlins and you!”

“We have one brother, besides—and a great many little brothers and sisters in heaven,” said Agnes, growing very grave, as they all did when they spoke of the dead.

Hannah drew closer with a sympathetic curiosity. “If that ain’t a heart-break, there’s none in this world,” said Hannah. “Bless their dear hearts, it’s best for them. Was it a fever then, miss, or a catching sickness? Dear, dear, it’s all one, when they’re gone, what it was.”

“Hannah, you must never speak of it to mamma,” said Agnes; “we used to be so sad—so sad! till God sent Bell and Beau. Do you know Miss Rachel at the Hall? her brother and she are twins too.”

“Yes, miss,” said Hannah, with a slight curtsy, and becoming at once very laconic.

“And we know her,” said Agnes, a little confused by the old woman’s sudden quietness. “I suppose that was her brother who passed to-night.”

“Ay, poor lad!” Hannah’s heart seemed once more a little moved. “They say miss is to be a play-actress, and I can’t abide her for giving in to it; but Mr Louis, bless him! he ought to be a king.”

“You like him, then?” asked Agnes eagerly.

“Ay, poor boy!” Hannah went away hastily to the table, where, in a china basin, in their cool crisp green, lay the homely salads of the garden, about to be arranged for supper. A tray covered with a snow-white cloth, and a small pile of eggs, waited in hospitable preparation for the same meal. Hannah, who had been so long in possession, felt like a humble mistress of the house, exercising the utmost bounties of her hospitality towards her new guests. “Least said’s best about them, dear,” said Hannah, growing more familiar as she grew a little excited—“but, Lord bless us, it’s enough to craze a poor body to see the likes of him, with such a spirit, kept out o’ his rights.”

“What are his rights, Hannah?” cried Agnes, with new and anxious interest: this threw quite a new light upon the subject.

Hannah turned round a little perplexed. “Tell the truth, I dun know no more nor a baby,” said Hannah; “but Miss Bridget, she was well acquaint in all the ways of them, and she ever upheld, when his name was named, that my lord kep’ him out of his rights.”

“And what did he say?” asked Agnes.

“Nay, child,” said the old woman, “it ain’t no business of mine to tell tales; and Miss Bridget had more sense nor all the men of larning I ever heard tell of. She knew better than to put wickedness into his mind. He’s a handsome lad and a kind, is Mr Louis; but I wouldn’t be my lord, no, not for all Banburyshire, if I’d done that boy a wrong.”

“Then, do you think Lord Winterbourne has not done him a wrong?” said Agnes, thoroughly bewildered.

Hannah turned round upon her suddenly, with a handful of herbs and a knife in her other hand. “Miss, he’s an unlawful child!” said Hannah, with the most melodramatic effectiveness. Agnes involuntarily drew back a step, and felt the blood rush to her face. When she had delivered herself of this startling whisper, Hannah returned to her homely occupation, talking in an under-tone all the while.

“Ay, poor lad, there’s none can mend that,” said Hannah; “he’s kep’ out of his rights, and never a man can help him. If it ain’t enough to put him wild, I dun know.”

“And are you quite sure of that? Does everybody think him a son of Lord Winterbourne’s?” said Agnes.

“Well, miss, my lord’s not like to own to it—to shame hisself,” said Hannah; “but they’re none so full of charity at the Hall as to bother with other folkses children. My lord’s kep’ him since they were babies, and sent the lawyer hisself to fetch him when Mr Louis ran away. Bless you, no; there ain’t no doubt about it. Whose son else could he be?”

“But if that was true, he would have no rights. And what did Miss Bridget mean by rights?” asked Agnes, in a very low tone, blushing, and half ashamed to speak of such a subject at all.

Hannah, however, who did not share in all the opinions of respectability, but had a leaning rather, in the servant view of the question, to the pariah of the great old house, took up somewhat sharply this unguarded opinion. “Miss,” said Hannah, “you’ll not tell me that there ain’t no rights belonging Mr Louis. The queen on the throne would be glad of the likes of him for a prince and an heir; and Miss Bridget was well acquaint in all the ways of the Riverses, and was as fine to hear as a printed book: for the matter of that,” added Hannah, solemnly, “Miss Taesie, though she would not go through the park-gates to save her life, had a leaning to Mr Louis too.”

“And who is Miss Taesie?” said Agnes.

“Miss,” said Hannah, in a very grave and reproving tone, “you’re little acquaint with our ways; it ain’t my business to go into stories—you ask your papa.”

“So I will, Hannah; but who is Miss Taesie?” asked Agnes again, with a smile.

Hannah answered only by placing her salad on the tray, and carrying it solemnly to the parlour. Amused and interested, Agnes stood by the kitchen fireside thinking over what she had heard, and smiling as she mused; for Miss Taesie, no doubt, was the Honourable Anastasia Rivers, beneath whose name, in the old exercise-book, stood that odd B. A.

CHAPTER XVI.
WINTERBOURNE.

The next day the family walked forth in a body, to make acquaintance with the “new neighbourhood.” There was Papa and Mamma first of all, Mrs Atheling extremely well dressed, and in all the cheerful excitement of an unaccustomed holiday; and then came Agnes and Marian, pleased and curious—and, wild with delight, little Bell and Beau. Hannah, who was very near as much delighted as the children, stood at the door looking after them as they turned the angle of the grassy path. When they were quite out of sight, Hannah returned to her kitchen with a brisk step, to compound the most delicious of possible puddings for their early dinner. It was worth while now to exercise those half-forgotten gifts of cookery which had been lost upon Miss Bridget; and when everything was ready, Hannah, instead of her black ribbon, put new white bows in her cap. At sight of the young people, and, above all, the children, and in the strange delightful bustle of “a full house,” hard-featured Hannah, kind and homely, renewed her youth.