The English Library
No. 77
THE RAILWAY MAN AND
HIS CHILDREN
By Mrs. OLIPHANT
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUMES BY THE SAME AUTHOR
PUBLISHED IN
The English Library
(In the Press)
The Marriage of Elinor 2 Vols.

Copyright Edition

The Railway Man
and his Children

BY
Mrs. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF
“KIRSTEEN,” “WITHIN THE PRECINCTS,” “AT HIS GATES,” ETC.
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I.
LEIPZIG
HEINEMANN AND BALESTIER
LIMITED, LONDON
1892

THE RAILWAY MAN
AND HIS CHILDREN

CHAPTER I.

The news that Miss Ferrars was going to marry Mr. Rowland the engineer, ran through the station like wildfire, producing a commotion and excitement which had rarely been equalled since the time of the Mutiny. Miss Ferrars! and Mr. Rowland!—it was repeated in every tone of wonder and astonishment, with as many audible notes of admiration and interrogation as would fill a whole page. “Impossible!” people said, “I don’t believe it for a moment”—“You don’t mean to say——” But when Mrs. Stanhope, who was Miss Ferrars’ friend, with whom she had been living, answered calmly that this was indeed what she meant to say, and that she was not very sure whether she was most sorry or glad—most pleased to think that her friend was thus comfortably established in life, or sorry that she was perhaps stepping a little out of her sphere—there remained nothing for her visitors but a universal gape of amazement, a murmur of deprecation or regret—“Oh, poor Miss Ferrars!” the ladies cried. “A lady, of such a good family, and marrying a man who was certainly not a gentleman.” “But he is a very good fellow,” the gentlemen said; and one or two of the mothers who were conscious in their hearts, though they did not say anything of the fact, that had he proposed for Edie or Ethel, they would have pushed his claims as far as legitimate pressure could go, held their tongues or said little, with a feeling that they had themselves escaped the criticism which was now so freely poured forth. They were aware indeed that it would have come upon them more hotly, for it was they who would have been blamed in the case of Ethel or Edie, whereas Miss Femurs was responsible for herself. But the one of them who would have been most guilty, and who indeed had thought a good deal about Mr. Rowland, and considered the question very closely whether she ought not as a matter of duty to endeavour to interest him in her Ethel, whose name was Dorothy, took up the matter most hotly, and declared that she could not imagine how a lady could make up her mind to such a descent “Not a gentleman: why, he does not even pretend to be a gentleman,” said the lady, as if the pretention would have been something in his favour. “He is not a man even of any education. Oh I know he can read and write and do figures—all those surveyor men can. Yes, I call him a surveyor—I don’t call him an engineer. What was he to begin with? Why he came out in charge of some machinery or something! None of them have any right to call themselves engineers. I call them all surveyors—working men—that sort of thing! and to think that a woman who really is a lady—”

“Oh come, Maria, come!” cried her husband, “you are glad enough of the P.W.D. when you have no bigger fish on hand.”

“I don’t understand what you mean by bigger fish, Colonel Mitchell,” said the lady indignantly; but if she did not know, all the rest of the audience did. Matchmaking mothers are very common in fiction, but more rare in actual life, and when one exists she is speedily seen through, and her wiles are generally the amusement of her circle, though the woman remains unconscious of this. And indeed poor Mrs. Mitchell was not so bad as she was supposed to be. She was a great entertainer, getting up parties of all kinds, which was the natural impulse of a fussy but not unkindly personality, delighting to be in the midst of everything; and it is certain that picnics and even dinner parties, much less dances, cannot be managed unless you keep up your supply of young men. There were times when her eagerness to keep up that supply and to assure its regularity was put down quite wrongly to the score of her daughters, which is an injustice which every hospitable woman with daughters must submit to. A sort of half audible titter went round the little party when Colonel Mitchell, with that cruel satisfaction so often seen in men, gave over his wife to the criticism of society. A man never stands by the women of his family in such circumstances; he deserts them even when he does not, as in this instance, actually betray. There was one young man, however, one of the staff of dancers and picnic men, who was faithful to her—a poor young fellow who knew that he had no chance of being looked upon as a parti, and who made a diversion in pure gratitude, a quality greatly lacking among his kind.

“Rowland,” he said, “is one of the best fellows in the world. He does not shine perhaps among ladies, but he’s good fun when he likes, and a capital companion.”

“And Miss Ferrars, dear,” said one of the ladies soothingly, “is not like my Ethel or your Dorothy. Poor thing, it is just as well, for she has nobody to look after her: she is, to say the least, old enough to manage matters for herself.”

“And to know that such a chance would never come again,” said one of the men with a laugh—which is a kind of speech that jars upon women, though they may perhaps say something very like it themselves. But to think of Miss Ferrars making a last clutch of desperation at James Rowland the engineer, as at a chance which might never occur again, was too much even for an afternoon company making a social meal upon a victim, and there was a feeling of compunction and something like guilt when some one whispered almost with awe, “Look! there they are.”

The party in question were seated in a verandah in the cool of the day when the sun was out of sight. They had all been gasping in semi-darkness through the heat, and now had come to life again to enjoy a little gossip, before entering upon the real business of dining and the amusements of the evening. The ladies sat up in their chairs, and the men put themselves at least in a moral attitude of attention as the two figures went slowly across the square. One feels a little “caught” in spite of oneself by the sudden appearance of a person who has been under discussion at the moment he or she appears. There is a guilty sense that walls have ears, and that a bird of the air may carry the matter. It was a relief to everybody when the pair had passed and were seen no more. They went slowly, for the lady had a couple of little children clinging to her hands.

Miss Ferrars was of an appearance not to be passed over, even though she was quite old enough, as her critic said, to manage matters for herself—so old as to have no prospect of another chance did she reject the one unexpectedly offered to her at present. She was a woman a little more than the ordinary height, and a little less than the ordinary breadth—a slim, tall woman, with a very pliant figure, which when she was young had lent itself to all kinds of poetical similes. But she was no longer young. She must have been forty at the least, and she was not without the disadvantages that belong to that age. She did not look younger than she was. Her complexion had faded, and her hair had been touched, not to that premature whiteness which softens and beautifies, but to an iron grey, which is apt to give a certain sternness to the face. That there was no sternness about her, it was only necessary to see her attitude with the children, who clung to her and swayed her about, now to one side now to the other, with the restless tyranny peculiar to their age, while still she endeavoured to give her attention and a smile to the middle-aged person by her side, who, truth to tell, was by no means so patient of the children’s presence as she was. It was the little boy, who was next to Mr. Rowland, and who kicked his legs and got in the way of his footsteps, that brought that colour of anger to his face, and many exclamations which had to be repressed to his lips. Those dreadful little Stanhopes! Miss Ferrars had been by way of paying a visit to the friend of her childhood, and it was very kind, everybody said, of Mrs. Stanhope to stretch such a point for a friend, and to keep her so long. But there were many who knew very well what Evelyn Ferrars had not said even to herself, that she was the most useful member of the Stanhope household, doing everything for the children, though not a word was said of any such duties as those which had insensibly been thrown upon her. Nobody breathed such a word as governess in respect to Mrs. Stanhope’s friend: but people have eyes, and uncommonly sharp ones sometimes at an Indian station, and everybody knew perfectly to what that long visit had come.

Mr. Rowland was a man of another order altogether. He was not tall, and he was rather broad—a ruddy weatherbeaten man, much shone upon by the sun, and blown about by all the winds. It was not difficult to see at a glance the difference between the two, which the critics in Colonel Mitchell’s verandah had pointed out so fully. He was dressed as well as the gentlemen of the station, and had an air of prosperity and wealth which was not often to be seen in the lean countenances of the soldiers; but he was not like them. He was respectable beyond words, well off, a sensible, responsible man: but he was not what is called a gentleman in common parlance. You may say that he was much better, being a good and upright and honest man; but after all that is but a begging of the question, for he might have been all these things and yet a gentleman, and this would have been in every way of the greatest advantage to him. It would have done him good with the young men under him, and even with the overseers and foremen of his works, as well as with the handful of people who made society in the station. Fortunately, however, he was not himself conscious of this deficiency, or if he was, accepted it as a matter of fact that did no real harm. He did not, as Mrs. Mitchell said, even pretend to be a gentleman. As he walked along by the side of the lady who had accepted him as her future husband, a great satisfaction betrayed itself in every look and movement. His face was lighted up with a sort of illumination as he turned it towards her—not the transport of a young man, or the radiance of that love-look which makes the most homely countenance almost beautiful, for he was perhaps beyond the age for such exaltation of sentiment; but a profound satisfaction and content which seemed to breathe out from him, surrounding him with an atmosphere of his own. Perhaps there was not the same expression upon the face of his betrothed. It is true that she was disturbed by the children, who hung upon her, dragging her now in one direction now in another; but at least her face was quietly serene, untroubled—peaceful if not glad.

This was the story of their wooing. Mr. Rowland, though he was not looked upon by the Society of the station as quite their equal, was yet invited everywhere, dining with everybody: and was treated with the utmost hospitality, so that no one could have suspected that any suspicion as to his worthiness was in the minds of these friendly people whom such a sudden event as this threatened marriage had moved to discussion of the claim to be one of them, which indeed he had never made, but which they had all awarded in that ease of social arrangement which herds together a little masterful alien community in the midst of that vast continent peopled by races so different. To be an Englishman is of itself in India a social grade, and thus Mr. Rowland the engineer had many opportunities of seeing Mrs. Stanhope’s friend, both in Mrs. Stanhope’s house and the houses of the other magnates of the station. He had met her at all the entertainments given, and they were many, and he had almost immediately singled her out, not because of her beauty nor of the dependent position which touches the heart of some men, nor indeed for any reason in particular, except that he did single her out. Such an attraction is its own sole reason and explanation. It was not even choice, but simple destiny, which made him feel that here, by God’s grace, was the one woman for him. I do not deny that when this middle-aged and perfectly honest and straightforward man asked her to marry him, Evelyn Ferrars was taken very much by surprise. She opened wide a pair of brown eyes which had not been without note in their day, but which had long ceased to expect any homage, and looked at him as if for the moment she thought him out of his senses. Did he know what he was saying—did he by any strange chance mean it? She looked at him with scarcely a blush, so great was her surprise, making these inquiries with her startled eyes; and there can be no doubt that her first impulse was to say no. But before she said it a sudden train of thought darted out from her mind, one crowding after the other an endless succession of ideas and reflections, presented to her in the twinkling of an eye, as if they had been a line of soldiers on the march. And she paused. He was scarcely aware of the hesitation, and resumed again after that moment of silence, pleading his own cause, very modestly yet very earnestly, with a seriousness and soberness which were much more effectual than greater enthusiasm would have been. But by this time she was scarcely aware what he said; it was her own mind that had come into action, saying to her a hundred things more potent than what he was saying, and changing in a moment all the tenor of her thoughts. Evelyn was not perhaps much more of a free agent than Rowland was in this moment of fate. She felt afterwards that she had been stopped and her attention attracted as by the flash of one of those sun-signals of which she had been hearing. She was altogether in a military atmosphere in the Stanhopes’ house, and everybody had been explaining that process by which the sun’s rays are made to communicate messages from one distant army to another. She was stopped with the no on her lips by the flash and radiation through the air of that message. She had not any code of interpretation to note in a moment what it meant. But she paused, almost to her own astonishment; and when she found her voice, it was to ask for a little time to think before she gave her final reply.

When a woman does this, it is almost invariably the case that she decides for the suitor, even the doubt being, I suppose, a point in his favour, and increasing a disposition—a bias towards him rather than away from him. Evelyn had, like most other Englishwomen, a lively and wholesome feeling that love alone justified marriage, and that any less motive was a desecration of that tremendous tie. It is an excellent thing for a race that this superstition should exist, and I am far from desiring to see any lower ground accepted as the basis of a connection upon which the purity and character of all other affections depend. But yet when reason is allowed time to speak, there are many other things which may be permitted to have a voice, and a woman may at least be allowed to take into consideration at forty, arguments which at twenty would be indignantly refused a hearing. What Evelyn Ferrars felt as she retired from that interview which had opened to her so many and such extraordinary new suggestions for thought, it is difficult to describe. She had become all at once a sort of battlefield—to keep up the military simile—in which that “No,” which had been her first conception of the situation, stood like a force entrenched and on the defensive, somewhat sullen, holding fast upon the mere fact of its existence, emitting a dull roar of artillery now and then, while the attacking forces scoured the plain in endless evolution, pressing on and on. The first flash of the sun-signal, which she had not been at first able to interpret, turned out to mean a rapid identification of her own position, which was a thing she had not allowed herself to think of, while it was without remedy. It was not what she had anticipated when she ventured in her loneliness to come up country in answer to her friend’s warm invitation. She had come out to Calcutta with her brother, the last survivor of her family after the breaking up of home at her father’s death; and when he too died soon after, cut off by the sudden stroke which ends so many promising careers in India, the despair of the solitary woman left in a strange place with few friends and little money, and nobody to come to her help, had been almost without a gleam of light. And in that emergency the Stanhopes had been very kind. The wife had written imploring her heart-broken friend to come to her, offering her all that the affection of a sister could do to supply her loss; the husband had come, what was even more kind, to do what he could for her, and to take her, if she consented, home. They had been more than kind. There had been no alloy of interested motives in that first impulse of generous compassion. It was good to think how frank, how full, how affectionate it had been.

But—oh what a pity, what a pity, that these beautiful impulses and sincere moments of loving kindness should ever be shadowed by the cold shade of after-thoughts! From the moment when Mrs. Stanhope weeping received poor Evelyn into her arms, and lavished upon her the caresses and endearments of the most devoted friendship, to that in which Miss Ferrars became the unpaid governess, the useful dependent, and at the same time a member of the family who was apt to be de trop, who was not wanted between husband and wife, who was always there and could not be kept to her schoolroom and out of the way as an ordinary governess would have been—was unfortunately not very long. And indeed it was nobody’s fault. The consciousness that she was getting a great deal out of her friend, and that the tables were more or less turned, and it was Evelyn who was conferring the benefit, did not make it easier to Mrs. Stanhope to keep up the effusion and tenderness of the first welcome: and Captain Stanhope was often cross, troubled by harassments of his own, and wishing his wife’s friend anywhere but where she was, notwithstanding the fact that her presence was “everything for the children.” The situation had grown more and more strained, but there seemed no issue out of it: for it takes a great deal of money to take your passage from the centre of India to England, even when you know where to go and have your living assured when there. And Evelyn had nothing, neither a house to go to nor enough money for the journey. There were moments when she would have given anything in the world—which is a mere figure of speech, for she had nothing in the world to give—to be able to go away, and relieve her friends of her inconvenient presence; and there were moments when she felt that she was of too much use in the house to deprive them of her services, as if she grudged the expenditure. It was scarcely possible to imagine a position more painful and trying. It was nothing to her that her whole life was absorbed in the service of her friends and their children. Many women are able to make this kind of sacrifice and to stave off all thoughts of the future and what is to become of them after—with a heroic obedience to the Gospel precept of taking no thought for the morrow. But that was not all. For she was at the same time, as she felt, an inconvenience to the very people for whom she was spending her strength: they wanted her very room for other uses. They did not want her constantly between them spoiling their tête à tête—always to be considered when there was company, and to be invited with them when they went out. The very children got to know that aunt Evelyn, as they called her, was de trop in the house, and yet could neither go nor be sent away.

And here suddenly was the opening of a door which made all things possible. When that mental heliograph flashed in her face, and she became aware of what it meant, Evelyn, for almost the first time, retired into her room and locked her door, and for a whole hour turned a deaf ear to the demands made upon her. The children came and called in every tone of impatience, Edith, the eldest, tap-tapping upon the closed door for ten minutes continuously, and little Bobby kicking, to the great derangement of the thoughts going on within; but for the first and only time Evelyn held fast. She had plenty to do in that house, more than ever she had done before in her life. In the previous crises of that existence it had been other people who had done the thinking, and there had been little left for her but to submit. Now, however, the matter was in her hands, and no one else could help her. It was hard work getting her head clear enough to put this and that together; for the mere idea of marriage was very startling and indeed terrifying to the middle-aged woman who had put it out of all her calculations years ago, and who had retained merely the old youthful superstition that its only warrant was love. But was that really so? After all it was not so simple a thing that it could be thus dismissed and classified. It was a very complicated thing and involved many duties. It was not merely an emotional matter, but one full of practical necessities and exertions. To be a true and helpful companion through all the chances of life: to govern a household: to secure comfort and peace of mind and consolation in all circumstances and occurrences for the partner of life: to care for him and his interests as nobody else could do: to adopt his obligations and help him to serve God and to serve men—Evelyn Ferrars felt that she was capable of all that. It was a worthy office to fulfil, and it was surely the chief part. As for the other side it was undeniable that she shrank from it a little. But he was not young any more than herself. The hour was scarcely over when Mrs. Stanhope herself appeared at the door, half with the air of a mistress who has a right to all her retainer’s time, and half with that of a friend anxious to know what was the matter.

“The children tell me they cannot make you hear,” she said. “I came myself to see if you were ill, or if anything is wrong.”

“You have come just when I wanted you,” said Evelyn, “if I may shut the door on the children for ten minutes more. Helen, something very wonderful has happened, and I have been trying to think what I must do.”

“What has happened?” said Mrs. Stanhope in alarm.

“Mr. Rowland has asked me to—to marry him,” said Evelyn. She did not blush as women do, even when their feelings are but little stirred. She was too anxious to learn what her friend’s verdict would be.

Mrs. Stanhope uttered a cry, and rising up hastily, caught Evelyn in her arms. “Oh,” she said, “I shall lose you, Eve!” The words and the embrace were full of compunction, of kindness, and remorse; but Evelyn felt the relief, the thankfulness, that suddenly flooded her friend’s breast, and her decision was no longer in any doubt.

CHAPTER II.

“Mr. Rowland,” said Evelyn with a little tremor, “the first thing I would like to say to you is that we are neither of us very young.”

“Miss Ferrars,” said the engineer, “you are just as young as it is best and most beautiful to be.”

There came a light like the reflection of a sudden flame over a face which she at least thought to be a faded face. She had never at her youngest and fairest received such a compliment, and how it could have come from a plain man who had so little appearance of any poetry about him was bewildering. It was indeed difficult to resume the middle-aged matter-of-fact tone after such an unexpected break.

“I am forty-two,” she said, “and I have not been without experiences in my life. I want you to know what my past has been, before—”

“Whatever you please to tell me,” he said with an air of deep respect—“but I must say it is not necessary. I am quite satisfied; your experiences may have been painful—the world isn’t over good to people like you. If you will give me your companionship for the rest of our lives, that is enough for me, and far more than I can ever deserve. I have had my experiences too—”

“I must tell you, however, my story,” she said. Women, especially those who have lived in the virginal age for so long, are very conscientious in these matters. They have a much greater respect for love than ordinary people, and think it dishonourable to keep back the knowledge from a future husband of how they have been affected in this way during their past. The love that may have touched them years before they had even heard his name, seems to their over delicacy as if it must be a drawback to them in his eyes—a really guilty secret of which a clean breast must be made before the new and real history is allowed to begin.

“I was,” she said with a little hesitation, “engaged to be married at the usual age. It is a long time ago. My father had not met with any misfortunes then. We were living at home. That makes so great a difference in every way. We were of course well known people, friendly with everybody; everything about us was well known. You know in a county people are acquainted with everything about each other—you can’t conceal it when anything happens to you, even if you wished to conceal it.”

“I never had anything to do with a county,” he said, with a sort of respectful acquiescence, interested but not curious—“but I can understand what you mean.”

“Well: when my father speculated and was so unfortunate (it was really more for my sake than for any other reason that he speculated—and then he was drawn on) it became impossible to carry my engagement out. The gentleman I was engaged to, was not very well off then. We had to think what was best for both of us. We agreed that it would be best to break it off. I should only have been a sort of millstone round his neck. People might have expected him to help papa. And his own means were quite limited then. He had not been supposed a good match for me in my wealthy days—and when the tables were turned in this way, we both thought it was better to part.”

“And did the fellow let you go—did he give you up? The wretched cad!” cried James Rowland, adding this violent expression of opinion under his breath.

“You must not speak so, Mr. Rowland; it was a mutual agreement. We both, I need hardly say, felt it very much. I—for a long time. Indeed, it has had an influence upon all my life. Don’t think I have regretted it,” she said eagerly, “for if we had not done it by mutual agreement as we did, with a sense of the necessity—we should have been forced to do it. For as it turned out, I could not have left my father. He was very much shattered. It cost him a great deal to give up his home. He had been born there, and all his people before him.”

“And you, I suppose, were born there too, and all your people before you?”

“I? Oh! that was nothing! Wherever one is with one’s own belongings, there is home. It doesn’t matter for anything else. But it was more sad than words can say for poor papa. He had to move into the village to a little house. He bore it like a hero, thinking that it was best not to hide himself as if he had done any wrong. Misfortune and loss are not wrong. I want you,” she said, gently, having raised her head for that one profession of faith, but dropping into the usual quiet tone again, “to know exactly all about us before—”

“And did you ever see that—man again?”

The adjectives that were implied in the pause James Rowland made before he brought out the word “man” were lost upon Evelyn, who probably could not have imagined anything so forcible, not to say profane.

“Yes,” she said quietly, “often. We could not help it, to go anywhere he had to go through our village. He removed very soon, which was the kindest thing he could have done.”

“The vile cad!” said James Rowland between his teeth.

“What did you say?” she asked with a startled look: but the engineer did not repeat those words.

“I am sure I for one am very much obliged to him,” he said, getting up and walking about the room. “I’m not the man to object. He did the best thing he could have done for me. And you nursed your poor father till he died; and then you came from one trouble to another.”

“Oh, do not speak of that! My poor Harry—my darling brother! to lose his home and his inheritance, and to be banished away from all he loved; and then just when life was beginning to smile a little, to die! I cannot speak of that!”

Mr. Rowland walked about the room more quickly than ever. She had covered her face with her hands, and the hot heavy tears were falling upon her dress like rain. After many hesitations he came up to her, and put his hand on her shoulder. “Is that so bad,” he said, “if we really believe that the other life is the better life? We say so, don’t we? and no doubt he’s got something better to do there than railroads, and likes it better, now he’s there.”

She looked up at him startled, though the sentiment was common enough. It is a fine thing to be matter of fact on such a subject, and gives faith a solid reality which is denied to a more poetical view.

“I’m not sorry for him,” said Rowland. “I’ll hope to know him some day. I’ve always heard he was a fine fellow, incapable of anything that was—shoddy.” Our engineer used very good English often, but now and then he knew nothing so forcible as the jargon which has got so much into all talk now-a-days, and is a pitfall for a partially educated man. “But,” he said, pressing his hand upon her shoulder, in a way which perhaps a finer gentleman would not have used to call her attention, “There is this to be said, my dear lady. You’ve had a great deal of trouble, but if I live you shall have no more. No more if I can help it! As long as James Rowland is to the fore nothing shall get at you, my dear, but over his body.”

He said it with fervour and with a momentary gleam as of moisture in his eyes; and she, looking up to him with a certain surprise in hers in which the tears were not dry, held out her hand. And thus their bargain was made: with as true emotion, perhaps, as if they had been lovers of twenty rushing into each other’s arms. No trouble to get at her but over his body! it was a curious touch of romance and hyperbole in the midst of the matter of fact. And how true it turned out! and how untrue!—as if any one living creature could ever come between another and that fate to which we are born as the sparks fly upwards. But the idea of being thus taken care of, and of some one interposing his body between her and every assailant, was so new to Evelyn that she could not but smile. She was the one that had taken care of everybody and interposed her delicate body between them and fate.

“And now,” said he, “it’s my turn. I was ready when you began. I’ve more to say, and less; for nobody has ever done me wrong. I am a widower to start with. I don’t know if you had heard that——”

“Yes—I heard it—”

“That’s all right then; you did not get to know me under false pretences. But you must know that I wasn’t always what I am now. I am not very much to brag of, you will say now—but I’m a gentleman to what I was,” he said, with a little harsh emotional laugh.

“Don’t please talk in that way, you offend me,” she said; “you must always have been a gentleman, Mr. Rowland, in your heart.”

“Do you think you could say Rowland plain out? No? Well after all it would not be suitable for a lady like you—it’s more for men.”

“I will say ‘James,’ if you prefer it,” she said with a moment’s hesitation.

“Would you? Yes, of course I prefer it—above all things: but don’t worry yourself. Well, I was saying—Yes I’ve been a married man. She lived for five years. She was as good a little thing as ever lived, an engineer’s daughter, just my own class. We worked at the same foundry, he and I. Nothing could be more suitable. Poor Mary! it’s so long since: I sometimes ask myself was there ever a Mary? did I ever live like that, getting up in the dark winter mornings, coming home to the clean kitchen and the tidy place, bringing her my week’s wages. It’s like a story you read in a book, not like me. But I went through it all. She was the best little wife in the world, keeping everything so nice; and when she had her first baby, what an excitement it was!” The honest middle-aged engineer fixed his eyes on space and went on with his story, smiling a little to himself, emphasizing it a little by the pressure of Evelyn’s hand which he held in his own. Curiously enough, as it seemed to her looking on, not much understanding a man’s feelings, wondering at them—he was more or less amused by his recollections. She felt her heart soft for the young wife whose life must have been so short: but he smiled at the far-off, touching, pleasing recollection. “She was a pretty creature,” he said, “nice blue eyes, pretty light hair with a curl in it over her forehead.” He gave Evelyn’s hand another pressure, and looked at her suddenly with a smile. “Not like you,” he said.

She had a feeling half of shocked amazement at his lightness: and yet it was so natural. Such a long time ago: a picture in the distance: a story he had read: the little fair curls on her forehead and the clean fireside and the first baby. He was by no means sure that it had all happened to himself, that he was the man coming in with his fustian suit all grimy, and his week’s wages to give to his wife. It was impossible not to smile at that strange condition of affairs with a sort of affectionate spectatorship. Mr. Rowland seemed to remember the young fellow too, who had a curly shock of hair as well, and, when he had washed himself, was a well looking lad. With what a will he had hewed down the loaf, and eaten the bacon and consumed his tea—very comfortable, more comfortable perhaps than the well known engineer ever was at a great dinner. He had his books in a corner, and after Mary had cleared the table, got them out and worked at diagrams and calculations all the evening to the great admiration of his wife. He half wondered, as he told the story, what had become of that promising young man.

“Not like you,” he said again, “but much more suitable. If I had met you in those days, I should have been afraid to speak to you. I would have admired you all the same, my dear, for I always had an eye for a lady, with every respect be it said. But she, you know, poor thing, was just my own kind. Well, well! there’s always a doubt in it how much a man is the happier for changing out of his natural born place. But I don’t think I should like to go back: and now that you don’t seem to mind consorting with one who was only a working man——”

Evelyn was a little confused what to say. She was very much interested in his picture of his past life, but a little disturbed that he too should seem no more than interested, telling it so calmly as if it were the story of another: and she had not the faculty of making pretty speeches or saying that a working man was her deal and the noblest work of God. So she, on her side, pressed his hand a little to call him out of his dream. “You said—the first baby?”

“Oh yes, I should have said that at once. There are two of them, poor little things. Oh they have been very well looked after. I left them with her sister, a good sort of woman, who treats them exactly like her own—which has been a great thing both for them and for me. I was very heart-broken, I assure you, when she died, poor thing. I had always been a dreadful fellow for my books, and the firm saw I suppose that I was worth my salt, and made a proposal to me to come out here. There was no Cooper’s Hill College or that sort of thing then. We came out, and we pushed our way as we could. It comes gradually that sort of thing—and I got accustomed to what you call society by degrees, just as I came to the responsibility of these railroads. I could not have ventured to take that upon me once, any more than to have dined at mess. I do both now and never mind. The railroad is an affair of calculation and of keeping your wits about you. So is the other. You just do as other men do, and all goes well.”

“But,” she said, pressing the question, “I want you to tell me about the children.”

“To be sure! there are two of them, a boy and a girl. I have got their photographs somewhere, the boy is the eldest. I’ll look them up and show them to you: poor little things! Poor May was very proud of them. But you must make allowance for me. I have been a very busy man, and beyond knowing that they were well, and providing for them liberally, I have not paid as much attention as perhaps I ought to have done. You see, I was full of distress about her when I left England; and out here a man is out of the way of thinking of that sort of thing, and forgets: well no, I don’t mean forgets—”

“I am sure you do not,” she said, “but are you not afraid they may have been brought up differently from what you would wish?”

“Oh, dear no,” he said cheerfully, “they have been brought up by her sister, poor thing, a very good sort of woman. I am sure their mother herself could not have done better for them than Jane.”

“But,” said Miss Ferrars, “you are yourself so different, as you were saying, from what you were when you came to India first?”

“Different,” he said with a laugh. “I should think so, indeed—oh, very different! things I never should have dreamt of aspiring to then, seem quite natural to me now. You may say different. When I look at you—”

She did not wish him to look at her, at least from this point of view, and it was very difficult to secure his attention to any other subject; which, perhaps, was natural enough. The only thing she could do without too much pertinacity was to ask, which was an innocent question, how long it was since he had come to India first.

“A long time,” he said, “a long time. I was only a little over thirty. It was in the year——, seventeen years ago. I am near fifty now.”

“Then your son?” she said, with a little hesitation.

“The little fellow? Well, and what of him?”

“He must be nearly twenty now.”

He looked at her with an astonished stare for a moment. “Twenty!” he said, as if the idea was beyond his comprehension. Then he repeated with a puzzled countenance, “Twenty! you don’t say so! Now that you put it in that light, I suppose he is.”

“And your daughter—”

“My little girl—” he rubbed his head in a bewildered way. “You are very particular in your questions. Are you afraid of them? You may be sure I will never let them be a subject of annoyance to you.”

“Indeed, you mistake me altogether,” said Evelyn. “It will be anything but annoyance. It will be one of the pleasures of my life.” She was very sincere by nature, and she did pause a moment before she said pleasures. She was not so sure of that. They had suddenly become her duty, her future occupation, but as to pleasures she was far from certain. Children brought up without any knowledge of their father, in the sphere which he had left so long ago, and which he was so conscious was different, very different from all he was familiar with now. It was curious to hear him enlarge upon the difference, and yet take so little thought of it in this most important particular. Her seriousness moved him at last.

“I see,” he said regretfully, “that you think I have been very indifferent to them, very negligent. But what could a man do? I could not have them here, to leave them in the charge of servants. I could not drag them about with me from one province to another. What could I have done? And I knew they were happy at home.”

“You must not think I am blaming you. I see all the difficulty, but now—now you will have them with you, will you not, and take them back into your life?”

He looked at her with eyes full of admiration and content. “Is that the first thing you want me to do,” he said, “the first thing you have at heart?”

“Yes,” she said simply, “and the most natural thing. Your children. What could they be but my first interest? They are old enough—that is one good thing—to come to India without pause.”

He rose from her side again and returned to his habitual action of walking about the room. “I knew,” he said, “from the first moment, that I was a lucky man, indeed, to meet with you. I have always been a lucky man; but never so much as when you made up your mind to have me, little as I deserve a woman like you. I’ve that good in me that I know it when I see it: a good woman from the crown of your head to the sole of your foot. There’s nothing in the world so good as that. Now, I’ll tell you something, and I hope it will please you, for it’s chiefly meant to please you. I am very well off. I can settle something very comfortable on you, and I can provide for the young ones. If it pleases you, my dear, we’ll turn our backs on this blazing India altogether, and go home.”

“Go home!” she said, with startled eyes.

“You’d like it? A country place in England or Scotland—better still, a house that would be your own—that you could settle in your own way, with all the things that please ladies now-a-days. I’ll bring you home a cartload of curiosities that will set you up in that way. And then you could have the children, and put them through their facings. Eh, my lady dear? You’d like that? Well, I can afford it,” he said with subdued exultation, with his hands in those pockets which metaphorically contained all that heart of man could desire. His eyes glowed with pleasure, with triumph, with a consciousness that he was making her happy. Yes! this was what every English lady banished in India must desire. A house in her own country, with every kind of greenness round, and every comfort within—with beautiful Indian stuffs and carpets, and curious things—and the children to pet and guide as she pleased. He was again the spectator, so to speak, of a picture of life, which rose before him, more beautiful than that of old—himself, indeed, the least lovely part of it, yet not so much amiss for an old fellow who had made all the money, and who could give her everything that could please her, everything her heart could wish for. His eyes, though they were not in themselves remarkable, grew liquid and lustrous in the pleasure of that thought.

As for Evelyn, she sat startled holding her hands clasped in her lap, with many things beyond the satisfaction he imagined in her eyes. Home in England meant something to her which could never be again. She said somewhat faintly—“In Scotland, if you would please me most of all.” At which words, for Rowland was a Scotsman, he came to her in a glow of pleasure and took both her hands and ventured, for the first time, to touch her forehead with his lips. The touch gave this elderly pair a little shock, a surprise, which startled her still more.

CHAPTER III.

Those two people had both a good deal to think about when they parted.

As for Evelyn the agitation of telling her own story and the extraordinary commotion which had been produced in her mind by the suggestion of going home, affected her like an illness. As she escaped from the inroad of the Stanhope children, all much surprised and indignant at being kept out, a thing which had never happened in their experience before, and made her way almost like a fugitive to the seclusion of her own room, she felt all the languor and exhaustion of a patient who had gone through a severe bodily crisis. It was over and she felt no pain—on the contrary that sensation of relief which is one of the most beatific in nature, had stolen through her relaxed limbs and faintly throbbing head. The ordeal was over, and it had been less terrible than she had feared. The man whom she had consented to marry, and with whose life her own would henceforward be identified, had not disappointed her, as it was possible he might have done. He was not a perfect man. He had been careless, very careless of those children who ought (she thought) to have been his first care. But otherwise he was true. There was no fictitious show about him, no pretension. He had been, she felt sure, as good a husband to that poor young creature who was dead as any man could be. Poor Mary! her story was so simple, so pretty and full of tenderness as he told it. Evelyn had liked him better for every word. Had she lived!—ah, had she lived! That would have been a different matter altogether. In that case James Rowland would probably have become foreman at the foundry, and remained a highly respectable working man all his life, bringing up his children in the natural way to follow his own footsteps. Would it have been perhaps better so? It would have been more natural, far more free of complications, without any of the difficulties which she could not help foreseeing. These difficulties would be neither few nor small. Two children brought up by their aunt Jane, in an atmosphere strongly shadowed by the foundry, to be suddenly transplanted to a large country house full of luxury and leisure, and the habits of an altogether different life—and not children either but grown up, eighteen and twenty! She drew a long breath, and put her hands together with an involuntary drawing together of her forces. Here was a thing to look forward to! But as for Rowland himself he had come through that ordeal, which was in one sense a trial of his real mettle, carried on before the most clear-sighted tribunal, before a judge whose look went through and through him, though not a word was said to put him on his guard, most satisfactorily, a sound man and true, with his heart in the right place and no falseness about him. It was true that in one respect he was very wrong. He had neglected the children: on this subject there could be no doubt. He had no right to forget that they were growing up, that their homely aunt, who was as good to them as if they were her own, was not all they wanted, though it might have been sufficient when they were little children. Miss Ferrars did not excuse him for this, but she forgave him, which was perhaps better.

She regarded the prospect thus opening before her with a half amused sensation of dismay and horror. Oh, it would be no amusing matter! Her mind took a rapid survey of the situation, and a shiver ran over her. It would be she, probably, who would have to bear the brunt. He perhaps would not remark, as a woman would, though he was their father. “A kick that scarce would move a horse may kill a sound divine.” Their defects would probably not be apparent to him, and he would have the strong claim of paternal love to carry him through everything. On the whole, perhaps, it was better that there should be something to do of this strenuous description. It would keep the too-much well-being in hand. Two people very well off, able to give themselves everything they wanted, contented (more or less) with each other, were apt to fall into a state of existence which was not elevated, especially when they were middle-aged and the glamour of youth and happy love, and all the sentiment of that period did not exist for them. Evelyn looked upon married life with something of the criticism of a woman long unmarried. It was often a selfish life. Selfishness never comes to such a climax as when it is practised by two, in each other’s interests, and does not seem to be selfishness at all. When the horizon is limited by the wants and wishes of us, it is more subtly and exquisitely bound in, than when the centre is me. In such circumstances people are incapable of being ashamed of themselves, while a selfish solitary sometimes is. But the children! that restored the balance. There would be enough to keep a woman in her sober senses, to neutralise the deadening effects of prosperity, in that. As she laid herself down upon her bamboo couch to rest a little, she laughed to herself at the picture of too great quiet, too perfect external well-being that had been in her mind. There would be a few thorns in the pillow—it would not be all repose and tranquility. She might make her mind easy about that.

The other thing that moved her was the suggestion of going home. Home meant to Evelyn the county in which she had spent her life, the house in which she had been born. Nothing more likely than that the very dwelling was in the market, that he might buy it—that she the last Ferrars might recover possession of the house of her fathers. She had heard something to this effect with that acuteness to catch a half-said inference in respect to anything that is of personal interest which is so remarkable. Had it concerned any property on earth but Langley Ferrars, she would never have caught the words: but because it was about her old home she had heard what two men were saying in the crowd of a station hall—“A property in Huntingdonshire,” “dirt cheap,” “last man couldn’t keep it up.” She had divined from this that her home was to be bought, that it could yet be recovered. Oh no, no, she cried to herself, covering her face with her hands, not for anything in the world! To go back there where she had been a happy girl, where all her dreams of love and happiness had taken place, where the famous oaks and bucks of Selston, which was his home, were visible from the windows! Oh no, no—oh no, no: that indeed was more than she could bear. In Scotland it would be another matter. It was no doubt the very thing which a kind man without very fine preceptions would do, to buy back her home for her, to take her there in triumph. A thrill of almost physical terror came over her. “Oh no,” she said to herself, “oh no, no, no!” These were the two things that disturbed the dreamy calm of that sensation of trial over, the kind of moral convalescence in which she found herself. They came through the misty quiet with flashes of alarm. But, on the whole, Evelyn felt as if she had been ill and was getting better, slowly coming round to a world which was changed indeed, and had lost something, but also had gained something, a world with no vague outlines in it or uncertainty, but clearly defined, spread out like a map before her. Perhaps there was something to regret in the old solitude to which her subdued life could retire out of all its troublesome conditions, and be its own mistress. But solitude, though it may be soothing, is not cheerful: and if she relinquished that, there was surely something in the constant companionship of one who had the highest regard for her, thought the very best of her, looked upon all her ways and words with admiration which should make up. He was a good honest man. He rang as true as a silver bell. There was nothing in him to be ashamed of. He was kind and genuine, with right thoughts and no false shame, but for that unaccountable failure about the children—a man as good as any she had met with in all her life. And to say there was no romance about the business, was to say the most foolish untruthful thing. Why it was all romance, far more than the girl and boy love-story, where they ran away with each other in defiance of every consideration! Here was a sober man, long accustomed to his own way, and to moving lightly unimpeded about the earth, a prosaic man, thinking a good deal of the world, who had suddenly turned aside out of his way, to take note of a neglected woman in a corner, and to raise her up over the heads of all the people who had pitied her. She would have been more than woman had she not felt that. To be able to do favours where she had received them, to give help with a liberal hand where she had been compelled to accept it in little, and perhaps with a grudge. Was it not romance that she who had nothing, should all at once, in the twinkling of an eye, have much and be rich, when she had been poor. It was in reality as great a romance as if he had been King Cophetua and she the beggar maid—almost more so, for Evelyn Ferrars was not beautiful as the day. She was to her own consciousness faded and old. This was stating the case much too strongly, but it was how a woman, such as she was, judges herself. If James Rowland was not a romantic lover, who was? He was more romantic than any Prince Charming that ever could be.

Mr. Rowland himself went away from this interview with feelings which were almost in a greater commotion than those of Evelyn. He was excited by going back upon the old life which had died out of his practical mind so completely, and which was to him as a tale that is told—yet which lay there, all the same, an innocent sweet memory deprived of all pain, a story of a young man and a young woman, both of whom had disappeared under the waves and billows of life—the young man, a well-looking fellow in his way, just as much as the young woman who had died. Mr. Rowland, the great engineer, was not even much like him, that hardheaded young fellow with his books, working out his diagrams on the clean kitchen table, and studying and toiling over his figures. How that fellow pegged away! James Rowland at forty-eight never opened a book. His calculations for practical work came to him as easy as a. b. c. He read his paper and the magazines when he saw them, but as for scientific works, never opened one, and did not think much of theoretical problems. And then the little house that was not far from the foundry, and the little clean bright pretty wife always ready and looking out for her husband, and the baby crying, and the young man coming in in his grimy fustian—it was a pretty picture, a charming story such as brings the tears to the eyes. She died, poor thing—they always have a sad end these little tales of real life. This was how he could not help looking at that story which he had just told though it was the story of his own life. Now that he thought of it he could have given a great many more details, although he had also forgotten many. It was a pretty story. There were a great many such stories in the world, and when the wife died and the little house fell to pieces, it was not at all unusual that the poor young fellow went to the bad. It was a good thing he had not done so in this case.

And then there came back to him with a shock that strange discovery about the children. Good heavens! to think they were grown up, those little things! The little one was a baby when he had seen her last—his paternal feelings had not been very strongly roused. To put them with their mother’s sister and persuade her to take the full charge of them had been evidently far the best thing to do. She was a good sort of woman who had no children of her own, and they were to her as if they had been her own, which was everything that could be desired. To make sure that they wanted for nothing, and that they should have kindness and affection par-dessus le marché was everything. Even now he did not see what more he could have done. He could not have brought them to India, where for a long time he had no settled place, and where, as everybody knows, children cannot live. He had done on the whole the very best thing for them. But it was startling to think that they were children of eighteen and twenty. Their aunt had sent him their photographs on various occasions, and he had replied in a way which did not displease her by adding on twenty pounds to his next cheque, and beseeching her to have them better dressed. Queer little things they had looked, not like the children at the Station. He had taken it for granted that Jane had not much taste for dress, but that when she grew up, the little one would change that. They got to know by instinct what was becoming as they grew up, those little things: so he was easy in his mind on that subject. Perhaps he had not thought of going home till it came suddenly into his mind, to please Miss Ferrars. Of course that was what would please her most, to have a home in England. She looked like a home in England. She was not a Station lady, full of picnics and dances. A large peaceful country house with fine trees and a beautiful garden, and a green fragrant park in which she could walk with him, that was what looked most like her: and she should have it! If Mr. Rowland had heard of Langley Ferrars which was in the market, I know very well what he would have done. He would have telegraphed to his man of business in London, regardless of expense, directing him to lose not a moment in securing that place. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to do. When a man is rich, a man of James Rowland’s mind, giving presents is his easiest way of showing his kindly feelings—and it is not a bad way. And all the explanations in the world would never have got it into his kind head that she would not have liked such a present as that. Her own home restored to her, where she could live at ease, not poorly as her ruined father, poor gentleman, had been compelled to do—but lavishly if she liked, carrying things with a high hand, showing all the neighbours, who perhaps had looked down upon her in her poverty, how well she had done for herself. There was nothing which would have pleased James Rowland more than this. But fortunately he never had heard that Langley Ferrars was in the market. He was not even aware indeed at this early period where his future wife had lived, or what the name of her home had been.

But she had said Scotland, which would be the best of all: and then suddenly had appeared before his eyes a vision of a house which he had often looked at when he went down the Clyde upon a holiday, or when there was some work at Greenock which he was entrusted with, as sometimes happened. Who can tell what visions of this kind steal into the brains of the working men in their noisy excursions, or the foundry lads with their sweethearts? Oftenest it is a cottage, perhaps a little cockney villa on the edge of a loch. “I’d like to tak’ ye there,” said with glowing eyes and all the ardour of youthful dreams: or, “Eh, man, if there was a bit housie like yon ahint ye, to gang back to when ye were past work,”—such speeches are common in the mouths of the excursionists, who live and die, and are contented enough, in the high “lands” and common stairs of the huge dull town. But James Rowland had been more ambitious. What he had remarked most had been a house, with a white colonnade round it, standing up on a green knoll at the end of a peninsula which overlooked the Clyde. There was one special spot from which he remembered to have watched for it, through the opening in the trees, not saying anything to any one, not even to Mary, but watching till it became visible—not a villa, nor a cottage, but a great house, with beautiful woods round it, and soft green lawns sloping downwards towards the noble river-sea, which just there flowed out into the opening of a loch. It suddenly came before him in a moment while he walked through the cantonments towards his own lodging in the arid enceinte of the Station. Such a contrast! He felt as if he were again standing on the deck of the river steamboat, watching for the white walls, the pillars of the colonnade, as they appeared through the trees. He knew exactly at what moment the trees would stand aside, ranged into groups and lines, and the house would come into sight. He thought that if he had been blind, he would yet have known exactly when that opening came.

That was the place for him! His heart gave a leap, almost as it had done when Evelyn Ferrars had given him her hand. It was the next thing almost—the fulfilment of a dream older by far than his knowledge of Evelyn Ferrars. Rosmore! To think that he should come to that; that it should be possible for him, the lad who had watched it so often coming in sight, to call it his own! But it was not yet sure by any means whether he would ever call it his own. He was rich enough to buy it, to improve it, to fit it up as it never had been fitted up before, but whether he would get it or not, remained still to be seen. The owner would have to be tempted with a fancy price, more money than it was worth or could bring: for the owner was a great personage, a man who was not to be supposed ready to offer one of his places to a chance buyer. Rowland did not mind the fancy price, and he enjoyed the thought of the diplomacy that would be required, and all the advances and retirings. It would be a home fit for her. She would bring the best people round her wherever she was. It should be hers, that home of his dreams, settled on her—her dower house—when he was out of the way: but he did not wish to think of being out of the way. He preferred to think of happiness and dignity and rest in that stately yet modest place, not too grand, quite simple indeed, not like the castellated absurdities of the Glasgow merchants. Among houses, it was like her among women, the most unpretending, the most sincere, everyway the best!

And, then, with a sudden prick of his heart, he remembered the children. Oh, the children! To think that they could be so old as that, and that it had remained for her to find it out! Twenty! It was not possible little Archie could be that age. What a little chubby fellow he was, with a face as round as an apple, and little rosy cheeks—so like Mary, her very image. It had always been pleasanter to think of him like that, than to identify the little scrubby boy in the photographs poor Jane kept sending; or the lean lad who, he now remembered, had appeared on the last one. He had torn it up, as certainly a libel on his son, not at all the kind of picture which he could have wished to set up on his chimney-piece, and point out complacently to visitors as “my boy.” He remembered this incident of the photograph perfectly now, and that he refused angrily to accept that as a portrait of Archie. “The photograph you sent me was a mistake, I suppose,” he had written to his sister-in-law; “it is quite impossible it could be my boy;” and he forgot what explanation she made. He was not, indeed, very attentive to her letters. He glanced at them to see that the children were well, but he had seldom patience to read all the four pages. Jane’s style and her handwriting, and the very look of her letters had been vexatious to him for many years past. They suggested having been written on a kitchen table with a pen that was greasy. The very outside of them coming in the bag along with his business letters and his invitations gave Rowland a little shock. He preferred that other people should not see him receive these queer missives, the very envelopes of which looked common, not like the others. Now it occurred to him, with a pang, that it was no mistake, that the unwashed-looking lad, with the vulgar, ill-cut clothes was probably his son after all. The idea was horrible to him, but he was glad for one thing that he had torn the photograph up, and could not be made to produce it to show Evelyn what manner of youth Archie was—if he was like that! And then the baby, whom he had always thought of as the baby, with all the tenderness that belonged to the name. Tenderness! but something else as well—indifference, forgetfulness—or he could never have been so blind, and suffered them to grow up like that. It was a very tormenting and uncomfortable thought, and Rowland was anxious to shake it off. He said to himself that photographs never do justice to the subject; that perhaps the boy might be a fine boy for all that: and finally contrived to elude the whole disagreeable subject by saying to himself how clever it was of her to have made that out about their age! What a clever woman she was; not learned, or that sort of thing, but knowing so much, and so perfect in her manner, and such a true native-born lady. This was her grand quality above all. She said just the right thing, at the right time, never compromising any one, hurting nobody’s feelings. He was himself rather given to treading on people’s toes, and making afterwards the astonishing discovery that they felt it, even though he had meant no harm. But she never did anything like that. She would know how to manage that business about the children, and he had a happy persuasion that everything would go right in her hands.

CHAPTER IV.

After all this record of thinkings it will be a relief to do something: which is generally the very best way, if not to settle a problem, at least to distract the attention from it. Mr. Rowland could not now do anything to alter the fact, that he had allowed his children to grow up in a different sphere from that which he intended them to occupy, and that probably the first meeting with them would contain many disenchantments and disappointments. No amount of thinking could now alter this fact, and dwelling upon it was not a way of making himself happier or adding in any way to the advantages of the moment. Like most men who have a great deal to do, and who must keep their brains clear for inevitable work, he had the power of putting disagreeable things away and declining to look at them. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” is always the maxim of philosophy, whether we take it in its highest meaning or in a lower sense; and it appeared to Mr. Rowland that the best thing he could do was to carry out his marriage with all the speed that was practicable, and to wind up his affairs (already prepared for that end) so that his return home might be accomplished as soon, and with as much pleasure to everybody concerned, as possible. As he was a very direct man, used to acting in the most straightforward way, his first step was to call on Mrs. Stanhope, who stood in the place of Evelyn’s relations, in order to settle with her the arrangements he wished to make.

“I should like, with Miss Ferrars’ consent—which I have not asked till I should have talked over the matter with you—that the marriage should take place as soon as possible. I can trust to her excellent sense to perceive that we can have no possible reason to wait.”

“Oh, Mr. Rowland!” said Mrs. Stanhope. “Of course it is quite reasonable on your part: but I don’t think that Evelyn would like it to be hurried. It is not as if you might be ordered off at a moment’s notice, like us poor military people. There is no reason to wait of course; but you can afford to take your time.” She said this more from the natural feminine impulse of holding back in such matters, and not allowing her friend to be held cheap, than from any other reason.

“If you mean that you want some time to fill Miss Ferrars’ place——”

“Mr. Rowland!” said Mrs. Stanhope again, this time with great indignation, “what do you mean by Miss Ferrars’ place? I have known Evelyn all my life, and she is my dearest friend. Do you think I could fill up her place if I were to try?—and I certainly don’t mean to try.”

“I meant, of course, in respect to your children,” said Mr. Rowland dryly. “You may do without your dearest friend by making an effort; but you can’t do without a governess. Excuse me, I am a plain man, and call a spade, a spade.”

This brutality of expression reduced Mrs. Stanhope to tears. “I have never treated her like a governess,” she said. “If Evelyn’s good heart made her help me with the children, it was not my asking, it was her own idea. She did it because she liked it. I implored her not to take them out, feeling that you might imagine something of that sort. Men like you, Mr. Rowland, who have made a great deal of money, always, if you will excuse me, impute interested motives. I foresaw as much as that.”

“Yes,” he said cheerfully, “we are given to think of the money value of things. Not of friendship, you know, and all that, but of time and work, and so forth. We needn’t enter into that question, for I’m sure we understand each other. And I don’t want to put you to inconvenience. How much time will it take you to fill Miss Ferrars’ place?”

Mrs. Stanhope was a clever little woman. She thought for a moment, in natural exasperation, of dismissing him summarily, and refusing to have anything to say to a man who had treated her so; and then she thought she would not do that. He was rich—he might be useful some time or other to the children; it would be foolish to make a breach with a friend who would remember nothing but the best of her (she did Evelyn this justice), and who would be kind to the children when they went home, and invite them for their holidays. So she subdued the natural anger that was almost on her lips, and gave vent to a harsh little laugh instead.

“You do always take such a prosaic view, and reduce everything to matter of fact,” she said. “I can’t afford to have any one in Evelyn’s place, if you desire to speak of it so. Evelyn has helped me with the children for love—I must do the best I can for them by myself when you take her away.”

“Ah well,” said Mr. Rowland, “then it is a real sacrifice, and you will suffer. I dare say you have a great deal to do. Would not little Molly Price be a help to you? She is a nice little girl, and she has nobody belonging to her, and I don’t know what the poor little thing is to do.”

Mrs. Stanhope made a pause before she replied, looking all the time keenly in the engineer’s face as if she would have read his meaning in that way. But he was impassible as a wooden image. “Molly Price is a very nice little girl,” she said slowly, trying all the time to make out what he meant, “and she would be of use, though far different from Evelyn. But how could I take up a girl like that, without any means of providing for her. I had thought of it,” Mrs. Stanhope admitted, “but to take up her time just when she might be doing better for herself, and to give her false expectations as to what I could do for her—when it only can be for a few years, till we send the children home.”

“I see,” said Mr. Rowland; “but the fact is that Molly has a little income of her own, and all she wants is a home.”

“A little income of her own!”

“Yes,” he said, meeting with the most impenetrable look the lady’s eager scrutiny. “Did you not know? enough to pay for her board if necessary. She only wants a home.”

“I don’t know what you can think of me,” said Mrs. Stanhope with a little haste. “I should never ask her for any board. She would have her share of whatever was going; and of course if she liked to help me with the children’s lessons—”

“You would allow her to do it, without any compensation? Don’t explain, my dear lady—I know the situation perfectly. And in return for that little arrangement you will help me in getting Evelyn to consent to a speedy marriage. As soon as we understand each other, everything will be perfectly straight.”

“You are such a dreadful man of business. I am not accustomed to such summary ways,” said Mrs. Stanhope, with again a half hysterical laugh. She was very much afraid of him after this experience. No doubt everybody in the station had seen through her actions so far as Evelyn Ferrars was concerned, attributing design and motive where none had existed, and not making any allowances for the unconscious, or only half conscious way in which she was led into taking an advantage of her friend. But nobody had ever ventured to put it into words. She was overawed by clear sight and the courage, and also a little by the practical help of this downright man.

“Yes,” he said, “I’m nothing if not a man of business. Well now, there is another matter. I want it to be a very grand affair.”

She looked at him with eyes more wide open than ever, and with perceptions more fine than his, and a little gasp of restrained horror in the thought—what would Evelyn say?—Evelyn who hoped it would be got over so quietly, that it might not be necessary to let people know: as if everything was not known from one end to another of the station almost before it was fully shaped in the brain from which it came!

“Yes,” he said, “I see you’re horrified—and, probably, so would Miss Ferrars be: so I want you to take the responsibility of everything, and put it on the ground of your gratitude to her, which must take some shape. I need not add, Mrs. Stanhope, if you will do this for me, that a cheque is at once at your disposal—to any amount you may think necessary.”

Anger, humiliation, injured pride, a quick perception of advantage, a rapid gleam of pleasure, the thrill of delightful excitement at the thought of a great deal of money to spend, all darted through Mrs. Stanhope’s mind, and glittered in her eager eyes. The disagreeable sentiments finally died away in the others which were more rational. To have the ordering of a great entertainment regardless of expense, and everybody at her feet, the providers of the same, and the guests, and indeed the whole community eager either for commissions or invitations! This was a temptation more than any woman could resist.

“Mr. Rowland,” she said, “you are a very extraordinary man. But I must warn you that Evelyn will not like it, and she knows that we cannot afford it. Oh, I will try, if you have set your heart upon it, and just say as little to her as possible. I suppose something like what Mrs. Fawcett had when Bertha was married? And you must give me a list of all the people you want to invite.”

“The Fawcetts’ was a very humdrum affair,” said Rowland critically, “quite an ordinary business. We must do a great deal better than that. And as for the invitations, ask everybody—beginning with the Governor. He’ll be at Cumsalla about that time, and it will be a fine opportunity for him to visit the station in a semi-official way: and the General commanding, and the Head of the district, and——”

“The Governor and the General!” Mrs. Stanhope gasped. She lay back in her chair in a half-fainting condition, yet with a keen conviction running through her mind like the flash of a gold thread, that to receive all these people in his own house, at a magnificent entertainment, would be such a chance as never could have been anticipated for Fred!

“Carte blanche,” said Mr. Rowland, pressing in his enthusiasm her limp and hesitating hand.

Evelyn Ferrars came in a moment after with the children. She gave a smile to her future husband, and a glance of surprise at her friend, who had not yet recovered that shock of emotion. “What are you plotting?” she said: but did not mean it, though it was so near their real occupation. As for Mr. Rowland he was equal to the occasion, his faculties being so stirred up and quickened by the emergency that he was as clear about it as if it had been a railway or a canal.

“We are plotting against you,” he said, “and I think I have got Mrs. Stanhope to enter into my cause.”

She looked from one to another with a little rising colour, divining what the subject would be. For once in her life Mrs. Stanhope was the dull one, not understanding her ally’s change of front. She thought he was about to betray the conspiracy into which he had just seduced her, and that Evelyn’s dislike and opposition would put an end to the delightful commotions of the marriage feast. “Oh,” she cried, “don’t tell her. She will never consent.”

“She is so very reasonable that I hope she will consent,” said Rowland. “My dear, it is just this, that there is no reason in the world why we should wait. I would like to be married as soon as the arrangements can be made. I think you won’t refuse to see all the arguments in favour of this: and that there are very few against it.”

Evelyn grew red and then grew pale, and finally with a little catch in her breath asked how long that would be?

“About three weeks,” said Rowland, holding her hand and patting it as if to soothe a child.

Her limbs trembled a little under her, and she sat down in the nearest chair. “It is a little sudden,” she said.

“My dear——let’s get it over,” said Rowland, his excitement showing through his usual sobriety like a face through a veil. “It’s a great change, but it is the first that is the worst. You and I, as soon as we’re together, will settle down into each other’s ways, and be very happy. I know I shall, and some of it’ll rub off upon you. There’s nothing in the world you can wish for that I shan’t be ready to do. It is only the first step that will be a trouble. Let’s get it over,” he cried, with a quiver in his voice.

This is not the usual way in which a man speaks to his bride of their marriage, but it is a very true way if people would be more sincere. And especially in the circumstances in which he and she stood, not young either of them, and taking fully into consideration all the mingled motives that go to make a satisfactory union of two lives. Mrs. Stanhope, to whom the conventional was everything, listened in horror, wondering how Evelyn would take this; but Evelyn took it very well, agreeing in it, and seeing the good sense of what her betrothed said. It was the first step that would be the worst. After that habit would come in and make them natural to each other. And to get over that first step, and to settle down quietly to the mutual companionship in which she too felt there was every prospect of satisfaction and content, would no doubt be a good thing. It was somewhat overwhelming to look forward to such a tremendous change so soon. But she agreed silently that there was no reason for delay, and that all he said was perfectly reasonable. “I cannot say anything against it,” she said quietly. “I have no doubt you are right. It seems a little sudden. I could have wished a little more time.”

“To think of it?” he said quietly. “Yes, my dear, if you had not made up your mind, that would be quite reasonable. But you have quite made up your mind.”

“Yes,” she said, “I have made up my mind.”

“Then thinking of it is no longer of any use—because it is in reality done, and there’s no way out of it. So the best thing is to carry the plan into execution, and think no more. Come,” said Rowland with an air of great complaisance, “I’ll yield a little I’ll say a month—that will leave quite time enough for everything,” he said, with a glance at Mrs. Stanhope to which she replied with a slight, scarcely perceptible nod of the head. And then it was all arranged, without difficulty and without any knowledge on Miss Ferrars’ part of the negotiations that had gone on before. Evelyn was much overwhelmed by the present her friend insisted upon making her, of her wedding dress, which turned out to be of the richest satin, and trimmed with the most beautiful lace, to the consternation of the bride, who remonstrated strongly. “How could you think of spending so much money? it is robbing the children—and it is far too grand for me.” “My dear,” said Mrs. Stanhope, the little hypocrite, “if you think how much you have done for the children, and saved me loads of money! I can afford that and more too out of what I have saved through you.” Evelyn was confounded by this generosity, both of gift and speech; but as the dress did not arrive until the day before the ceremony, there was not much time to think about it, and her mind was naturally full of many subjects more important. The same cause kept her even from remarking the extraordinary fuss in the station on the wedding day—the flags flying, the carpets that were put down for the bride’s procession, the decorations of the chapel. She scarcely saw them indeed, her mind being otherwise taken up. And when the Governor was brought up to her to be introduced, and the General followed him, both with an air of being royal princes at the least, amid the obsequious court of officers, Evelyn was easily persuaded that it was because they had chosen this day to make their inspection, and that their presence at the station was quite natural. “How fortunate for you that they are both here together,” she said to Mrs. Stanhope. “Now surely Fred will get what you want so much for him.” “Oh, he will get it, he will get it!” Mrs. Stanhope cried, hysterically. “Thanks to you, you darling, thanks to you!” “What have I to do with it?” said Evelyn. She was now Mrs. Rowland, and her mind was full of many things. It was a nuisance to have so many people about, all drawn, she supposed, in the train of the great men. As for the great men themselves, they were, of course, like any other gentlemen to Evelyn: they did not excite her by their greatness. She was a little surprised by all the splendour, the sumptuous table, the crowd of people; but took it for granted that one half at least was accidental, and that though it was quite unappropriate to an occasion so serious as a middle-aged marriage, it might be good for Fred Stanhope, who had so long been after an appointment, which always eluded his grasp.

Thus the bride accepted, without knowing it, the extraordinary honours that were done her, while all the station stood amazed by the number and greatness of the guests. The Lieutenant-Governor came without a murmur to compliment the great engineer. He would not have done it for Fred Stanhope, who was Brevet-Major, and thought himself a much greater man than Rowland. Neither would the General commanding have come to Fred unless he had known him in private, or had some special interest in him. But they all collected to the wedding of the man who had made the railroads and ditches—a proof, the military people thought, how abominably they were neglected by Government, though it could not sustain itself without them, not for a day! They were, however, all of them deeply impressed by the greatness that had come upon Miss Ferrars, whom they had pitied and patronised, or even snubbed during her humiliation—by the splendour of her dress, and of the breakfast, and of the bridegroom’s presents to her—and still more, by the manner in which she received the congratulations of the big wigs without the least excitement, as if she had been all her life in the habit of entertaining the great ones of the earth. “Give you my word,” said the little subaltern Bremner, who was an ugly little fellow, and had not much to recommend him, “she was not a bit more civil to the best of them than she was to me.” “Looked as if she had been used to nothing but swells all her life,” said another. “And as if she thought one just as good as another.” On the whole, it was this that struck the company, especially the gentlemen, most—that she was just as civil to a little lieutenant as she was to the General commanding. The ladies had other things to distract their minds, the jewels, the bridal dress, the table. Such a commotion had never been made in the Station before by any marriage: the Colonel’s daughter’s wedding feast was nothing in comparison: and that this should all be for the poor lady who had been nothing more than nursery governess to the Stanhopes, was quite bewildering. When the pair went away, the whole Station turned out. It was, of course, quite late when they started, as they were only going as far as Cumsalla. The Station was lit with coloured lamps, which blazed softly in the evening dusk, turning that oasis in the sand into a magical place. And the big moon got up with a bound into the sky, as she sometimes does when at the full, thrusting her large round lustrous face into the centre of all, as if to see what it meant. “By Jove, she’s come out to look at you too,” said the bridegroom to his bride. He was considerably excited, as was but natural—enchanted with the success of all his plans, and the éclat of the whole performance. It was altogether a trying moment—for perhaps something of a vulgar fibre in the man was betrayed by his eagerness that it should be “a grand affair,” and his delight in its success.

But fortunately Evelyn was not in possession of her usual clear-sightedness, and she was still of opinion that the presence of the great people had been accidental, and the extraordinary sumptuousness of all the preparations a piece of loving extravagance on the part of the Stanhopes, which should not, if she could help it, go without its reward. “I hope,” she said, “the moon is loyal, and means it as a demonstration for the Lieutenant-Governor, as all these rejoicings have been already to-day.”

“Not a bit of it,” said Rowland; “all the demonstrations have been for you. The Governor and the General were only my—I mean, Fred Stanhope’s guests.”

Evelyn thought her husband must have had too much champagne: but she would not let this vex her or disturb her, seeing that it was so great an occasion. She calmed him with her soothing voice, and did not show the faint movement of fright and alarm that was in her breast.

“I am very glad they were there, anyhow,” she said, “for Fred’s sake. I hope he will get that appointment now. It was a fortunate chance for him.”

“It was no chance at all,” said Rowland, half piqued at her obtuseness. “I dare say it will be good for him as well: but it was all to do honour to you, my dear. I was determined that you should have all the honour and glory a bride could have. These swells came for you, and all that is for you, the illuminations, and everything. But when I saw you among them, Evelyn, I just said—how superior you were to everything of the sort. Talk about women’s heads being turned! You went from one place to another, and looked down upon it all like a queen.”

“Hush! hush!” she said; “indeed I did not look down upon anything. I did not think of it. I am very different from a queen. I am setting out upon a great voyage, and my mind is too full of that to think of swells, as you call them. You are the swell that occupies me most.”

“You are my queen,” said Rowland in his pride and delight, “and I am not good enough to tie your shoe: for I’ve been thinking of a great flash to dazzle them all, while you were thinking of—look back, there’s the bouquet going off! nobody in this presidency has seen such fireworks as they’ve got there to-night. I wanted every black baby of them all to remember the day of Miss Ferrars’ wedding. And now when I look at you, I’m ashamed of it all, to think such folly as that should be any honour to you!”

These devoted sentiments, however, were not the prevalent feeling at the Station, where there was a ball after the fireworks with everything of the most costly and splendid description, and where the health of the bride and bridegroom was drank with acclamations in far too excellent champagne. The ladies who had daughters looked out contemptuously over the heads of the subalterns to see if there was not another railway man in the background who would give a similar triumph to one of their girls. But young railway men are not any more satisfactory than young soldiers, and there was not another James Rowland far or near. When it was all over, Helen Stanhope rushed into her husband’s arms with tears of joy, “You have got it, Fred,” she said, “you have got it! and it’s all on account of that kind thought you had (for it was your thought) when you went and fetched Evelyn Ferrars home out of her misery. It’s brought a blessing as I knew it would.”

Fred pulled his long moustache, and was not very ready in his reply. “I wish we hadn’t got so tired of it, Nelly. It might be a kind thought at the first, but neither you nor I kept up to the start. God Almighty didn’t owe us much for that.”

“Oh, don’t be profane,” cried his wife, “taking God’s name in vain! She didn’t think so. What would she have done without us? And it’s all thanks to her that we have got it at last.”

CHAPTER V.

Rowland was able to carry out the programme which he had made for himself. He was a man to whom pieces of what is called luck are apt to come. Luck goes rather against the more serious claims of deserving, and is a thing which many of us would like to ignore—but it is hard to believe there is not something in it. One man who is just as worthy as another gets little that he wants, while his neighbour gets much; one who is just as unworthy as another gets all the blows while his fellow sinner escapes. Mr. Rowland had always been a lucky man. The things he desired seemed to drop into his mouth. That white house on the peninsula looking down upon Clyde, with its noble groups of trees, its fine woods behind, its lochs and inlets, and the great noble estuary at its foot, proved as soon as he set his heart upon it procurable. Had you or I wanted it, it would have been hopeless. Even he, though his luck was so great and he possessed that golden key which opens so many doors, was not able to move the noble proprietor to a sale; but he was permitted to rent it upon a long lease which was almost as satisfactory. “I should have preferred to buy it outright and settle it upon you, Evelyn,” he said to his wife as they sat at breakfast in their London hotel, and he read aloud the lawyer’s letter about this coveted dwelling. “But when one comes to think of it, you might not care for a big house in Scotland after I am out of the way. It was to please me, I know, that you fixed on Scotland first. And then you might find it a trouble to keep up if you were alone.”

“There is no occasion for thinking what I should do when I am alone, thank heaven,” said Mrs. Rowland; “there is little likelihood of that.”

“We must be prepared for everything,” he said with a beaming face, which showed how little the possibility weighed upon him. “However, perhaps it is just as well. Now, my dear, I will tell you what I am going to do. I am going up to the North to see after it all. You shall stay comfortably here and see the pictures and that sort of thing, and I shall run up and prepare everything for you, settle about Rosmore on the longest term I can get, look after the furniture a bit: well—I should like, you know, to look after the children a bit, too.”

“To be sure you would,” she said cheerfully. “You know I wanted you to have them here to meet us; but I understand very well, my dear James, that you would rather have your first day with them alone.”

“It’s not that,” he said rising and marching about the room—“it’s not that. I’d rather see you with them, and taking to them than anything else in the world—but—perhaps I’d better go first and see how the land lies. You don’t mind my leaving you—for a few days.” He said this with a sort of timid air which sat strangely on the otherwise self-confident and consciously fortunate man, so evidently inviting an expression of regret, that Evelyn could scarcely restrain a smile.

“I do mind very much,” she said: and he was so genial, so kind, even so amusing in his simplicity, that it was strictly true. “I don’t like at all to be left alone in London; but still I understand it perfectly, and approve—though I’d rather you stayed with me.”

“Oh, if you approve,” he said with a sort of shame-faced laugh of satisfaction, “that is all I want; and you may be sure I’ll not stay a moment longer than I can help. I never saw such a woman for understanding as you are. You know what a man means before he says a word.”

It was on his wife’s lips to tell him that he said innumerable words of which he was unaware, about quite other matters, on every kind of subject, but all showing the way his thoughts were tending, but she forbore; for sweet as it is to be understood, it is not so sweet to be shown how you betray yourself and lay bare your secrets unwittingly to the eye of day. It was not difficult to divine that his mind was now very much taken up by the thought of his children, not merely in the way of love and desire to see them, but from an overmastering anxiety as to how they would bear his wife’s inspection, and what their future place in his life would be. In his many thoughts on the subject, he had decided that he must see them first and judge of that. During the three months in which he had been seeing with Evelyn’s eyes and perceiving with her mind, various things had changed for James Rowland. He was not quite aware of the agency, nor even that a revolution had taken place in him, but he was conscious of being more and more anxious about the effect which everything would produce on her, and specially, above all other things, of the effect that his children would produce. And he had said and done many things to make this very visible. For his own part he thought he had concealed it completely, and even that she gave him credit for too much feeling in imputing to him that eagerness to see them, to take his boy and his girl into his arms, which she had just said was so natural. He preferred to leave that impression on her mind. The feelings she imputed to him would have been her feelings, she felt sure, had she been coming home to her children after so long a separation. He could not say even to himself that this was his feeling. He had done without them for a very long time, perhaps he could have gone on doing without them. But what would Evelyn say to them? Would they be fit for her notice? Would they shock and startle her? What manner of beings would they seem in her eyes? It was on the cards that did she show any distaste for them, their father, who was their father after all, might resent it secretly or openly—for the claims of blood are strong; but at the present moment this was not at all in his thoughts. His thoughts were full of anxiety to know how they would please her, whether they were worthy to be brought at all into her presence. Mrs. Rowland would fain have assured him that his anxiety was unnecessary, and that, whatever his children were, they would be her first duty; but she was too understanding to do even this. All that she could do to help him in the emergency, was to accept his pretext and give him her approval, and tell him it was the most natural thing in the world. Useless to say that she was anxious too, wondering how the experiment would turn out. Whether the lowly upbringing would be so great a disadvantage as she feared, or whether the more primitive laws of that simpler social order would develop the better faculties, and suppress the conventional, as many a theorist believes. She was no theorist, but only a sensible woman who had seen a good deal of the world, and I fear that she did not believe in that suppression of the conventional. But whatever it was, she was anxious, as was natural, on a matter which would have so large an influence upon her entire life.

“I’ll tell you what you can do to amuse yourself,” he said, “when you’re tired of the pictures and all that. Go to Wardour Street, Evelyn, and if you see anything that strikes your fancy, buy it. Buying is a great amusement. And we shall want all sorts of handsome things. Yes, I know. I’d put it into the best upholsterer’s hands and tell him to spare no expense. But that’s not your way: I’ve learnt as much as that. And then there are carpets and curtains and things. Buy away—buy freely. You know what is the right thing. What’s the name of the people in Regent Street, eh? Well go there—buy him up if you please—the whole shop. I don’t care for those flimsy green and yellow things. I like solid, velvet and damask, and so forth. But what does that matter if you do? I like what you like.”

“Do you want me to ruin you, James?” she said.

He laughed with that deep laugh of enjoyment which moneyed men bring out of the profoundness of their pockets and persons. “If it pleases you,” he said. He was not afraid. That she should ruin him, was a very good joke. He had no desire for an economical wife. He wanted her to be extravagant, to get every pretty thing that struck her fancy. He had a vision of himself standing in the drawing-room which looked out upon the Clyde, and saying to everybody, “It’s my wife’s taste. I don’t pretend to know about this sort of thing, except that it costs a lot of money. It’s she that’s responsible.” And this anticipation pleased him to the bottom of his heart.

He went away next day, taking the train to Glasgow, not without sundry expressions of contempt for the arrangement of the Scotch trains, and the construction of the railways. “We do things better in India,” he said. He was very compunctious about going away, very sorry to leave her, very anxious that she should have everything that was possible to amuse her while he was gone; and exceedingly proud, yet distressed, that she should insist upon coming to the railway with him. It was such an early start for her, it would tire her, it was too much trouble, he said, with a beaming countenance. But when the train started, and Mr. Rowland was alone, he became suddenly very grave. He had not consented to her wish to have the children to meet them in London, because of the fancies that had seized him. If he could only have gone on paying largely for the children, knowing nothing but that they were happy and well, he would on the whole have been very thankful to make such an arrangement. But not only would it have been impossible to do so, but his wife would not have permitted it. She it was who talked of duty in respect to them, who planned everything that would have to be done. For his part, he would have been quite content to let well alone. But how often it happens that you cannot do that, but are compelled to break up rational arrangements and make fictitious ones, visibly altering everything for the worse. Rowland in his prophetic soul felt that this was what he was about to do. He was going to take his children out of the sphere they belonged to, to transport them to another with which they had nothing to do. And his mind altogether was full of compunctions. He had not after all shown their photographs or their letters to his wife. It would be less dreadful, he thought, that they should burst upon her in their native vulgarity and commonness all at once, than that she should be able to divine what like they were, and look forward to the meeting with horror. Naturally he exaggerated the horror Evelyn would be likely to feel, as he depreciated her acuteness and power of divining the motive which made him so certain that he could not find the photographs. Evelyn knew the situation, indeed, almost as well, perhaps in some ways better, than he did. She divined what was to be expected from the two young people brought up upon a very liberal allowance by the aunt whose husband had been a working engineer in the foundry. She was sincerely sorry for them, as well as a little for herself, wondering how they would meet her, feeling it almost impossible that there should not be a little grudge and jealousy, a determination to make a stand against her, and to feel themselves injured and supplanted. She followed her husband in her mind with a little anxiety, hoping that he would not show himself too enlightened as to their deficiencies. And then there would be their aunt to reckon with, the mother’s sister, the second mother. How would she bear it if the young people whom she thought perfect failed to please their father? It would be thought to be the stepmother’s fault even before the stepmother appeared on the scene.

Evelyn returned to her hotel after seeing her husband off, with a countenance not less grave than his, and a strong consciousness that the new troubles were about to begin. She had shaken off her old ones. As for that familiar distress of not having any money, it had disappeared like last year’s snow. It is a curious sensation to be exhorted to be extravagant when you have never had money to spend during your whole life, and there are few ladies who would not like to try that kind of revolution. Evelyn felt it exhilarating enough for a short time, though she had no extravagance in her; but she soon grew tired of the attempt to ruin her husband which gave him so much pleasure. She bought a few things both in Wardour Street and in the shop in Regent Street to which he had alluded, finding with a little trouble things that were not flimsy and diaphanous. But very soon she got tired, and by the third day it was strongly impressed upon her that to be alone, even with unlimited capacity of buying, is a melancholy thing. She had said to herself when she came to London that to recall herself to the recollection of old friends was the last thing she would desire to do. There was too much sorrow in her past: she did not want to remind herself of the time when she, too, used to come to London for the season, to do as everybody did, and go where everybody went. That was so long ago, and everything was so changed. But it is strange how the firmest resolution can be overset in a moment by the most accidental touch. She was sitting by herself one bright morning, languid, in the bare conventional sitting-room of the hotel, which was by no means less lonely because it was the best sitting-room, and cost a great deal of money in the height of the season. She had received a letter from her husband, in which she had been trying hard to read between the lines what were his ideas about his children, whether they had pleased him. The letter was a little stiff, she thought, guarded in its expression. “Archie is quite a man in appearance, and Marion a nice well-grown girl. They have had every justice done them so far as their health is concerned,” Mr. Rowland wrote; but he did not enter into any further details. Was he pleased? had the spell of nature asserted itself? did he fear her criticism, and had he determined that no one should object to them? Evelyn was much concerned by these questions, which she could not answer to her own satisfaction. The thing she most feared was the very natural possibility that he might resent her interference, and allow no opinion to be expressed on the subject, whatever might be his own. And it vexed her that he said nothing more, closed his heart, or at least his lips, and gave no clue to what he was thinking. It was the first time this had occurred—to be sure, it was the first time he had communicated his sentiments to her by way of writing, and probably he had no such freedom in expressing himself that way as by word of mouth. Whatever the fact might be, Evelyn felt herself cast down, she scarcely knew why. She vaguely devined that there was no satisfaction in his own mind, and to be thrust away from his confidence in this respect would be very painful to her, as well as making an end of all attempts on her part for the good of the children.

Evelyn was in this melancholy mood, sitting alone, and with everything suspended in her life, feeling a little as if she had been brought away from India where she had at least a definite known plan and work, to be stranded on a shore which had grown cold, unknown, and inhospitable to her, when in the newspaper which she had languidly taken up she saw suddenly the name of an old friend. She had said to herself that she would not seek to renew acquaintance with her old friends: but it is one thing to say that when one feels no need of them, and another to reflect when you are lonely and in low spirits, that there is some one in the next street, round the next corner, who would probably receive you with a smile of delight, fall upon your neck, and throw open to you the doors of her heart. Evelyn represented to herself when she saw this name that here was one of whom she would have made an exception in any circumstances, one who would certainly have sought her out in her trouble, and would rejoice in her well-being. She half resisted, half played with the idea for half the morning—at one time putting it away, at another almost resolved to act upon it. And at length the latter inclination carried the day. Part of the reluctance arose from the fact that she did not know how to introduce herself. Would any one in London have heard of the wedding far away at an obscure station in India? Would any one imagine that it was she who was the bride? She took out her new card with Mrs. James Rowland upon it, in a curious shamefacedness, and wrote Evelyn Ferrars upon it with an unsteady hand. But she had very little time to entertain these feelings of uncertainty. It was so like Madeline to come flying with her arms wide open all the length of the deep London drawing-room against the light, with that shriek of welcome. Of course she would shriek. Evelyn knew her friend’s ways better, as it proved, than she knew that friend herself.

“So it is you! At last! I meant to go out this very day on a round of all the hotels to find you; but I couldn’t believe you wouldn’t come, for you knew where to find me.”

“At last!” said Evelyn astonished. “How did you know I was in London at all?”

“Oh, my dear Eve, don’t be affected,” cried this lively lady, “as if a great person like Mr. Rowland could travel and bring home his bride without all the papers getting hold of it! Why, we heard of your wedding-dress and the diamonds he gave you, almost as soon as you did. They were in one of the ladies’ papers of course. And so, Evelyn, after waiting so long, you have gone and made a great match after all.”

“Have I made a great match? indeed I did not know it. I have married a very good man which is of more consequence,” said Evelyn, with almost an air of offence. But that, of course, was absurd, for Lady Leighton had not the most distant idea of offending.

“Oh, that goes without saying,” she said lightly; “every new man is more perfect than any other that went before him. But you need not undervalue your good things all the same. I suppose there were advantages in respect to the diamonds? He would be able to pick them up in a way that never happens to us poor people at home.”

“I dare say he will be glad to tell you if you want to know; but, Madeline, that is not what interests me most. There are so many things I should like to hear of.”

“Yes; to be sure,” said Lady Leighton, growing grave; “but, my dear, if I were you I wouldn’t inquire—not now, when everything is so changed.”

“What is so changed?” said Evelyn, more and more surprised.

Her friend made a series of signals with her eyes, indicating some mystery, and standing, as Evelyn now perceived, in such a position as to screen from observation an inner room from which she had come. The pantomime ended by a tragic whisper: “He is there—don’t see him. It would be too great a shock. And why should you, when you are so well off?”

“Who is there? And why should I not see, whoever it is? I can’t tell what you mean,” Mrs. Rowland said.

“Oh, if that is how you feel!” said her friend; “but I would not in your place.”

At this moment Evelyn heard a sound as of shuffling feet, and looking beyond her friend’s figure, saw an old man, as she supposed, with an ashy countenance and bowed shoulders, coming towards them. At the first glance he seemed very old, very feeble; some one whom she had never seen before—and it took him some time to make his way along the room. Even when he came near she did not recognize him at first. He put out feebly a lifeless hand, and said, in a thick mumbling tone: “Is this Evelyn Ferrars? but she has grown younger instead of older. Not like me.”

Evelyn rose in instinctive respect to the old man whom she did not know. She thought it must be some old relative of Madeline, some one who had known her as a child. She answered some indifferent words of greeting, and dropped hastily as soon as she had touched it, the cold and flabby hand. It could be no one whom she had known, though he knew her.

“Oh, Mr. Saumarez,” said Lady Leighton, “I am so sorry this has happened I do hope it will not hurt you. Had I not better ring for your man? You know that you must not do too much or excite yourself. Let me lead you back to your chair.”

A faint smile came over the ashen face. “She doesn’t know me,” he said.

Oh, heaven and earth, was this he? A pang of wonder, of keen pain and horror, shot through Evelyn like a sudden blow, shaking her from head to foot. It was not possible! the room swam round her, and all that was in it. He! The name had been like a pistol shot in her head, and then something, a look, as if over some chilly snowy landscape, a gleam of cold light had startled her even before the name. “Is it——is it? I did not know you had been ill,” she said, almost under her breath.

“Yes, it is my own self, and I have been ill, extremely ill; but I am getting better. I will sit down if you will permit me. I am not in the least excited; but very glad to see Mrs. Rowland and offer her my congratulations. I am not in such good case myself,—nobody is likely to congratulate me.”

“I do not see that,” said Lady Leighton. “You are so very much better than you have been.”

“That’s very true. I may be congratulated so far. I should offer to call at your hotel on Mr. Rowland, but I fear my strength is not to be trusted. I am more glad than I can tell you to have seen you looking so well and happy, after so many years. Lady Leighton, I think I will now accept your kind offer to ring for my man.” He put out the grey tremulous hand again, and enfolded that of Evelyn in it. “I am very glad, very glad,” he said with emphasis, in a low but firm tone, Lady Leighton having turned away to ring the bell, “to have seen you again, and so well, and so young, and I don’t doubt so happy. My wife is dead, and I am a wreck as you see——”

“I am very sorry, very sorry.”

“I knew you would be: while I am glad to have seen you so well. And I have two children whom I shall have to leave to the tender mercies of the world. Ah, we have trials in our youth that we are tragical about; but believe me these are the real tragedies of life,” he said.

And then there came something almost more painful still. His servant came into the room and put on his coat and buttoned him into it as if he had been a child, then raised him smartly from his chair, drew an arm within his own, and led him away. The two ladies heard them go slowly shuffling downstairs, the master leaning upon the servant. Evelyn had grown as pale as marble. She remembered now to have seen an invalid chair standing at the door. And this was he who had filled her young life with joy, and afterwards with humiliation and pain. “Oh,” she cried, “and that is he, that is he!”

“I wish I could have spared you the sight,” said Lady Leighton, “but when he saw your card—he looked at it, when I dropped it out of my hand: people ill like that are so inquisitive—I knew how it would be. Well, you must have seen him sooner or later. It is as well to get it over. He is a wreck, as he says. And oh the contrast, Evelyn! He could not but see it—you so young-looking, so happy and well off. What a lesson it is.”

“I don’t want to be a lesson,” said Evelyn, with a faint smile. “Don’t make any moral out of me. He was a man always so careful of himself. What has he done to be so broken down?”

“Can you ask me what he has done, Evelyn? He has thought of nothing but himself and his own advantage all his life. Don’t you think we all remember——”

“I hope that you will forget—with all expedition,” cried Evelyn quickly. “I have no stone to cast at him. I am very very sorry.” The moisture came into her kind eyes. Her pity was so keen that it felt like a wound in her own heart.

“Oh, Evelyn, I would give the world this had not happened. I did all I could to keep you from seeing he was there. Such a shock for you without any warning! I know, I know that a woman never forgets.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rowland, hastily, “that has nothing to do with it. I never was sentimental like you; and a spectacle like that is not one to call up tender recollections, is it? But I am very sorry. And he has children, to make him feel it all the more.”

“Yes,” said Lady Leighton doubtfully, “he has children. I must tell you that he still has a way of working on the feelings. Oh, poor man, I would not say a word that was unkind; but now that he has nothing but his troubles to give him an interest, he likes, perhaps, to make the most of his troubles. I wish you had not had this shock to begin with, dear Evelyn, your first day at home.”

CHAPTER VI.

Does a woman never forget? It was not true perhaps as Lady Leighton said it, but it would be vain to say that Evelyn was not moved to the bottom of her heart by the sight of her former lover. He, about whom all the dreams of her youth had been woven, who had deserted her, given her up in her need, and humiliated her before all the world. To see him at all would not have been without effect upon her, but to see him so humiliated in his turn, so miserable a wreck, while she was in all the flush of a late return to youth and well-being, happy in a subdued way, and on the height of prosperity, gave her a shock of mingled feeling, perhaps more strong than any she had experienced since he rent her life in two, and covered her (as she felt) with shame. But it was not any re-awakening of the extinguished fire which moved Evelyn. She could not forget, it was true, and yet she could easily have forgotten, the relation in which she had stood to him, and her old adoration of him, at all times the visionary love of a girl, giving a hundred fictitious excellencies to the hero she had chosen. This was not what had occurred to her mind. Had she seen him in his ancient supremacy of good fortune—a well-preserved, middle-aged Adonis, smiling perhaps, as she had imagined, at her late marriage with a rich parvenu, keeping the superior position of a man who has rejected a love bestowed upon him, and never without that complacent sense of having “behaved badly,” which is one of the many forms of vanity—the sight would not have disturbed her, except, perhaps, with a passing sensation of anger. But to see him in his downfall gave Evelyn a shock of pain. It was too terrible to think of what he had been and what he was. Instead of the sense of retribution which her friend had suggested, Evelyn had a horrified revulsion of feeling, rebellious against any such possibility, angry lest it should be supposed that she could have desired the least and smallest punishment, or could take any satisfaction from its infliction. She would have hated herself could she have thought this possible. There is an old poem in which the story of Troilus and Cressida, so often treated by the poets in its first bloom, has an after episode, an administration of poetic justice, in which all the severity of the mediæval imagination comes forth. The false Cressida falls into deepest misery in this tragic strain, and becomes a leper, the last and most awful of degradations. And while she sits with her wretched companions, begging her miserable bread by the roadside, the injured Troilus, the true knight, rides by. Evelyn, though I do not suppose she had ever seen Henryson’s poem, felt the same anguish of pity which arose in the bosom of the noble Greek. If she could have sent in secret the richest offering, and stolen aside out of the way not to insult the sufferer even by a look, she would have done it. Her pity was an agony, but it had nothing in it akin to love.

Lady Leighton, however, did not leave her friend any time to brood over this painful scene. She had no intention to confine to a mere interchange of courtesies this sudden reappearance upon the scene of a former companion whom, indeed, she could not help effectually in the period of her humiliation, but to whom now, in her newly acquired wealth, Madeline felt herself capable of being of great use. And it must not be supposed that it was purely a vulgar inclination to connect herself with rising fortunes, or to derive advantage from her friend’s new position that moved her. It was in its way a genuine and natural desire to further her old companion, whom she had been fond of, but for whom she could do nothing when she was poor and her position desperate. The love of a little fuss and pleasant meddling was the alloy of Lady Leighton’s gold, not any mercenary devotion to riches or thought of personal advantage. It was certainly delightful to have somebody to push and help on who could be nothing but a credit to you; to whom it would be natural to spend much money; and who yet was “one of our own set” and a favourite friend.

On the second day accordingly after that meeting which had been so painful an entry into the old world, Lady Leighton came in upon Evelyn as she sat alone, not very cheerful, longing for her husband and the new home in which she should find her natural place. She came with a rustle and bustle of energy, and that pretty air of having a thousand things to do, which is distinctive of a lady in the height of the season. “Here you are, all alone,” she said, “and so many people asking for you. Why didn’t you come to luncheon yesterday? We waited half an hour for you. And then we expected you at five o’clock, and I had Mary Riversdale and Alice Towers to meet you, who had both screamed to hear you were in town. And you never came! And of course they thought me a delusion and a snare, for they had given up half a dozen engagements. Why didn’t you come?”

“I am very sorry,” Evelyn said.

“That is no excuse,” cried her friend. “You were upset by the sight of that wretched Ned Saumarez. And I don’t wonder; but I believe he is not half so ill as he looks, and up to a good deal of mischief still. However, that is not the question. I have come about business. What are you going to do about a house?”

“About a house?”

“I came to be quite frank with you to-day. When your husband comes back you ought to have something ready for him. My dear Evelyn, I am going to speak seriously. If you want to know people, and be properly taken up, you must have a house for the rest of the season. A hotel is really not the thing. You ought to be able to have a few well chosen dinner parties, and to see your friends a little in the evening. There is nothing like a speciality. You might go in for Indian people. Let it be known that people are sure to meet a few Eastern big wigs, and your fortune would be made.”

“But——” cried Evelyn aghast.

“Don’t tell me,” said Lady Leighton solemnly, “that you don’t want to know people, and be properly taken up again. Of course you don’t require to be pushed into society like a mere millionaire who is nobody. You are quite different. People remember you. They say to me, ‘Oh, that is the Miss Ferrars of the Gloucestershire family.’ Everybody knows who you are. You have nothing to do but to choose a nice house—and there are plenty at this time of the season to be had for next to nothing—and to give a few really nice dinners. Doing it judiciously, finding out when people are free, for of course it does happen now and then that there will be a day when there is nothing going on, you can manage it yet. And everybody knows that your husband is very rich. You could do enough at least to open the way for next season, and make it quite simple. But, my dear, in that case you must not go on wasting these precious days, without deciding on anything and living in a hotel.”

“You take away my breath,” said Mrs. Rowland. “I have not the least desire to be taken up by society. If I had, I think what I saw the other day would have been enough to cure me; but I never had the smallest thought—my husband is rich, I suppose, but he does not mean to spend his money so. He means to live—at home—among his own people.”

Evelyn’s voice, which had been quite assured, faltered a little and trembled as she said these last words.

“Among his own people!” said Lady Leighton, with a little shudder. “Do you mean to say——! Now, my dear Evelyn, you must forgive me, for perhaps I am quite wrong. I have heard about Mr. Rowland. I have always heard that he was—that he had been——” Madeline Leighton was a person of great sense. She saw in Evelyn’s naturally mild eyes that look of the dove enraged, which is more alarming as a danger signal than any demonstration on the part of the eagle. She concluded hastily, “A very excellent man, the nicest man in the world.”

“You were rightly informed,” said Mrs. Rowland, somewhat stiffly. “My husband is as good a man as ever lived.”

“But to go and settle among—his own people! perhaps they are not all as good as ever lived. They must be a little different to what you have been used to. Don’t you think you should stipulate for a little freedom? Frank’s people are as good as ever lived, and they are all of course, so to speak, in our own set. But if I were condemned to live with them all the year round, I should die. Evelyn! it is, I assure you, a very serious matter. One should begin with one’s husband seriously, you know. Very good women who always pretend to like everything they are wanted to do, and smother their own inclinations, are a mistake, my dear. They always turn out a mistake. In the first place they are not true any more than you thought me to be the other day. They are cheating, even if it is with the best of motives. And in the end they are always found out. And to pretend to like things you hate is just being as great a humbug as any make-believe in society. Besides, your husband would like it far better if you provided him with a little amusement, and kept his own people off him for part of the year.”

“I don’t think Society would amuse him at all,” said Evelyn, with a laugh. “And besides, he has no people that I know of—so that you need not be frightened for me—except his own children,” she added, with involuntary gravity.

Lady Leighton gave vent to an “O!” which was rounder than the O of Giotto. Horror, amazement, compassion were in it. “He has children!” she said faintly.

“Two—and they, of course, will be my first duty.”

“Girls?”

“A girl and a boy.”

“Oh, you poor thing!” said Lady Leighton, giving her friend an embrace full of sympathy. “I am so sorry for you! I hope they are little things.”

Evelyn felt a little restored to herself when she was encountered with such solemnity. “You have turned all at once into a Tragic Muse,” she said; “you need not be so sorry for me. I am not—sorry for myself.”

“Oh, don’t be a humbug,” said Lady Leighton severely; “of all humbugs a virtuous humbug is the worst. You hate it! I can see it in your eyes.”

“My eyes must be very false if they express any such feeling. To tell the truth,” she added smiling, “I am a little frightened—one can scarcely help being that. I don’t know how they may look upon me. I shouldn’t care to be considered like the stepmother of the fairy tales.”

“Poor Evelyn!” said Lady Leighton. She was so much impressed as to lose that pliant readiness of speech which was one of her great qualities. Madeline’s resources were generally supposed by her friends to be unlimited: she had a suggestion for everything. But in this case she was silenced—for at least a whole minute. Then she resumed, as if throwing off a load.

“You should have the boy sent to Eton, and the girl to a good school. You can’t be expected to take them out of the nursery. And for their sakes, Evelyn, if for nothing else, it is most important that you should know people and take your place in society. It makes all my arguments stronger instead of weaker: you must bring Miss Rowland out—when she grows up.”

Evelyn could not but laugh at the ready advice which always sprang up like a perpetual fountain, in fine independence of circumstances. “Dear Madeline,” she said, “there is only one drawback, which is that they are grown up already. My stepdaughter is eighteen. I don’t suppose she will go to school, if I wished it ever so much—and I have no wish on the subject. It is a great responsibility; but provided they will accept me as their friend——”

“And where have they been brought up? Is she pretty? are they presentable? She must have money, and she will marry, Evelyn; there’s hope in that. But instead of departing from my advice to you on that account, I repeat it with double force. You must bring out a girl of eighteen. She must see the world. You can’t let her marry anybody that may turn up in the country. Take my word for it, Evelyn,” she added solemnly, “if it was necessary before, it is still more necessary now.”

“She may not marry at all—there are many girls who do not.”

“Don’t let us anticipate anything so dreadful,” said the woman of the world. “A stepdaughter who does not marry is too much to look forward to. No, my dear, that is what you must do. You must bring her out well and get her off. Is she pretty? for, of course, she will be rich.”

“I don’t know. I know little about the children. My husband has been in India for a long time. He does not himself know so much of them as he ought.”

A shiver went through Lady Leighton’s elegant toilette. She kissed her friend with great pity. “I will stand by you, dear,” she said, “to the very utmost of my ability. You may be sure that anything I can do to help you;—but put on your bonnet in the meantime I have a list of houses I want you to look at. You can look at them at least—that does no harm; if not for this season, it will be a guide to you for the next. And it is always more or less amusing. After that there are some calls I have to make. Come, Evelyn, I really cannot leave you to mope by yourself here.”

And Evelyn went. She was lonely, and it was a greater distraction after all than buying cabinets in Wardour Street, and looking over even the most lovely old Persian rugs. Looking at houses, especially furnished houses, to be let for the season, is an amusement which many ladies like. It is curious to see the different ideas, the different habits of the people who want to let them, and to contrast the house that is furnished to be let and the house that is furnished to be lived in, which are two different things. Lady Leighton enjoyed the afternoon very much. She pointed out to her friend just how she could arrange the rooms in every house, so that the liveliest hopes were left in the mind of each householder; and by the time they got back to Madeline’s own house to tea, she declared herself too tired to do anything but lie on the sofa, and talk over all they had seen. “It lies between Wilton Place and Chester Street,” she said. “The last is the best house, but then the other is better furnished. That boudoir in Wilton Place is a little gem: or you might make the drawing-room in Chester Street exceedingly pretty with those old things you are always buying. The carpets are very bad, I must allow, but with a few large rugs—and it is such a good situation. Either of them would do. And so cheap!—a mere nothing for millionaires like you.”

Evelyn allowed, not without interest, that the houses were very nice. She allowed herself to discuss the question. Visions floated before her eyes of old habits resumed, and that flutter of movement, of occupation, of new things to see and hear, which forms the charm of town, caught her with its fascination. To step a little, just a little, not much, into the living stream, to feel the movement, though she was not carried away by it, was a temptation. At a distance it is easy to condemn the frivolity, the hurry, the rush of the season; but to touch its glittering surface over again after a long interval of banishment, and feel the thrill of the tide of life which is never still, which quickens the pulse and stimulates the mind, has a great attraction in it. Evelyn forgot for the moment the shock which had so driven her back from all pleasant projects. She allowed herself to see with Madeline’s eyes. No doubt it might be pleasant. It was now June, and a month of society in the modified way in which a late arrival, so long separated from all old acquaintances can alone hope to enjoy it, would not be too great an interruption to the home life, and it would leave time to have everything done at Rosmore. And it would postpone a little the introduction to many new elements of which she was afraid. She had been disappointed when her husband left her, to have the entrance upon her new life postponed at all, and the period of suspense prolonged. But that feeling began to give way to other feelings—feelings more natural. After the unutterably subdued life she had led in India, and before the novel and strange existence which was now waiting for her as the mother and guide of human creatures unknown to her, might not a moment of relaxation, of individuality, be worth having? She had been Mrs. Stanhope’s friend without any identity, with a life which was all bound up in the obscure rooms of the bungalow; and she was Mr. Rowland’s wife, the mother of his children, the head of his house, in an atmosphere altogether novel to her, and which of her, in her natural personality, knew nothing. Society was not her sphere, yet it was the nearest to any sphere in which she could stand as herself. And she allowed herself to be seduced. She thought that perhaps for a little James might enjoy it. Chester Street is very near the Park. To walk out in the June mornings, when even the London air is made of sunshine, to the Row and see the dazzling stream flow by—the beautiful horses, the beautiful people—girls and men whom it was a sight to see—to meet every five minutes an old acquaintance, to hear once more that babble about people and personal incidents which is so trivial to the outsider, but always attractive to those who know the names and can understand the situations about which everybody talks! And in the evening, to sit at the head of the table with perhaps a statesman, perhaps a poet, somebody of whom the whole world has heard, at her right hand, penetrating even the society chatter with a thread of meaning! Evelyn forgot for the moment various things that would not be so pleasant—that her husband would like to entertain a lord, but would not probably know much more about him, however great he might be—that he might be inclined to tell the price of his wine, and laugh the rich man’s laugh of satisfaction at the costliness of everything, and the ruin that awaited him in London. These little imperfections Evelyn was perhaps too sensitive of, but on this occasion they stole out of her mind. She began to discuss Chester Street with a gradually growing satisfaction. Or Park Lane? There was a house in Park Lane—and for a hundred pounds or two of rent, if he liked the scheme at all, James would not hesitate. She was quite sure of him so far as that was concerned.

“Chester Street has its advantages,” said Lady Leighton. “It is such a capital situation; and yet quite modest, no pretension. It is more like you, Evelyn. So far as Mr. Rowland is concerned, I feel sure, though I don’t know him, that he would prefer Belgrave Square, and the biggest rent in London.”

“How do you know that?” said Evelyn with an uneasy laugh.

“Because I know my millionaires,” said Lady Leighton gravely. “But for the end of the season, and an accidental sort of thing as it will be, I should not recommend that. Next year if you come up in May, and on quite lancé; but for this year, when you are only feeling your way—Chester Street, Evelyn! that’s my idea—and a few small parties, quite select, to meet some Indian man. I don’t want you to have just a common success like the vulgar rich people. Dear, no! quite a different thing—a success d’estime—a real good foundation for anything you might like to do after. You might take Marlborough House then—if you could get it—and stick at nothing.”

“We shall not attempt to get Marlborough House,” said Evelyn, with a laugh, “nor even anything more moderate. Mr. Rowland does not care for town. But I confess that you have beguiled me, Madeline, with your flattering tongue. I think—I should rather like—if he approves of the idea.”

“My dear, it is surely enough if you approve of the idea. He is not going to make you a black slave.”

“My husband is sure to approve of what I do,” said Evelyn, with a little dignity. “But I prefer to consult him all the same. He may have formed other engagements. It may be necessary to go up to Rosmore at once. But I confess that I should like—if there is nothing else in the way.”

“And that is all,” cried Lady Leighton, “after all my efforts! Well, if it must be so, telegraph to him—or at least tell him to answer you by telegraph: for that house might still be swept up while you are hesitating. Oh, I know it is rather late for a house to be snapped up. But when you want a thing it immediately becomes a chance that some one else will want it too. I shall look for you to-morrow to luncheon, Evelyn: now, mind that you don’t fail me, and we’ll go out after and settle about it, and do all that is necessary. Shouldn’t you like now to go and look at a few more Persian rugs? and that little Chippendale set you were telling me of? The next best thing to spending money one’s self is helping one’s friend to do it,” said Lady Leighton. “Indeed, some people think it is almost more agreeable: for you have the pleasure, without the pain of paying. Come, Evelyn, and we can finish with a turn in the Park before dinner. I always like to get as much as possible into every day.”

It was indeed a necessity with the town lady to get as much as she could into her day. If she had not gone to choose the rugs on her friend’s account, she would have had to make for herself some other piece of business equally important. There was not an hour that had not its occupation. Looking at the houses had filled the afternoon with bustle and excitement: and doing all that was necessary, i.e., rearranging all the furniture, covering up the dingy carpets, choosing new curtains, etc., would furnish delightful “work” for two or three. Lady Leighton had never an hour that was without its engagement, as she said with a sigh. She envied her friends who had leisure. She had not a moment to herself.

And Evelyn wrote a hurried letter to her husband about the Chester Street house, and the pleasure of staying in town for a week or two, as she put it vaguely, and introducing him to some of her friends. She even in her haste mentioned Lord and Lady Leighton, knowing that he had a little weakness for a title—a thing she was sadly ashamed of when she came to think. But the best of us are so easily led away.

CHAPTER VII.

The bustle of this afternoon’s occupation, which left her no time to think before she was deposited at her hotel for her late dinner, put serious thoughts out of Evelyn’s mind; and even when that hasty meal, over which she had no inclination to linger, was ended, and she had relapsed into the comfort of a dressing gown, and lay extended in an easy chair beside the open windows, hearing all the endless tumult of town, half with a sense of being left out, and half with self-congratulations over her quiet, she was little inclined to reflection. The echo of all that she had been doing hung about her, and that pleasant little commotion of choice, of arrangement and organization, which is involved in a new house and new settlement, absorbed her thoughts. They went very fast, setting a thousand things stirring. There is nothing that moves the woman of to-day more than the task of making a house pretty and harmonious, and forming a version of home out of any spare hired dwelling. Evelyn had anticipated having this to do for Rosmore. But James had somehow taken it out of her hands. He had gone to prepare it for her, not thinking that she would have liked much better to have a share in the doing. And now to think of having her little essay for herself, and setting up a temporary home out of her own fancy, turning a few bare rooms into a place full of fragrance and brightness, pleased her fancy. She listened to the carriages flying past with an endless roll of sound, so many of them conveying society to its favourite haunts, to one set of brilliant rooms after another, to new combinations of smiling faces and beautiful toilettes, with a half melancholy half pleasing excitement. To be above, and listen to that sound, is always slightly melancholy, and Evelyn could not but think a little of the pleasure of emerging from the silence of solitude, of seeing and being seen, of finding friends from whom she had been long parted, and a dazzling vision of life which was all the brighter from being partially forgotten, and never very perfectly known. From where she sat she could see the glare of the carriage lamps, and now and then some glimpses of the persons within—a lady’s white toilette surging up at the window or a brilliant shirt front looking almost like another lamp inside. It amused her to watch that stream flow on.

And then there came over her a dark shadow, the vision of the man who had been so young and so full of life when she saw him last, and who was so death-like and fallen now. The thought chilled her suddenly to the heart. She drew back from the window, and wrapped herself in a shawl, with the shudder of a cold which was not physical but spiritual. In the midst of all that ceaseless loudness of life and movement and pleasure, and of the vision which had visited her own brain of lighted rooms, and animated faces, and brilliant talk—to drop back to that wreck of existence, the helpless man leaning upon his servant’s arm, bundled up like a piece of goods, unresisting, compelled to submit to those cares which were an indignity, yet which were necessary to very existence! The echo came back to Evelyn’s heart. If there was in her mind, who in reality cared for none of these things, a little sentiment of loneliness as she saw the stream of life go by, what must there be in his, to whom society was life, and who was cut off from all its pleasures? Her imagination followed him to the prison of his weakness, his melancholy home, with this imperative servant who tended and ruled all his movements, for his sole society. God help him! What a condition to come to, after all the experiences of his life!

Should she ever meet him again, she had asked herself, partly with a vaguely formed wish of saying some word of kindness to so great a sufferer, partly with a shrinking reluctance to give herself the pain of looking upon his humiliation again? But it was almost as great a shock as on the first meeting to see him coming along the park as she walked to Lady Leighton’s next day. He was being drawn along in his wheeled chair by the man who had bundled him up so summarily on the previous occasion. Evelyn would have hurried on, but he held out his hand appealingly, and even called her name as she endeavoured to pass. “Won’t you stop and speak to me?” he said. It was impossible to resist that appeal. She stood by him looking down upon his ashy countenance, the loose lips and half-open mouth which babbled rather than talked, and which it required an effort at first to understand. “Will you sit down a little and talk?” he said. “It’s a pleasure I don’t often have, a talk with an old friend. Sit there, and I’ll have my chair drawn beside you. I hope you won’t think yourself a victim, as I fear some of my friends do——”

“Oh no,” she said anxiously, “don’t think so: I—was going to see Madeline—but it will not matter——”

“Oh, she can spare you for half an hour.”

It was with dismay that Evelyn heard this, but how could she resist the power of his weakness and fallen estate? He had his chair drawn up in front of the one she had taken, very near her, and with a gesture dismissed his servant, who went and took up his position with his back against a tree, and his eyes upon the master who was also his patient. The sight of this reminder of his extreme weakness and precarious condition was almost more than Evelyn’s nerves could bear.

“We are a wonderful contrast, you and I,” he said; “you so young and fair, just entering upon life, and I leaving it, a decrepid old man.”

“You know,” she said, “that I am not young and fair any more than you are old. I am grieved to see you so ill; but I hope——”

“There is no room for hope. To go on like this for many years, which they say is possible, is not much worth hoping for, is it? Still, I would bear it for various reasons. But I am not likely to be tried. I am a wreck—and my wife only lived two years—I suppose you knew that.”

“I had heard that Mrs. Saumarez died.”

“Yes—I’d have come to you for consolation had I dared.”

“It was better not,” said Evelyn, while a subdued flash of indignation shot out much against her will from her downcast eyes.

“That was what I thought. When a thing does not succeed at first it is better not to try to get fire out of the ashes,” he said didactically; “but between us two, there is no difficulty in seeing which has the best of it. I should like to call and make Mr. Rowland’s acquaintance. But you see the plight in which I am. It is almost impossible for me to get up a stair——”

“My husband—does not mean to remain in London,” she said hurriedly. “We are going to Scotland at once.”

“To a place he has bought, I suppose? I hear that he has a great fortune—and I am most heartily glad of it for your sake.”

She replied hurriedly, with a slight bow of acquiescence. It was the strangest subject to choose for discussion: but yet it was very difficult to find any subject. “You told me the other day,” she said, “about your children.”

“I am very thankful to you for asking. I wanted to speak of them. I have a boy and girl, with only a year between them—provided for more or less; but who is to look after them when I am gone? Their mother’s family I never got on with. They are the most worldly-minded people. I should not like my little Rosamond to fall into their hands.”

There was a pause: for Evelyn found that she had nothing to say. It was so extraordinary to sit here, the depositary of Edward Saumarez’s confidences, listening to the account of his anxieties—she who was so little likely to be of any help.

“How old is she?” she managed to ask at last.

“Rosamond? How long is it since we were—so much together? A long time. I dare say more than twenty years.”

“Something like that.”

“Ah well,” he said with a sigh, “I married about a year after. They’re nineteen and twenty, or thereabouts. Rosamond, they tell me, ought to be brought out; but what is the good of bringing out a girl into the world who has no one to protect her? Nobody but a worldly-minded aunt who will sell her for what she will bring—marry her off her hands as quickly as possible; that is all she will think of. It may seem strange to you, but my little girl is proud of me, dreadful object as I am.”

“Why should it seem strange? It would be very unnatural if she was not.”

“She is the only one in the world who cares a brass farthing whether I live or die.” As Evelyn raised her eyes full of pity, she was suddenly aware that he was watching her, watching for some tell-tale flush or gesture which should give a tacit denial to what he said. He, like Lady Leighton, was of opinion that a woman never forgets, and dreadful object as he allowed himself to be, the man’s vanity would fain have been fed by some sign that the woman beside him, whom he had abandoned so basely, whose heart he had done his best to break, still cherished something of the old feeling, and was his still. He was disconcerted by the calm compassion in her eyes.

“Eddy is as cold as a stone,” he said; “he is like his mother’s people. He doesn’t see why an old fellow like me should keep dragging on. He minds no more than Jarvis does—less, for I am Jarvis’s living, and to keep me alive is the best thing for him. But it would be better for Eddy, he thinks, if I were out of the way.”

“Please do not speak so; I don’t believe that any son really entertains such thoughts.”

“Ah, that shows how little you know. You have not been in society all these years. Eddy is philosophical, and thinks that I have very little good of my life, which is true enough, and that he would have a great deal, which is quite as true.”

“Even if it were so, he would not be his own master—at nineteen,” Evelyn said.

“Twenty—he is the eldest. Of course he would be better off in that case. He would have more freedom, and a better allowance; and he would be of more importance, not the second but the first.”

“Oh,” she cried with horror, “do not impute such dreadful motives to your own child.”

He shook his head, looking at her with an air of cynical wisdom—a look which made the countenance, so changed and faded with disease, almost diabolical to contemplate. Evelyn turned her eyes away with a movement of horrified impatience. And this was not at all the feeling with which Saumarez meant to inspire the woman who had once loved him. He was unwilling even now to believe that she had entirely escaped out of his power.

“Evelyn,” he said, putting forth again that large nerveless hand, from the touch of which she shrank—“let me call you so, as in the old days. It can do no one any harm now.”

“Surely not,” she said; “it could do no one any harm.”

He had not expected this reply; if she had shrank from the familiarity and refused her permission, he would have been better pleased. Helpless, paralytic, dreadful to behold, he would fain have considered himself a danger to her peace of mind still.

“I have to accept that,” he said, “like all the rest. That it doesn’t matter what I say, no man could be jealous of me. Evelyn!—I like to say the name—there’s everything that’s sweet and womanly in it. I wish I had called my little girl by that name. I thought of it, to tell the truth.”

“Nothing could have been more unsuitable,” cried Evelyn, with a flush of anger. “I hope you did not think of it, for that would have been an insult, not a compliment to me. Mr. Saumarez, I think I must go on. Madeline expected me at——”

“Oh, let Madeline wait a little! She has plenty of interests, and I have something very serious to say. You may think I am trying to lead you into recollections—which certainly would agitate me, if not you. You are very composed, Evelyn. I ought to be glad to see you so, but I don’t know that I am. I remember everything so well—but you—seem to have passed into another world.”

“It is true. The world is entirely changed for me. I can scarcely believe that it was I who lived through so many experiences twenty-two years ago.”

“I feel that there is a reproach in that—and yet if I could tell you everything—but you would not listen to me now.”

“I am no longer interested,” she said gently, “so many things have happened since then: my father’s death, and Harry’s. How thankful I was to be able to care for them both! All these things are between me and my girlhood. It has died out of my mind. If there is anything you want to say to me, Mr. Saumarez, I hope it is on another subject than that.”

The attempt in his eyes to convey a look of sentiment made her feel faint. But fortunately his faculties were keen enough to show him the futility of that attempt. “Yes,” he said, “it is another subject—a very different subject. I shall not live long, and I have no friends. I care for nobody, and you will say it is a natural consequence of this that nobody cares for me.”

She made a movement of dissent in her great pity. “It cannot be so bad as that.”

“But it is. My sister’s dead, you know, and there is really nobody. Evelyn, I have a great favour to ask you. Will you be the guardian of my boy and girl?”

“The guardian—of your children!” She was so startled and astonished that she could only gaze at him, and could not find another word to say.

“Why should you be so much surprised? I never thought so much of any woman as I do of you. I find you again after so many years, unchanged. Evelyn, you are changed. I said so a little while ago: but yet you are yourself, and that’s the best I know. I’d like my little Rosamond to be like you. I’d like Eddy, though he’s a rascal, to know some one that would make even him good. Evelyn, they are well enough off, they would not be any trouble in that way. Will you take them—will you be their guardian when I am gone?”

Evelyn was not only astonished but frightened by what he asked of her. She rose up hastily. “You must not think of it—you must not think of it! What could I do for them? I have other duties of my own.”

“It would not be so much trouble,” he said, “only to give an eye to them now and then; to have them with you when you felt inclined to ask them—nothing more. For old friendship’s sake you would not object to have my children on a visit once a year or so. I am sure you would not refuse me that?”

“But that is very different from being their guardian.”

“It would not be, as I should arrange it. You would give them your advice when they wanted it. You would do as much as that for any one, for the gamekeeper’s children, much more for an old friend’s—and see them now and then, and inquire how they were getting on? I should ask nothing more. Evelyn, you wouldn’t refuse an old friend, a disabled, unhappy solitary man like me?”

“Oh, Mr. Saumarez!” she cried. He had tried to raise himself up a little in the fervour of his appeal, but fell back again in a sort of heap, the exertion and the emotion being too much for his strength. The servant appeared in a moment from where he had been watching. “He oughtn’t to be allowed to agitate himself, ma’am,” said the man reproachfully. Evelyn, alarmed, walked humbly beside the chair till they came to the gate of the Park, terrified to think that perhaps he had injured himself, that perhaps she ought to humour him by consenting to anything. He was not allowed to say any more, nor did she add a word, but he put out his hand again and pressed hers feebly as they parted. “Can I do anything?” she had asked the servant in her compunction. “Nothing but leave him quite quiet,” said the man. “It might be as much as his life is worth. I don’t hold with letting ‘em talk.” Saumarez was one of a class, a mere case, to his attendant. And Evelyn felt as if she had been guilty of a kind of murder as she hurried away.

She found Lady Leighton waiting for her for lunch, and slightly disturbed by the delay. “I have a thousand things to do, and the loss of half-an-hour puts one all out,” she said, with a little peevishness; “but I’m sure you had a reason, Evelyn, for being so late.”

“A reason which was much against my will,” said Evelyn, telling the story of her distress, to which her friend listened very gravely. “I should take care not to meet him again,” said Lady Leighton, with a cloud on her brow. “You listen to him out of pure pity, but weak and ailing as he is, it would be sweet to his vanity to compromise a woman even now.”

“I do not understand what you mean,” said Evelyn; “he could not compromise me, if that is it, by anything he could do, were he all that he has ever been.”

“You don’t know what your husband might think,” said her friend; “he wouldn’t like it. He might have every confidence in you—but a man of Ned Saumarez’s character, and an old lover, and all that—he might say——”

“My husband,” said Mrs. Rowland, feeling the blood mount to her head, “has no such ideas in his mind. He neither knows anything about Mr. Saumarez’s character, nor would he even if he did know. You mistake my feeling altogether. It is not anything about my husband that distresses me—it is the trust he wants me to undertake of his children.”

“Oh, you may make yourself easy about that, Evelyn. That was only a blind. It is little he thinks about his children. He’ll get you to meet him and to talk to him, professedly about them—oh, I don’t doubt that! but that’s not what he means. You don’t know Ned Saumarez so well as I do,” cried Lady Leighton, putting out her hand to stop an outcry of indignation; “you don’t know the world so well as I do; you have been out of it for years, and you always were an innocent, and never did understand—”

“Understand! that a man who is dying by inches should have—such ideas. A man on the edge of the grave—with a servant, a nurse, looking after him as if he were a child.”

“It’s very sad, my dear, especially the last, which is incredible, I allow. How a man like that can think that a woman would—But they do all the same. You might be led yourself by pity, or perhaps by a little lingering feeling—or—well, well, I will not say that, I don’t want to make you angry—perhaps by a little vanity then, if I may say such a word.”

“Madeline, I think you know far too much of the world.”

“Perhaps,” said Lady Leighton, not without a little self-complacence. “I have had a great deal of experience in life.”

“And too little,” said Evelyn, “of honest meaning and truth.”

“Oh, as for that! but if you think you will find truth or honest meaning, my dear, in Ned Saumarez, you will be very far wrong; and if he can lead you into a mess with your husband, or get you talked about——”

“He will never get me into a mess with my husband, you may be certain of that, Madeline.”

“Oh, if you will take your own way, I cannot help it,” cried Lady Leighton. “I have done all I can. And now come down to lunch. At all events we must not quarrel, you and I.”

The lunch, however, was not a very successful one, and Evelyn refused to take any further action about Chester Street, and was so determined in her resistance that her friend at last gave up the argument, and with something very like the quarrel she had deprecated, allowed Mrs. Rowland to depart alone for her hotel, which she did in great fervour of indignation and distress. But as she walked quickly along the long line of the park, she perceived with a pang of alarm and surprise, the invalid’s chair being drawn across the end of the ride, into the same path where she had met Saumarez an hour or two before. Was it possible that Madeline could be right? Was he going back to wait for her there? She stood but for a moment and watched the slow mournful progress of the chair, the worn-out figure lying back in it, the ashen face amid the many wraps. A certain awe came over her. She had been long out of the world, and had never been very wise in such matters: and who could believe that a man in the last stage of life should be able to amuse himself by schemes at once so base and so frivolous? She turned back half-ashamed of herself for doing so, and went home another way. It might be, she said to herself with a compunction, that all he meant was after all what he thought his children’s interest: then with a thrill of self-suspicion asked herself, was this the vanity by which Madeline, too clear sighted, had suggested she might be moved? Oh, clearly the world was not a place for her! The mere discussion of such possibilities abashed and shamed her. Her simple husband, who could not cope with these fine people, and upon whom probably they would look down—her home, far from all such ignoble suggestions, her own difficulties, which might be troublesome enough, but not like these—how much better they were! Her heart had been a little caught by the aspect of the old life from which she had been separated so long, and she had begun to think that with all the advantages her new position gave her, it might be pleasant to resume those of the old one, and venture a little upon the sea of society, which looked so bright at the first glance. Had she yielded to this temptation no doubt the good Rowland would have followed her guidance, pleased with anything she suggested, delighted for a time with the fine company, giving up his chosen life for her sake. And it is very probable that, had Lady Leighton foreseen the disgust with which her warning would fill her friend’s mind, she would have been chary about giving it, and would have preferred to let Evelyn take her chance of compromise and danger. The worst of society is, that it deadens the mind to the base and vile, taking away all horror of things unclean, by inculcating a perpetual suspicion of their existence. But no such deadening influence had ever been in Evelyn’s mind. She sent another letter to her husband by that afternoon’s post, which, in the midst of various tribulations of his own, made that good man’s heart leap. She told him that she had changed her mind about staying in London, that it was odious to her: that she counted the hours till he should return, that she longed for Rosmore, and to see the Clyde and the lochs, and the children, and “our own home.” James Rowland, though he was not a sentimental man, kissed this letter; for he was in great need of consolation, having in full measure his own troubles too.