LEISURE HOUR SERIES

WHITELADIES

A NOVEL
BY
MRS. OLIPHANT
AUTHOR OF “MARGARET MAITLAND,” “THE LAST OF THE MORTIMERS,” ETC.

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1875
John F. Trow & Son, Printers,
205-213 East 12th St., New York.

WHITELADIES.

CHAPTER I.

It was an old manor-house, not a deserted convent, as you might suppose by the name. The conventual buildings from which no doubt the place had taken its name, had dropped away, bit by bit, leaving nothing but one wall of the chapel, now closely veiled and mantled with ivy, behind the orchard, about a quarter of a mile from the house. The lands were Church lands, but the house was a lay house, of an older date than the family who had inhabited it from Henry VIII.’s time, when the priory was destroyed, and its possessions transferred to the manor. No one could tell very clearly how this transfer was made, or how the family of Austins came into being. Before that period no trace of them was to be found. They sprang up all at once, not rising gradually into power, but appearing full-blown as proprietors of the manor, and possessors of all the confiscated lands. There was a tradition in the family of some wild, tragical union of an emancipated nun with a secularized friar—a kind of repetition of Luther and his Catherine, but with results less comfortable than those which followed the marriage of those German souls. With the English convertites the issue was not happy, as the story goes. Their broken vows haunted them; their possessions, which were not theirs, but the Church’s, lay heavy on their consciences; and they died early, leaving descendants with whose history a thread of perpetual misfortune was woven. The family history ran in a succession of long minorities, the line of inheritance gliding from one branch to the other, the direct thread breaking constantly. To die young, and leave orphan children behind; or to die younger still, letting the line drop and fall back upon cadets of the house, was the usual fate of the Austins of Whiteladies—unfortunate people who bore the traces of their original sin in their very name.

Miss Susan Austin was, at the moment when this story begins, seated in the porch of the manor, on a blazing day of July, when every scrap of shade was grateful and pleasant, and when the deep coolness of the old-fashioned porch was a kind of paradise. It was a very fine old house, half brick, half timber; the eaves of the high gables carved into oaken lace-work; the lattice casements shining out of velvet clothing of ivy; and the great projecting window of the old hall, stepping out upon the velvet lawn, all glass from roof to ground, with only one richly-carved strip of panelling to frame it into the peaked roof. The door stood wide open, showing a long passage floored with red bricks, one wall of which was all casement, the other broken by carved and comely oaken doors, three or four centuries old. The porch was a little wider than the passage, and had a mullioned window in it, by the side of the great front opening, all clustered over with climbing roses. Looking out from the red-floored passage, the eye went past Miss Susan in the porch, to the sweet, luxuriant greenness of the lime-trees on the farther side of the lawn, which ended the prospect. The lawn was velvet green; the trees were silken soft, and laden with blossoms; the roses fluttered in at the open porch window, and crept about the door. Every beam in the long passage, every door, the continuous line of casement, the many turns by which this corridor led, meandering, with wealth of cool and airy space, toward the house, were all centuries old, bearing the stamp of distant generations upon the carved wood and endless windings; but without, everything was young and sunny,—grass and daisies and lime-blossoms, bees humming, birds twittering, the roses waving up and down in the soft wind. I wish the figure of Miss Susan had belonged to this part of the landscape; but, alas! historical accuracy forbids romancing. She was the virtual mistress of the house, in absence of a better; but she was not young, nor had she been so for many a long day.

Miss Susan was about sixty, a comely woman of her age, with the fair hair and blue eyes of the Austins. Her hair was so light that it did not turn gray; and her eyes, though there were wrinkles round them, still preserved a certain innocence and candor of aspect which, ill-natured people said, had helped Miss Susan to make many a hard bargain, so guileless was their aspect. She was dressed in a gray gown of woollen stuff (alpaca, I think, for it is best to be particular); her hair was still abundant, and she had no cap on it, nor any covering. In her day the adoption of a cap had meant the acceptation of old age, and Miss Susan had no intention of accepting that necessity a moment before she was obliged to do so. The sun, which had begun to turn westward, had been blazing into the drawing-room, which looked that way, and Miss Susan had been driven out of her own chair and her own corner by it—an unwarrantable piece of presumption. She had been obliged to fly before it, and she had taken refuge in the porch, which faced to the north, and where shelter was to be found. She had her knitting in her hands; but if her countenance gave any clue to her mind’s occupation, something more important than knitting occupied her thoughts. She sat on the bench which stood on the deepest side between the inner and the outer entrance, knitting silently, the air breathing soft about her, the roses rustling. For a long time she did not once raise her head. The gardener was plodding about his work outside, now and then crossing the lawn with heavy, leisurely foot, muffled by the velvet of the old immemorial turf. Within there would now and then come an indistinct sound of voice or movement through the long passage; but nothing was visible, except the still gray figure in the shade of the deep porch.

By-and-by, however, this silence was broken. First came a maid, carrying a basket, who was young and rosy, and lighted up the old passage with a gleam of lightness and youthful color.

“Where are you going, Jane?” said Miss Susan.

“To the almshouse, please,” said Jane, passing out with a curtsey.

After her came another woman, at ten minutes’ interval, older and staider, in trim bonnet and shawl, with a large carpet-bag.

“Where are you going, Martha?” said the lady again.

“Please, ma’am, to the almshouse,” said Martha.

Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders slightly, but said no more.

A few minutes of silence passed, and then a heavy foot, slow and solemn, which seemed to come in procession from a vast distance, echoing over miles of passage, advanced gradually, with a protestation in every footfall. It was the butler, Stevens, a portly personage, with a countenance somewhat flushed with care and discontent.

“Where are you going, Stevens?” said Miss Susan.

“I’m going where I don’t want to go, mum,” said Stevens, “and where I don’t hold with; and if I might make so bold as to say so, where you ought to put a stop to, if so be as you don’t want to be ruinated and done for—you and Miss Augustine, and all the house.”

“ ‘Ruinated’ is a capital word,” said Miss Susan, blandly, “very forcible and expressive; but, Stevens, I don’t think we’ll come to that yet awhile.”

“Going on like this is as good a way as any,” grumbled the man, “encouraging an idle set of good-for-nothings to eat up ladies as takes that turn. I’ve seen it afore, Miss Austin. You gets imposed upon, right hand and left hand; and as for doing good!—No, no, this ain’t the way.”

Stevens, too had a basket to carry, and the afternoon was hot and the sun blazing. Between the manor and the almshouses there lay a long stretch of hot road, without any shade to speak of. He had reason, perhaps, to grumble over his unwilling share in these liberal charities. Miss Susan shrugged her shoulders again, this time with a low laugh at the butler’s perturbation, and went on with her knitting. In a few minutes another step became audible, coming along the passage—a soft step with a little hesitation in it—every fifth or sixth footfall having a slight pause or shuffle which came in a kind of rhythm. Then a tall figure came round the corner, relieved against the old carved doorway at the end and the bright redness of the brick floor; a tall, very slight woman, peculiarly dressed in a long, limp gown, of still lighter gray than the one Miss Susan wore, which hung closely about her, with long hanging sleeves hanging half way down the skirt of her dress, and something like a large hood depending from her shoulders. As the day was so warm, she had not drawn this hood over her head, but wore a light black gauze scarf, covering her light hair. She was not much younger than her sister, but her hair was still lighter, having some half visible mixture of gray, which whitened its tone. Her eyes were blue, but pale, with none of the warmth in them of Miss Susan’s. She carried her head a little on one side, and, in short, she was like nothing in the world so much as a mediæval saint out of a painted window, of the period when painted glass was pale in color, and did not blaze in blues and rubies. She had a basket too, carried in both her hands, which came out of the long falling lines of her sleeves with a curious effect. Miss Augustine’s basket, however, was full of flowers—roses, and some long white stalks of lilies, not quite over, though it was July, and long branches of jasmine covered with white stars.

“So you are going to the almshouses too?” said her sister. “I think we shall soon have to go and live there ourselves, as Stevens says, if this is how you are going on.”

“Ah, Susan, that would indeed be the right thing to do, if you could make up your mind to it,” said her sister, in a low, soft, plaintive voice, “and let the Church have her own again. Then perhaps our sacrifice, dear, might take away the curse.”

“Fiddlesticks!” said Miss Susan. “I don’t believe in curses. But, Austine, my dear, everybody tells me you are doing a great deal too much.”

“Can one do too much for God’s poor?”

“If we were sure of that now,” said Miss Susan, shaking her head; “but some of them, I am afraid, belong to—the other person. However, I won’t have you crossed; but, Austine, you might show a little moderation. You have carried off Jane and Martha and Stevens: if any one comes, who is to open the door?”

“The doors are all open, and you are here,” said Miss Augustine calmly. “You would not have the poor suffer for such a trifle? But I hope you will have no visitors to disturb your thoughts. I have been meditating much this morning upon that passage, ‘Behold, our days are as a weaver’s shuttle.’ Think of it, dear. We have got much, much to do, Susan, to make up for the sins of our family.”

“Fiddlesticks,” said Miss Susan again; but she said it half playfully, with tones more gentle than her decided expression of face would have prophesied. “Go away to your charities,” she added. “If you do harm, you do it in a good way, and mean well, poor soul, God knows; so I hope no mischief will come of it. But send me Stevens home as soon as may be, Austine, for the sake of my possible meditations, if for nothing else; for there’s nobody left in the house but old Martin and the boy, and the women in the kitchen.”

“What should we want with so many servants?” said Miss Augustine with a sigh; and she walked slowly out of the porch, under the rose-wreaths, and across the lawn, the sun blazing upon her light dress and turning it into white, and beating fiercely on her uncovered head.

“Take a parasol, for heaven’s sake,” said Miss Susan; but the white figure glided on, taking no notice. The elder sister paused for a moment in her knitting, and looked after the other with that look, half tender, half provoked, with which we all contemplate the vagaries of those whom we love, but do not sympathize with, and whose pursuits are folly to us. Miss Susan possessed what is called “strong sense,” but she was not intolerant, as people of strong sense so often are; at least she was not intolerant to her sister, who was the creature most unlike her, and whom she loved best in the world.

The manor-house did not belong to the Misses Austin, but they had lived in it all their lives. Their family history was not a bright one, as I have said; and their own immediate portion of the family had not fared better than the previous generations. They had one brother who had gone into the diplomatic service, and had married abroad and died young, before the death of their father, leaving two children, a boy and a girl, who had been partially brought up with the aunts. Their mother was a Frenchwoman, and had married a second time. The two children, Herbert and Reine, had passed half of their time with her, half with their father’s sisters; for Miss Susan had been appointed their guardian by their father, who had a high opinion of her powers. I do not know that this mode of education was very good for the young people; but Herbert was one of those gentle boys predestined to a short life, who take little harm by spoiling. He was dying now at one-and-twenty, among the Swiss hills, whither he had been taken, when the weather grew hot, from one of the invalid refuges on the Mediterranean shore. He was perishing slowly, and all false hope was over, and everybody knew it—a hard fate enough for his family; but there were other things involved which made it harder still. The estate of Whiteladies was strictly entailed. Miss Susan and Miss Augustine Austin had been well provided for by a rich mother, but their French sister-in-law had no money and another family, and Reine had no right to the lands, or to anything but a very humble portion left to her by her father; and the old ladies had the prospect before them of being turned out of the house they loved, the house they had been born in, as soon as their nephew’s feeble existence should terminate. The supposed heir-at-law was a gentleman in the neighborhood, distantly related, and deeply obnoxious to them. I say the supposed heir—for there was a break in the Austin pedigree, upon which, at the present time, the Misses Austin and all their friends dwelt with exceeding insistance. Two or three generations before, the second son of the family had quarrelled with his father and disappeared entirely from England. If he had any descendants, they, and not Mr. Farrel-Austin, were the direct heirs. Miss Susan had sent envoys over all the known world seeking for these problematic descendants of her granduncle Everard. Another young Austin, of a still more distant stock, called Everard too, and holding a place in the succession after Mr. Farrel-Austin, had gone to America even, on the track of some vague Austins there, who were not the people he sought; and though Miss Susan would not give up the pursuit, yet her hopes were getting feeble; and there seemed no likely escape from the dire necessity of giving up the manor, and the importance (which she did not dislike) of the position it gave her as virtual mistress of a historical house, to a man she disliked and despised, the moment poor Herbert’s breath should be out of his body. Peacefully, therefore, as the scene had looked before the interruptions above recorded, Miss Susan was not happy, nor were her thoughts of a cheerful character. She loved her nephew, and the approaching end to which all his relations had long looked forward hung over her like a cloud, with that dull sense of pain, soon to become more acute, which impending misfortune, utterly beyond our power to avert, so often brings; and mingled with this were the sharper anxieties and annoyances of the quest she had undertaken, and its ill success up to this moment; and the increasing probability that the man she disliked, and no other, must be her successor, her supplanter in her home. Her mind was full of such thoughts; but she was a woman used to restrain her personal sentiments, and keep them to herself, having been during her long life much alone, and without any companion in whom she was accustomed to confide. The two sisters had never been separated in their lives; but Augustine, not Susan, was the one who disclosed her feelings and sought for sympathy. In most relations of life there is one passive and one active, one who seeks and one who gives. Miss Augustine was the weaker of the two, but in this respect she was the more prominent. She was always the first to claim attention, to seek the interest of the other; and for years long her elder sister had been glad to give what she asked, and to keep silent about her own sentiments, which the other might not have entered into. “What was the use?” Miss Susan said to herself; and shrugged her shoulders and kept her troubles, which were very different from Augustine’s in her own breast.

How pleasant it was out there in the porch! the branches of the lime-trees blown about softly by the wind; a daisy here and there lifting its roguish saucy head, which somehow had escaped the scythe, from the close-mown lawn; the long garlands of roses playing about the stone mullions of the window, curling round the carved lintel of the door; the cool passage on the other side leading into the house, with its red floor and carved doors, and long range of casement. Miss Susan scarcely lifted her eyes from her knitting, but every detail of the peaceful scene was visible before her. No wonder—she had learned them all by heart in the long progress of the years. She knew every twig on the limes, every bud on the roses. She sat still, scarcely moving, knitting in with her thread many an anxious thought, many a wandering fancy, but with a face serene enough, and all about her still. It had never been her habit to betray what was in her to an unappreciative world.

She brightened up a little, however, and raised her head, when she heard the distant sound of a whistle coming far off through the melodious Summer air. It caught her attention, and she raised her head for a second, and a smile came over her face. “It must be Everard,” she said to herself, and listened, and made certain, as the air, a pretty gay French air, became more distinct. No one else would whistle that tune. It was one of Reine’s French songs—one of those graceful little melodies which are so easy to catch and so effective. Miss Susan was pleased that he should whistle one of Reine’s tunes. She had her plans and theories on this point, as may be hereafter shown; and Everard besides was a favorite of her own, independent of Reine. Her countenance relaxed, her knitting felt lighter in her hand, as the whistle came nearer, and then the sound of a firm, light step. Miss Susan let the smile dwell upon her face, not dismissing it, and knitted on, expecting calmly till he should make his appearance. He had come to make his report to her of another journey, from which he had just returned, in search of the lost Austins. It had not been at all to his own interest to pursue this search, for, failing Mr. Farrel-Austin, he himself would be the heir-at-law; but Everard, as Miss Susan had often said to herself, was not the sort of person to think of his own advantage. He was, if anything, too easy on that head—too careless of what happened to himself individually. He was an orphan with a small income—that “just enough” which is so fatal an inheritance for a young man—nominally at “the Bar,” actually nowhere in the race of life, but very ready to do anything for anybody, and specially for his old cousins, who had been good to him in his youth. He had a small house of his own on the river not far off, which the foolish young man lived in only a few weeks now and then, but which he refused to let, for no reason but because it had been his mother’s, and her memory (he thought) inhabited the place. Miss Susan was so provoked with this and other follies that she could have beaten Everard often, and then hugged him—a mingling of feelings not unusual. But as Everard is just about to appear in his own person, I need not describe him further. His whistle came along, advancing through the air, the pleasantest prelude to his appearance. Something gay and free and sweet was in the sound, the unconscious self-accompaniment of a light heart. He whistled as he went for want of thought—nay, not for want of thought, but because all the movements of his young soul were as yet harmonious, lightsome, full of hope and sweetness; his gay personality required expression; he was too light-hearted, too much at home in the world, and friendly, to come silent along the sunshiny way. So, as he could not talk to the trees and the air, like a poetical hero in a tragedy, Everard made known his good-will to everything, and delicious, passive happiness, by his whistle; and he whistled like a lark, clear and sweet; it was one of his accomplishments. He whistled Miss Susan’s old airs when she played them on her old piano, in charming time and harmony; and he did not save his breath for drawing-room performances, but sent before him these pleasant intimations of his coming, as far as a mile off. To which Miss Susan sat and listened, waiting for his arrival, with a smile on her face.

CHAPTER II.

“I HAVE been waiting for you these fifteen minutes,” she said.

“What—you knew I was coming?”

“I heard you, boy. If you choose to whistle ‘Ce que je desire’ through St. Austin’s parish, you may make up your mind to be recognized. Ah! you make me think of my poor children, the one dying, the other nursing him—”

“Don’t!” said the young man, holding up his hand, “it is heart-breaking; I dare not think of them, for my part. Aunt Susan, the missing Austins are not to be found in Cornwall. I went to Bude, as you told me, and found a respectable grocer, who came from Berks, to be sure, and knew very little about his grandfather, but is not our man. I traced him back to Flitton, where he comes from, and found out his pedigree. I have broken down entirely. Did you know that the Farrel-Austins were at it too?”

“At what?”

“This search after our missing kinsfolk. They have just come back, and they look very important; I don’t know if they have found out anything.”

“Then you have been visiting them?” said Miss Susan, bending her head over her knitting, with a scarcely audible sigh; it would have been inaudible to a stranger, but Everard knew what it meant.

“I called—to ask if they had got back, that was all,” he said, with a slight movement of impatience; “and they have come back. They had come down the Rhine and by the old Belgian towns, and were full of pictures, and cathedrals, and so forth. But I thought I caught a gleam in old Farrel’s eye.”

“I wonder—but if he had found them out I don’t think there would be much of a gleam in his eye,” said Miss Susan. “Everard, my dear, if we have to give up the house to them, what shall I do? and my poor Austine will feel it still more.”

“If it has to be done, it must be done, I suppose,” said Everard, with a shrug of his shoulders, “but we need not think of it until we are obliged; and besides, Aunt Susan, forgive me, if you had to give it up to—poor Herbert himself, you would feel it; and if he should get better, poor fellow, and live, and marry—”

“Ah, my poor boy,” said Miss Susan, “life and marriage are not for him!” She paused a moment and dried her eyes, and gulped down a sob in her throat. “But you may be right,” she said in a low tone, “perhaps, whoever our successors were, we should feel it—even you, Everard.”

“You should never go out of Whiteladies for me,” said the young man, “that you may be sure of; but I shall not have the chance. Farrel-Austin, for the sake of spiting the family generally, will make a point of outliving us all. There is this good in it, however,” he added, with a slight movement of his head, which looked like throwing off a disagreeable impression, and a laugh, “if poor Herbert, or I, supposing such a thing possible, had taken possession, it might have troubled your affection for us, Aunt Susan. Nay, don’t shake your head. In spite of yourself it would have affected you. You would have felt it bitter, unnatural, that the boys you had brought up and fostered should take your house from you. You would have struggled against the feeling, but you could not have helped it, I know.”

“Yes; a great deal you know about an old woman’s feelings,” said Miss Susan with a smile.

“And as for these unknown people, who never heard of Whiteladies, perhaps, and might pull down the old house, or play tricks with it—for instance, your grocer at Bude, the best of men, with a charming respectable family, a pretty daughter, who is a dress-maker, and a son who has charge of the cheese and butter. After all, Aunt Susan, you could not in your heart prefer them even to old Farrel-Austin, who is a gentleman at least, and knows the value of the old house.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said Miss Susan, though she had shivered at the description. “Farrel-Austin is our enemy; he has different ways of thinking, different politics, a different side in everything; and besides—don’t laugh in your light way, Everard; everybody does not take things lightly as you do—there is something between him and us, an old grievance that I don’t care to speak of now.”

“So you have told me,” said the young man. “Well, we cannot help it, anyhow; if he must succeed, he must succeed, though I wish it was myself rather for your sake.”

“Not for your own?” said Miss Susan, with restrained sharpness, looking up at him. “The Farrel-Austins are your friends, Everard. Oh, yes, I know! nowadays young people do not take up the prejudices of their elders. It is better and wiser, perhaps, to judge for yourself, to take up no foregone conclusion; but for my part, I am old-fashioned, and full of old traditions. I like my friends, somehow, reasonably or unreasonably, to be on my side.”

“You have never even told me why it was your side,” said Everard, with rising color; “am I to dislike my relations without even knowing why? That is surely going too far in partisanship. I am not fond of Farrel-Austin himself; but the rest of the family—”

“The—girls; that is what you would say.”

“Well, Aunt Susan! the girls if you please; they are very nice girls. Why should I hate them because you hate their father? It is against common-sense, not to speak of anything else.”

There was a little pause after this. Miss Susan had been momentarily happy in the midst of her cares, when Everard’s whistle coming to her over the Summer fields and flowers, had brought to her mind a soft thought of her pretty Reine, and of the happiness that might be awaiting her after her trial was over. But now, by a quick and sudden revulsion this feeling of relief was succeeded by a sudden realization of where Reine might be now, and how occupied, such as comes to us all sometimes, when we have dear friends in distress—in one poignant flash, with a pain which concentrates in itself as much suffering as might make days sad. The tears came to her eyes in a gush. She could not have analyzed the sensations of disappointment, annoyance, displeasure, which conspired to throw back her mind upon the great grief which was in the background of her landscape, always ready to recall itself; but the reader will understand how it came about. A few big drops of moisture fell upon her knitting. “Oh, my poor children!” she said, “how can I think of anything else, when at this very moment, perhaps, for all one knows—”

I believe Everard felt what was the connecting link of thought, or rather feeling, and for the first moment was half angry, feeling himself more or less blamed; but he was too gentle a soul not to be overwhelmed by the other picture suggested, after the first moment. “Is he so very bad, then?” he asked, after an interval, in a low and reverential tone.

“Not worse than he has been for weeks,” said Miss Susan, “but that is as bad as possible; and any day—any day may bring—God help us! in this lovely weather, Everard, with everything blooming, everything gay—him dying, her watching him. Oh! how could I forget them for a moment—how could I think of anything else?”

He made no answer at first, then he said faltering, “We can do them no good by thinking, and it is too cruel, too terrible. Is she alone?”

“No; God forgive me,” said Miss Susan. “I ought to think of the mother who is with her. They say a mother feels most. I don’t know. She has other ties and other children, though I have nothing to say against her. But Reine has no one.”

Was it a kind of unconscious appeal to his sympathy? Miss Susan felt in a moment as if she had compromised the absent girl for whom she herself had formed visions with which Reine had nothing to do.

“Not that Reine is worse off than hundreds of others,” she said, hastily, “and she will never want friends; but the tie between them is very strong. I do wrong to dwell upon it—and to you!”

“Why to me?” said Everard. He had been annoyed to have Reine’s sorrow thrust upon his notice, as if he had been neglecting her; but he was angry now to be thus thrust away from it, as if he had nothing to do with her; the two irritations were antagonistic, yet the same. “You don’t like painful subjects,” said Miss Susan, with a consciousness of punishing him, and vindictive pleasure, good soul as she was, in his punishment. “Let us talk of something else. Austine is at her almshouses, as usual, and she has left me with scarcely a servant in the house. Should any one call, or should tea be wanted, I don’t know what I should do.”

“I don’t suppose I could make the tea,” said Everard. He felt that he was punished, and yet he was glad of the change of subject. He was light-hearted, and did not know anything personally of suffering, and he could not bear to think of grief or misfortune which, as he was fond of saying, he could do no good by thinking of. He felt quite sure of himself that he would have been able to overcome his repugnance to things painful had it been “any good,” but as it was, why make himself unhappy? He dismissed the pain as much as he could, as long as he could, and felt that he could welcome visitors gladly, even at the risk of making the tea, to turn the conversation from the gloomy aspect it had taken. The thought of Herbert and Reine seemed to cloud over the sunshine, and take the sweetness out of the air. It gave his heart a pang as if it had been suddenly compressed; and this pain, this darkening of the world, could do them no good. Therefore, though he was fond of them both, and would have gone to the end of the world to restore health to his sick cousin, or even to do him a temporary pleasure, yet, being helpless toward them, he was glad to get the thoughts of them out of his mind. It spoilt his comfort, and did them no manner of good. Why should he break his own heart by indulging in such unprofitable thoughts?

Miss Susan knew Everard well; but though she had herself abruptly changed the subject in deference to his wishes, she was vexed with him for accepting the change, and felt her heart fill full of bitterness on Reine’s account and poor Herbert’s, whom this light-hearted boy endeavored to forget. She could not speak to him immediately, her heart being sore and angry. He felt this, and had an inkling of the cause, and was half compunctious and half disposed to take the offensive, and ask, “What have I done?” and defend himself, but could not, being guilty in heart. So he stood leaning against the open doorway, with a great rosebranch, which had got loose from its fastenings, blowing in his face, and giving him a careless prick with its thorns, as the wind blew it about. Somehow the long waving bough, with its many roses, which struck him lightly, playfully, across the face as he stood there, with dainty mirth and mischief, made him think of Reine more than Miss Susan’s reminder had done. The prick of the branch woke in his heart that same, sudden, vivid, poignant realization of the gay girl in contrast with her present circumstances, which just a few minutes before had taken Miss Susan, too, by surprise; and thus the two remained, together, yet apart, silent, in a half quarrel, but both thinking of the same subject, and almost with the same thoughts. Just then the rolling of carriage wheels and prance of horses became audible turning the corner of the green shady road into which the gate, at this side of the town, opened—for the manor-house was not secluded in a park, but opened directly from a shady, sylvan road, which had once served as avenue to the old priory. The greater part of the trees that formed the avenue had perished long ago, but some great stumps and roots, and an interrupted line of chance-sown trees, showed where it had been. The two people in the porch were roused by this sound, Miss Susan to a troubled recollection of her servant-less condition, and Everard to mingled annoyance and pleasure as he guessed who the visitors were. He would have been thankful to any one who had come in with a new interest to relieve him from the gloomy thoughts that had taken possession of him against his will, and the new comers, he felt sure, were people whom he liked to meet.

“Here is some one coming to call,” cried Miss Susan in dismay, “and there is no one to open the door!”

“The door is open, and you can receive them here, or take them in, which you please; you don’t require any servant,” said Everard; and then he added, in a low tone, “Aunt Susan, it is the Farrel-Austins; I know their carriage.”

“Ah!” cried Miss Susan, drawing herself up. She did not say any more to him—for was not he a friend and supporter of that objectionable family?—but awaited the unwelcome visitors with dignified rigidity. Their visits to her were very rare, but she had always made a point of enduring and returning these visits with that intense politeness of hostility which transcends every other kind of politeness. She would not consent to look up, nor to watch the alighting of the brightly-clad figures on the other side of the lawn. The old front of the house, the old doorway and porch in which Miss Susan sat, was not now the formal entrance, and consequently there was no carriage road to it; so that the visitors came across the lawn with light Summer dresses and gay ribbons, flowery creatures against the background of green. They were two handsome girls, prettily dressed and smiling, with their father, a dark, insignificant, small man, coming along like a shadow in their train.

“Oh, how cool and sweet it is here!” said Kate, the eldest. “We are so glad to find you at home, Miss Austin. I think we met your sister about an hour ago going through the village. Is it safe for her to walk in the sun without her bonnet? I should think she would get a sunstroke on such a day.”

“She is the best judge,” said Miss Susan, growing suddenly red; then subduing herself as suddenly, “for my part,” she said, “I prefer the porch. It is too warm to go out.”

“Oh, we have been so much about; we have been abroad,” said Sophy, the youngest. “We think nothing of the heat here. English skies and English climate are dreadful after the climate abroad.”

“Ah, are they? I don’t know much of any other,” said Miss Susan. “Good morning, Mr. Farrel. May I show you the way to the drawing-room, as I happen to be here?”

“Oh, mayn’t we go to the hall, please, instead? We are all so fond of the hall,” said Sophy. She was the silly one, the one who said things which the others did not like to say. “Please let us go there; isn’t this the turn to take? Oh, what a dear old house it is, with such funny passages and turnings and windings! If it were ours, I should never sit anywhere but in the hall.”

“Sophy!” said the father, in a warning tone.

“Well, papa! I am not saying anything that is wrong. I do love the old hall. Some people say it is such a tumble-down, ramshackle old house; but that is because they have no taste. If it were mine, I should always sit in the hall.”

Miss Susan led the way to it without a word. Many people thought that Sophy Farrel-Austin had reason in her madness, and said, with a show of silliness, things that were too disagreeable for the others; but that was a mere guess on the part of the public. The hall was one of the most perfectly preserved rooms of its period. The high, open roof had been ceiled, which was almost the only change made since the fifteenth century, and that had been done in Queen Anne’s time; and the huge, open chimney was partially built up, small sacrifices made to comfort by a family too tenacious of their old dwelling-place to do anything to spoil it, even at the risk of asthma or rheumatism. To tell the truth, however, there was a smaller room, of which the family now made their dining-room on ordinary occasions. Miss Susan, scorning to take any notice of words which she laid up and pondered privately to increase the bitterness of her own private sentiments toward her probable supplanters, led the way into this beautiful old hall. It was wainscoted with dark panelled wood, which shone and glistened, up to within a few feet of the roof, and the interval was filled with a long line of casement, throwing down a light which a painter would have loved upon the high, dark wall. At the upper end of the room was a deep recess, raised a step from the floor, and filled with a great window all the way up to the roof. At the lower end the musicians’ gallery of ancient days, with carved front and half-effaced coats-of-arms, was still intact. The rich old Turkey carpet on the floor, the heavy crimson curtains that hung on either side of the recess with its great window, were the most modern things in the room; and yet they were older than Miss Susan’s recollection could carry. The rest of the furniture dated much further back. The fire-place, in which great logs of wood blazed every Winter, was filled with branches of flowering shrubs, and the larger old-fashioned garden flowers, arranged in some huge blue and white China jars, which would have struck any collector with envy. Miss Susan placed her young visitors on an old, straight-backed settle, covered with stamped leather, which was extremely quaint, and very uncomfortable. She took herself one of the heavy-fringed, velvet-covered chairs, and began with deadly civility to talk. Everard placed himself against the carved mantel-piece and the bank of flowers that filled the chimney. The old room was so much the brighter to him for the presence of the girls; he did not care much that Sophy was silly. Their pretty faces and bright looks attracted the young man; perhaps he was not very wise himself. It happens so often enough.

And thus they all sat down and talked—about the beautiful weather, about the superiority, even to this beautiful weather, of the weather “abroad;” of where they had been and what they had seen; of Mrs. Farrel-Austin’s health, who was something of an invalid, and rarely came out; and other similar matters, such as are generally discussed in morning calls. Everard helped Miss Susan greatly to keep the conversation up, and carry off the visit with the ease and lightness that were desirable, but yet I am not sure that she was grateful to him. All through her mind, while she smiled and talked, there kept rising a perpetual contrast. Why were these two so bright and well, while the two children of the old house were in such sad estate?—while they chattered and laughed what might be happening elsewhere? and Everard, who had been like a brother to Herbert and Reine, laughed too, and chattered, and made himself pleasant to these two girls, and never thought—never thought! This was the sombre under-current which went through Miss Susan’s mind while she entertained her callers, not without sundry subdued passages of arms. But Miss Susan’s heart beat high, in spite of herself, when Mr. Farrel-Austin lingered behind his daughters, bidding Everard see them to the carriage.

“Cousin Susan, I should like a word with you,” he said.

CHAPTER III.

The girls went out into the old corridor, leaving the great carved door of the dining-hall open behind them. The flutter of their pretty dresses filled the picturesque passage with animation, and the sound of their receding voices kept up this sentiment of life and movement even after they had disappeared. Their father looked after them well pleased, with that complacence on his countenance, and pleasant sense of personal well-being which is so natural, but so cruel and oppressive to people less well off. Miss Susan, for her part, felt it an absolute insult. It seemed to her that he had come expressly to flaunt before her his own happiness and the health and good looks of his children. She turned her back to the great window, that she might not see them going across the lawn, with Everard in close attendance upon them. A sense of desertion, by him, by happiness, by all that is bright and pleasant in the world, came into her heart, and made her defiant. When such a feeling as this gets into the soul, all softness, all indulgence to others, all favorable construction of other people’s words or ways departs. They seemed to her to have come to glory over her and over Herbert dying, and Reine mourning, and the failure of the old line. What was grief and misery to her was triumph to them. It was natural perhaps, but very bitter; curses even, if she had not been too good a woman to let them come to utterance, were in poor Miss Susan’s heart. If he had said anything to her about his girls, as she expected, if he had talked of them at all, I think the flood must have found vent somehow; but fortunately he did not do this. He waited till they were out of the house, and then rose and closed the door, and reseated himself facing her, with something more serious in his face.

“Excuse me for waiting till they had gone,” he said. “I don’t want the girls to be mixed up in any family troubles; though, indeed, there is no trouble involved in what I have to tell you—or, at least, so I hope.”

The girls were crossing the lawn as he spoke, laughing and talking, saying something about the better training of the roses, and how the place might be improved. Miss Susan caught some words of this with ears quickened by her excited feelings. She drew her chair further from the window, and turned her back to it more determinedly than ever. Everard, too! he had gone over to the prosperous side.

“My dear cousin,” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, “I wish you would not treat me like an enemy. Whenever there is anything I can do for you, I am always glad to do it. I heard that you were making inquiries after our great-uncle Everard and his descendants, if he left any.”

“You could not miss hearing it. I made no secret of it,” said Miss Susan. “We have put advertisements in the newspapers, and done everything we possibly could to call everybody’s attention.”

“Yes; I know, I know; but you never consulted me. You never said, ‘Cousin, it is for the advantage of all of us to find these people.’ ”

“I do not think it is for your advantage,” said Miss Susan, looking quickly at him.

“You will see, however, that it is, when you know what I have to tell you,” he said, rubbing his hands. “I suppose I may take it for granted that you did not mean it for my advantage. Cousin Susan, I have found the people you have been looking for in vain.”

The news gave her a shock, and so did his triumphant expression; but she put force upon herself. “I am glad to hear it,” she said. “Such a search as mine is never in vain. When you have advantages to offer, you seldom fail to find the people who have a right to those advantages. I am glad you have been successful.”

“And I am happy to hear you say so,” said the other. “In short, we are in a state of agreement and concord for once in our lives, which is delightful. I hope you will not be disappointed, however, with the result. I found them in Bruges, in a humble position enough. Indeed, it was the name of Austin over a shop door which attracted my notice first.”

He spoke leisurely, and regarded her with a smile which almost drove her furious, especially as, by every possible argument, she was bound to restrain her feelings. She was strong enough, however, to do this, and present a perfectly calm front to her adversary.

“You found the name—over a shop door?”

“Yes, a drapery shop; and inside there was an old man with the Austin nose as clear as I ever saw it. It belongs, you know, more distinctly to the elder branch than to any other portion of the family.”

“The original stock is naturally stronger,” said Miss Susan. “When you get down to collaterals, the family type dies out. Your family, for instance, all resemble your mother, who was a Miss Robinson, I think I have heard?”

This thrust gave her a little consolation in her pain, and it disturbed her antagonist in his triumph. She had, as it were, drawn the first blood.

“Yes, yes; you are quite right,” he said; “of a very good family in Essex. Robinsons of Swillwell—well-known people.”

“In the city,” said Miss Susan, “so I have always heard; and an excellent thing, too. Blood may not always make its way, but money does; and to have an alderman for your grandfather is a great deal more comfortable than to have a crusader. But about our cousin at Bruges,” she added, recovering her temper. How pleasant to every well-regulated mind is the consciousness of having administered a good, honest, knock-down blow!

Mr. Farrel-Austin glanced at her out of the light gray eyes, which were indisputable Robinsons’, and as remote in color as possible from the deep blue orbs, clear as a Winter sky, which were one of the great points of the Austins; but he dared not take any further notice. It was his turn now to restrain himself.

“About our cousin in Bruges,” he repeated with an effort. “He turns out to be an old man, and not so happy in his family as might be wished. His only son was dying—”

“For God’s sake!” said Miss Susan, moved beyond her power of control, and indeed ceasing to control herself with this good reason for giving way—“have you no heart that you can say such words with a smile on your face? You that have children yourself, whom God may smite as well as another’s! How dare you? how dare you? for your own sake!”

“I don’t know that I am saying anything unbecoming,” said Mr. Farrel. “I did not mean it. No one can be more grateful for the blessings of Providence than I am. I thank Heaven that all my children are well; but that does not hinder the poor man at Bruges from losing his. Pray let me continue: his wife and he are old people, and his only son, as I say, was dying or dead—dead by this time, certainly, according to what they said of his condition.”

Miss Susan clasped her hands tightly together. It seemed to her that he enjoyed the poignant pang his words gave her—“dead by this time, certainly!” Might that be said of the other who was dearer to her? Two dying, that this man might get the inheritance! Two lives extinguished, that Farrel-Austin and his girls might have this honor and glory! He had no boys, however. His glory could be but short-lived. There was a kind of fierce satisfaction in that thought.

“I had a long conversation with the old man; indeed, we stayed in Bruges for some days on purpose. I saw all his papers, and there can be no doubt he is the grandson of our great-uncle Everard. I explained the whole matter to him, of course, and brought your advertisements under his notice, and explained your motives.”

“What are my motives?—according to your explanation.”

“Well, my dear cousin—not exactly love and charity to me, are they? I explained the position fully to him.”

“Then there is no such thing as justice or right in the world, I suppose,” she cried indignantly, “but everything hinges on love to you, or the reverse. You know what reason I have to love you—well do you know it, and lose no opportunity to keep it before me; but if my boy himself—my dying boy, God help me!—had been in your place, Farrel-Austin, should I have let him take possession of what was not his by right? You judge men, and women too, by yourself. Let that pass, so far as you are concerned. You have no other ground, I suppose, to form a judgment on; but you have no right to poison the minds of others. Nothing will make me submit to that.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Farrel-Austin, shrugging his shoulders with contemptuous calm, “you can set yourself right when you please with the Bruges shopkeeper. I will give you his address. But in the meantime you may as well hear what his decision is. At his age he does not care to change his country and his position, and come to England in order to become the master of a tumble-down old house. He prefers his shop, and the place he has lived in all his life. And the short and the long of it is, that he has transferred his rights to me, and resigned all claim upon the property. I agreed to it,” he added, raising his head, “to save trouble, more than for any other reason. He is an old man, nearly seventy; his son dead or dying, as I said. So far as I am concerned, it could only have been a few years’ delay at the most.”

Miss Susan sat bolt upright in her chair, gazing at him with eyes full of amazement—so much astonished that she scarcely comprehended what he said. It was evidently a relief to the other to have made his announcement. He breathed more freely after he had got it all out. He rose from his chair and went to the window, and nodded to his girls across the lawn. “They are impatient, I see, and I must be going,” he went on. Then looking at Miss Susan for the first time, he added, in a tone that had a sound of mockery in it, “You seem surprised.”

“Surprised!” She had been leaning toward the chair from which he had arisen without realizing that he had left it in her great consternation. Now she turned quickly to him. “Surprised! I am a great deal more than surprised.”

He laughed; he had the upper hand at last. “Why more?” he said lightly. “I think the man was a very reasonable old man, and saw what his best policy was.”

“And you—accepted his sacrifice?” said Miss Susan, amazement taking from her all power of expression;—“you permitted him to give up his birthright? you—took advantage of his ignorance?”

“My dear cousin, you are rude,” he said, laughing; “without intending it, I am sure. So well-bred a woman could never make such imputations willingly. Took advantage! I hope I did not do that. But I certainly recommended the arrangement to him, as the most reasonable thing he could do. Think! At his age, he could come here only to die; and with no son to succeed him, of course I should have stepped in immediately. Few men like to die among strangers. I was willing, of course, to make him a recompense for the convenience—for it was no more than a convenience, make the most you can of it—of succeeding at once.”

Miss Susan looked at him speechless with pain and passion. I do not know what she did not feel disposed to say. For a moment her blue eyes shot forth fire, her lips quivered from the flux of too many words which flooded upon her. She began even, faltering, stammering—then came to a stop in the mere physical inability to arrange her words, to say all she wanted, to launch her thunderbolt at his head with the precision she wished. At last she came to a dead stop, looking at him only, incapable of speech; and with that pause came reflection. No; she would say nothing; she would not commit herself; she would think first, and perhaps do, instead of saying. She gave a gasp of self-restraint.

“The young ladies seem impatient for you,” she said. “Don’t let me detain you. I don’t know that I have anything to say on the subject of your news, which is surprising, to be sure, and takes away my breath.”

“Yes, I thought you would be surprised,” he said, and shook hands with her. Miss Susan’s fingers tingled—how she would have liked, in an outburst of impatience which I fear was very undignified, to apply them to his ear, rather than to suffer his hand to touch hers in hypocritical amity! He was a little disappointed, however, to have had so little response to his communication. Her silence baffled him. He had expected her to commit herself, to storm, perhaps; to dash herself in fury against this skilful obstacle which he had placed in her way. He did not expect her to have so much command of herself; and, in consequence, he went away with a secret uneasiness, feeling less successful and less confident in what he had done, and asking himself, Could he have made some mistake after all—could she know something that made his enterprise unavailing? He was more than usually silent on the drive home, making no answer to the comments of his girls, or to their talk about what they would do when they got possession of the manor.

“I hope the furniture goes with the house,” said Kate. “Papa, you must do all you can to secure those old chairs, and especially the settee with the stamped leather, which is charming, and would fetch its weight in gold in Wardour street.”

“And, papa, those big blue and white jars,” said Sophy, “real old Nankin, I am sure. They must have quantities of things hidden away in those old cupboards. It shall be as good as a museum when we get possession of the house!”

“You had better get possession of the house before you make any plans about it,” said her father. “I never like making too sure.”

“Why, papa, what has come over you?” cried the eldest. “You were the first to say what you would do, when we started. Miss Susan has been throwing some spell over you.”

“If it is her spell, it will not be hard to break it,” said Sophy; and thus they glided along, between the green abundant hedges, breathing the honey breath of the limes, but not quite so happy and triumphant as when they came. As for the girls, they had heard no details of the bargain their father had made, and gave no great importance to it; for they knew he was the next heir, and that the manor-house would soon cease to be poor Herbert’s, with whom they had played as children, but whom, they said constantly, they scarcely knew. They did not understand what cloud had come over their father. “Miss Susan is an old witch,” they said, “and she has put him under some spell.”

Meanwhile Miss Susan sat half-stupefied where he had left her, in a draught, which was a thing she took precautions against on ordinary occasions—the great window open behind her, the door open in front of her, and the current blowing about even the sedate and heavy folds of the great crimson curtains, and waking, though she did not feel it, the demon Neuralgia to twist her nerves, and set her frame on an edge. She did not seem able to move or even think, so great was the amazement in her mind. Could he be right—could he have found the Austin she had sought for over all the world; and was it possible that the unrighteous bargain he had told her of had really been completed? Unrighteous! for was it not cheating her in the way she felt the most, deceiving her in her expectations? An actual misfortune could scarcely have given Miss Susan so great a shock. She sat quite motionless, her very thoughts arrested in their course, not knowing what to think, what to do—how to take this curious new event. Must she accept it as a thing beyond her power of altering, or ought she to ignore it as something incredible, impossible? One thing or other she must decide upon at once; but in the meantime, so great was the effect this intimation had upon her mind, she felt herself past all power of thinking. Everard coming back found her still seated there in the draught in the old hall. He shut the door softly behind him and went in, looking at her with questioning eyes. But she did not notice his look; she was too much and too deeply occupied in her own mind. Besides, his friendship with her visitors made Everard a kind of suspected person, not to be fully trusted. Miss Susan was too deeply absorbed to think this, but she felt it. He sat down opposite, where Mr. Farrel-Austin had been sitting, and looked at her; but this mute questioning produced no response.

“What has old Farrel been saying to you, Aunt Susan?” he asked at last.

“Why do you call him old Farrel, Everard? he is not nearly so old as I am,” said Miss Susan with a sigh, waking up from her thoughts. “Growing old has its advantages, no doubt, when one can realize the idea of getting rid of all one’s worries, and having the jangled bells put in tune again; but otherwise—to think of others who will set everything wrong coming after us, who have tried hard to keep them right! Perhaps, when it comes to the very end, one does not mind; I hope so; I feel sore now to think that this man should be younger than I am, and likely to live ever so much longer, and enjoy my father’s house.”

Everard sat still, saying nothing. He was unprepared for this sort of reply. He was slightly shocked too, as young people so often are, by the expression of any sentiments, except the orthodox ones, on the subject of dying. It seemed to him, at twenty-five, that to Miss Susan at sixty, it must be a matter of comparatively little consequence how much longer she lived. He would have felt the sentiments of the Nunc Dimittis to be much more appropriate and correct in the circumstances; he could not understand the peculiar mortification of having less time to live than Farrel-Austin. He looked grave with the fine disapproval and lofty superiority of youth. But he was a very gentle-souled and tender-hearted young man, and he did not like to express the disapproval that was in his face.

“We had better not talk of them,” said Miss Susan, after a pause; “we don’t agree about them, and it is not likely we should; and I don’t want to quarrel with you, Everard, on their account. Farrel thinks he is quite sure of the estate now. He has found out some one whom he calls our missing cousin, and has got him to give up in his own favor.”

“Got him to give up in his own favor!” repeated Everard amazed. “Why, this is wonderful news. Who is it, and where is he, and how has it come about? You take away one’s breath.”

“I cannot go into the story,” said Miss Susan. “Ask himself. I am sick of the subject. He thinks he has settled it, and that it is all right; and waits for nothing but my poor boy’s end to take possession. They had not even the grace to ask for him!” she cried, rising hastily. “Don’t ask me anything about it; it is more than I can bear.”

“But, Aunt Susan—”

“I tell you we shall quarrel, Everard, if we talk more on this subject,” she cried. “You are their friend, and I am their—no; it is they who are my enemies,” she added, stopping herself. “I don’t dictate to you how you are to feel, or what friends you are to make. I have no right; but I have a right to talk of what I please, and to be silent when I please. I shall say no more about it. As for you,” she said, after another pause, with a forced smile, “the young ladies will consult with you what changes they are to make in the house. I heard them commenting on the roses, and how everything could be improved. You will be of the greatest use to them in their new arrangements, when all obstacles are removed.”

“I don’t think it is kind to speak to me so,” said Everard, in his surprise. “It is not generous, Aunt Susan. It is like kicking a fellow when he is down; for you know I can’t defend myself.”

“Yes, I suppose it is unjust,” said Miss Susan, drying her eyes, which were full of hot tears, with no gratefulness of relief in them. “The worst of this world is that one is driven to be unjust, and can’t help it, even to those one loves.”

CHAPTER IV.

EVERARD AUSTIN remained at Whiteladies for the rest of the afternoon—he was like one of the children of the house. The old servants took him aside and asked him to mention things to Miss Susan with which they did not like to worry her in her trouble, though indeed most of these delicacies were very much after date, and concerned matters on which Miss Susan had already been sufficiently worried. The gardener came and told him of trees that wanted cutting, and the bailiff on the farm consulted him about the laborers for the approaching harvest. “Miss Susan don’t like tramps, and I don’t want to go against her, just when things is at its worst. I shouldn’t wonder, sir,” said the man, looking curiously in Everard’s face, “if things was in other hands this time next year?” Everard answered him with something of the bitterness which he himself had condemned so much a little while before. That Farrel-Austin should succeed was natural; but thus to look forward to the changing of masters gave him, too, a pang. He went indoors somewhat disturbed, and fell into the hands of Martha and Jane fresh from the almshouse. Martha, who was Miss Susan’s maid and half-housekeeper, had taken charge of him often enough in his boyish days, and called him Master Everard still, so that she was entitled to speak; while the younger maid looked on, and concurred—“It will break my lady’s heart,” said Martha, “leaving this old house; not but what we might be a deal more comfortable in a nice handy place, in good repair like yours is, Master Everard; where the floors is straight and the roofs likewise, and you don’t catch a rheumatism round every corner; but my lady ain’t of my way of thinking. I tell her as it would have been just as bad if Mr. Herbert had got well, poor dear young gentleman, and got married; but she won’t listen to me. Miss Augustine, she don’t take on about the house; but she’s got plenty to bother her, poor soul; and the way she do carry on about them almshouses! It’s like born natural, that’s what it is, and nothing else. Oh me! I know as I didn’t ought to say it; but what can you do, I ask you, Master Everard, when you have got the like of that under your very nose? She’ll soon have nothing but paupers in the parish if she has her way.”

“She’s very feeling-hearted,” said Jane, who stood behind her elder companion and put in a word now and then over Martha’s shoulder. She had been enjoying the delights of patronage, the happiness of recommending her friends in the village to Miss Augustine’s consideration; and this was too pleasant a privilege to be consistent with criticism. The profusion of her mistress’s alms made Jane feel herself to be “feeling-hearted” too.

“And great thanks she gets for it all,” said Martha. “They call her the crazy one down in the village. Miss Susan, she’s the hard one; and Miss Augustine’s the crazy one. That’s gratitude! trailing about in her gray gown for all the world like a Papist nun. But, poor soul, I didn’t ought to grudge her gray, Master Everard. We’ll soon be black and black enough in our mourning, from all that I hear.”

Again Everard was conscious of a shiver. He made a hasty answer and withdrew from the women who had come up to him in one of the airy corridors upstairs, half glass, like the passages below, and full of corners. Everard was on his way from a pilgrimage to the room, in which, when Herbert and he were children, they had been allowed to accumulate their playthings and possessions. It had a bit of corridor, like a glazed gallery, leading to it—and a door opened from it to the musicians’ gallery of the hall. The impulse which led him to this place was not like his usual care to avoid unpleasant sensations, for the very sight of the long bare room, with its windows half choked with ivy, the traces of old delights on the walls—bows hung on one side, whips on the other—a heap of cricket-bats and pads in a corner; and old books, pictures, and rubbish heaped upon the old creaky piano on which Reine used to play to them, had gone to his heart. How often the old walls had rung with their voices, the old floor creaked under them! He had given one look into the haunted solitude, and then had fled, feeling himself unable to bear it. “As if I could do them any good thinking!” Everard had said to himself, with a rush of tears to his eyes—and it was in the gallery leading to this room—the west gallery as everybody called it—that the women stopped him. The rooms at Whiteladies had almost every one a gallery, or an ante-room, or a little separate staircase to itself. The dinner-bell pealed out as he emerged from thence and hurried to the room which had been always called his, to prepare for dinner. How full of memories the old place was! The dinner-bell was very solemn, like the bell of a cathedral, and had never been known to be silent, except when the family were absent, for more years than any one could reckon. How well he recollected the stir it made among them all as children, and how they would steal into the musicians’ gallery and watch in the centre of the great room below, in the speck of light which shone amid its dimness, the two ladies sitting at table, like people in a book or in a dream, the servants moving softly about, and no one aware of the unseen spectators, till the irrepressible whispering and rustling of the children betrayed them! how sometimes they were sent away ignominiously, and sometimes Aunt Susan, in a cheery mood, would throw up oranges to them, which Reine, with her tiny hands, could never catch! How she used to cry when the oranges fell round her and were snapped up by the boys—not for the fruit, for Reine never had anything without sharing it or giving it away, but for the failure which made them laugh at her! Everard laughed unawares as the scene came up before him, and then felt that sudden compression, constriction of his heart—serrement du cœur, which forces out the bitterest tears. And then he hurried down to dinner and took his seat with the ladies, in the cool of the Summer evening, in the same historical spot, having now become one of them, and no longer a spectator. But he looked up at the gallery with a wistful sense of the little scuffle that used to be there, the scrambling of small feet, and whispering of voices. In Summer, when coolness was an advantage, the ladies still dined in the great hall.

“Austine, you have not seen Everard since he returned from America,” said Miss Susan. “How strong and well he looks!”—here she gave a sigh; not that she grudged Everard his good looks, but the very words brought the other before her, at thought of whom every other young man’s strength and health seemed cruel.

“He has escaped the fate of the family,” said Miss Augustine. “All I can pray for, Everard, is that you may never be the Austin of Whiteladies. No wealth can make up for that.”

“Hush, hush!” said Miss Susan with a smile, “these are your fancies. We are not much worse off than many other families who have no such curse as you think of, my dear? Are all the old women comfortable—and grumbling? What were you about to-day?”

“I met them in chapel,” said the younger sister, “and talked to them. I told them, as I always do, what need we have of their prayers; and that they should maintain a Christian life. Ah, Susan, you smile; and Everard, because he is young and foolish, would laugh if he could; but when you think that this is all I can do, or any one can do, to make up for the sins of the past, to avert the doom of the family—”

“If we have anything to make up more than others, I think we should do it ourselves,” said Miss Susan. “But never mind, dear, if it pleases you. You are spoiling the people; but there are not many villages spoiled with kindness. I comfort myself with that.”

“It is not to please myself that I toil night and day, that I rise up early and lie down late,” said Miss Augustine, with a faint gleam of indignation in her eyes. Then she looked at Everard and sighed. She did not want to brag of her mortifications. In the curious balance-sheet which she kept with heaven, poor soul, so many prayers and vigils and charities, against so many sinful failings in duty, she was aware that anything like a boast on her part diminished the value of the compensation she was rendering. Her unexpressed rule was that the, so to speak, commercial worth of a good deed disappeared, when advantage was taken of it for this world; she wanted to keep it at its full value for the next, and therefore she stopped short and said no more. “Some of them put us to shame,” she said; “they lead such holy lives. Old Mary Matthews spends nearly her whole time in chapel. She only lives for God and us. To hear her speak would reward you for many sacrifices, Susan—if you ever make any. She gives up all—her time, her comfort, her whole thoughts—for us.”

“Why for us?” said Everard. “Do you keep people on purpose to pray for the family, Aunt Augustine? I beg your pardon, but it sounded something like it. You can’t mean it, of course?”

“Why should not I mean it? We do not pray so much as we ought for ourselves,” said Miss Augustine; “and if I can persuade holy persons to pray for us continually—”

“At so much a week, a cottage, and coals and candles,” said Miss Susan. “Augustine, my dear, you shall have your way as long as I can get it for you. I am glad the old souls are comfortable; and if they are good, so much the better; and I am glad you like it, my dear; but whatever you think, you should not talk in this way. Eh, Stevens, what do you say?”

“If I might make so bold, ma’am,” said the butler, “not to go against Miss Augustine; but that hold Missis Matthews, mum, she’s a hold—”

“Silence, sir!” said Miss Susan promptly, “I don’t want to hear any gossip; my sister knows best. Tell Everard about your schools, my dear; the parish must be the better with the schools. Whatever the immediate motive is, so long as the thing is good,” said this casuist, “and whatever the occasional result may be, so long as the meaning is charitable—There, there, Everard, I won’t have her crossed.”

This was said hastily in an undertone to Everard, who was shaking his head, with a suppressed laugh on his face.

“I am not objecting to anything that is done, but to your reasoning, which is defective,” he said.

“Oh, my reasoning! is that all? I don’t stand upon my reasoning,” said Miss Susan. And then there was a pause in the conversation, for Miss Susan’s mind was perturbed, and she talked but in fits and starts, having sudden intervals of silence, from which she would as suddenly emerge into animated discussion, then be still again all in a moment. Miss Augustine, in her long limp gray dress, with pale hands coming out of the wide hanging sleeves, talked only on one subject, and did not eat at all, so that her company was not very cheerful. And Everard could not but glance up now and then to the gallery, which lay in deep shade, and feel as if he were in a dream, seated down below in the light. How vividly the childish past had come upon him; and how much more cheerful it had been in those old days, when the three atoms in the dusty corner of the gallery looked down with laughing eyes upon the solemn people at table, and whispered and rustled in their restlessness till they were found out!

At last—and this was something so wonderful that even the servants who waited at table were appalled—Miss Augustine recommenced the conversation. “You have had some one here to-day,” she said. “Farrel-Austin—I met him.”

“Yes!” said Miss Susan, breathless and alarmed.

“It seemed to me that the shadow had fallen upon them already. He is gray and changed. I have not seen him for a long time; his wife is ill, and his children are delicate.”

“Nonsense, Austine, the girls are as strong and well as a couple of young hoydens need be.” Miss Susan spoke almost sharply, and in a half-frightened tone.

“You think so, Susan; for my part I saw the shadow plainly. It is that their time is drawing near to inherit. Perhaps as they are girls, nothing will happen to them; nothing ever happened to us; that is to say, they will not marry probably; they will be as we have been. I wish to know them, Susan. Probably one of them would take up my work, and endeavor to keep further trouble from the house.”

“Farrel’s daughter? you are very good, Austine, very good; you put me to shame,” said Miss Susan, bending her head.

“Yes; why not Farrel’s daughter? She is a woman like the rest of us and an Austin, like the rest of us. I wish the property could pass to women, then there might be an end of it once for all.”

“In that case it would go to Reine, and there would not in the least be the end of it; quite the reverse.”

“I could persuade Reine,” said Miss Augustine. “Ah, yes; I could persuade her. She knows my life. She knows about the family, how we have all suffered. Reine would be led by me; she would give it up, as I should have done had I the power. But men will not do such a thing. I am not blaming them, I am saying what is the fact. Reine would have given it up.”

“You speak like a visionary,” said Miss Susan sighing. “Yes, I daresay Reine would be capable of a piece of folly, or you, or even myself. We do things that seem right to us at the moment without taking other things into consideration, when we are quite free to do what we like. But don’t you see, my dear, a man with an entailed estate is not free? His son or his heir must come after him, as his father went before him; he is only a kind of a tenant. Farrel, since you have spoken of Farrel—I would not have begun it—dare not alienate property from Everard; and Everard, when it comes to him, must keep it for his son, if he ever has one.”

“The thing would be,” said Miss Augustine, “to make up your mind never to have one, Everard.” She looked at him calmly and gravely, crossing her hands within her long sleeves.

“But, my dear Aunt Augustine,” said Everard, laughing, “what good would that do me? I should have to hand it on to the next in the entail all the same. I could not do away with the estate without the consent of my heir at least.”

“Then I will tell you what to do,” said Miss Augustine. “Marry; it is different from what I said just now, but it has the same meaning. Marry at once; and when you have a boy let him be sent to me. I will train him, I will show him his duty; and then with his consent, which he will be sure to give when he grows up, you can break the entail and restore Whiteladies to its right owner. Do this, my dear boy, it is quite simple; and so at last I shall have the satisfaction of feeling that the curse will be ended one day. Yes; the thing to be done is this.”

Miss Susan had exclaimed in various tones of impatience. She had laughed reluctantly when Everard laughed; but what her sister said was more serious to her than it was to the young man. “Do you mean to live forever,” she said at last, “that you calculate so calmly on bringing up Everard’s son?”

“I am fifty-five,” said Miss Augustine, “and Everard might have a son in a year. Probably I shall live to seventy-five, at least,—most of the women of our family do. He would then be twenty, approaching his majority. There is nothing extravagant in it; and on the whole, it seems to me the most hopeful thing to do. You must marry, Everard, without delay; and if you want money I will help you. I will do anything for an object so near my heart.”

“You had better settle whom I am to marry, Aunt Augustine.”

Everard’s laughter made the old walls gay. He entered into the joke without any arrière pensée; the suggestion amused him beyond measure; all the more that it was made with so much gravity and solemnity. Miss Susan had laughed too; but now she became slightly alarmed, and watched her sister with troubled eyes.

“Whom you are to marry? That wants consideration,” said Miss Augustine. “The sacrifice would be more complete and satisfying if two branches of the family concurred in making it. The proper person for you to marry in the circumstances would be either—”

“Austine!”

“Yes! I am giving the subject my best attention. You cannot understand, no one can understand, how all-important it is to me. Everard, either one of Farrel’s girls, to whom I bear no malice, or perhaps Reine.”

“Austine, you are out of your senses on this point,” said Miss Susan, almost springing from her seat, and disturbing suddenly the calm of the talk. “Come, come, we must retire; we have dined. Everard, if you choose to sit a little, Stevens is giving you some very good claret. It was my father’s; I can answer for it, much better than I can answer for my own, for I am no judge. You will find us in the west room when you are ready, or in the garden. It is almost too sweet to be indoors to-night.”

She drew her sister’s arm within hers and led her away, with peremptory authority which permitted no argument, and to which Augustine instinctively yielded; and Everard remained alone, his cheek tingling, his heart beating. It had all been pure amusement up to this point; but even his sense of the ludicrous could not carry him further. He might have known, he said to himself, that this was what she must say. He blushed, and felt it ungenerous in himself to have allowed her to go so far, to propose these names to him. He seemed to be making the girls endure a humiliation against his will, and without their knowledge. What had they done that he should permit any one even to suggest that he could choose among them? This was the more elevated side of his feelings; but there was another side, I am obliged to allow, a fluttered, flattered consciousness that the suggestion might be true; that he might have it in his power, like a sultan, to choose among them, and throw his princely handkerchief at the one he preferred. A mixture, therefore, of some curious sense of elation and suppressed pleasure, mingled with the more generous feeling within him, quenching at once the ridicule of Miss Augustine’s proposal, and the sense of wrong done to those three girls. Yes, no doubt it is a man’s privilege to choose; he, and not the woman, has it in his power to weigh the qualities of one and another, and to decide which would be most fit for the glorious position of his wife. They could not choose him, but he could choose one of them, and on his choice probably their future fate would depend. It was impossible not to feel a little pleasant flutter of consciousness. He was not vain, but he felt the sweetness of the superiority involved, the greatness of the position.

When the ladies were gone Everard laughed, all alone by himself, he could not help it; and the echoes took up the laughter, and rang into that special corner of the gallery which he knew so well, centring there. Why there, of all places in the world? Was it some ghost of little Reine in her childhood that laughed? Reine in her childhood had been the one who exercised choice. It was she who might have thrown the handkerchief, not Everard. And then a hush came over him, and a compunction, as he thought where Reine was at this moment, and how she might be occupied. Bending over her brother’s death-bed, hearing his last words, her heart contracted with the bitter pang of parting, while her old playfellow laughed, and wondered whether he should choose her out of the three to share his grandeur. Everard grew quite silent all at once, and poured himself out a glass of the old claret in deep humiliation and stillness, feeling ashamed of himself. He held the wine up to the light with the solemnest countenance, trying to take himself in, and persuade himself that he had no lighter thoughts in his mind, and then having swallowed it with equal solemnity, he got up and strolled out into the garden. He had so grave a face when Miss Susan met him, that she thought for the first moment that some letter had come, and that all was over, and gasped and called to him, what was it? what was it? “Nothing!” said Everard more solemnly than ever. He was impervious to any attempt at laughter for the rest of the evening, ashamed of himself and his light thoughts, in sudden contrast with the thoughts that must be occupying his cousins, his old playmates. And yet, as he went home in the moonlight, the shock of that contrast lessened, and his young lightness of mind began to reassert itself. Before he got out of hearing of the manor he began to whistle again unawares; but this time it was not one of Reine’s songs. It was a light opera air which, no doubt, one of the other girls had taught him, or so, at least, Miss Susan thought.

CHAPTER V.

In all relationships, as I have already said—and it is not an original saying—there is one who is active and one who is passive,—“L’unqui baise et l’autre qui tend la joue,” as the French say, with their wonderful half-pathetic, half-cynic wisdom. Between the two sisters of Whiteladies it was Augustine who gave the cheek and Susan the kiss, it was Augustine who claimed and Susan who offered sympathy; it was Augustine’s affairs, such as they were, which were discussed. The younger sister had only her own fancies and imaginations, her charities, and the fantastic compensations which she thought she was making for the evil deeds of her family, to discuss and enlarge upon; whereas the elder had her mind full of those mundane matters from which our cares spring—the management of material interests—the conflict which is always more or less involved in the government of other souls. She managed her nephew’s estate in trust for him till he came of age,—if he should live to come of age, poor boy; she managed her own money and her sister’s, which was not inconsiderable; and the house and the servants, and in some degree the parish, of which Miss Susan was the virtual Squire. But of all this weight of affairs it did not occur to her to throw any upon Augustine. Augustine had always been spared from her youth up—spared all annoyance, all trouble, everybody uniting to shield her. She had been “delicate” in her childhood, and she had sustained a “disappointment” in youth—which means in grosser words that she had been jilted, openly and disgracefully, by Farrel-Austin, her cousin, which was the ground of Susan Austin’s enmity to him. I doubt much whether Augustine herself, whose blood was always tepid and her head involved in dreams, felt this half so much as her family felt it for her—her sister especially, to whom she had been a pet and a plaything all her life, and who had that half-adoring admiration for her which an elder sister is sometimes seen to entertain for a younger one whom she believes to be gifted with that beauty which she knows has not fallen to her share. Susan felt the blow with an acute sense of shame and wounded pride, which Augustine herself was entirely incapable of—and from that moment forward had constituted herself, not only the protector of her sister’s weakness, but the representative of something better which had failed her, of that admiration and chivalrous service which a beautiful woman is supposed to receive from the world.

It may seem a strange thing to many to call the devotion of one woman to another chivalrous. Yet Susan’s devotion to her sister merited the title. She vowed to herself that, so far as she could prevent it, her sister should never feel the failure of those attentions which her lover ought to have given her—that she should never know what it was to fall into that neglect which is often the portion of middle-aged women—that she should be petted and cared for, as if she were still the favorite child or the adored wife which she had been or might have been. In doing this Susan not only testified the depth of her love for Augustine, and indignant compassion for her wrongs, but also a woman’s high ideal of how an ideal woman should be treated in this world. Augustine was neither a beautiful woman nor an ideal one, though her sister thought so, and Susan had been checked many a time in her idolatry by her idol’s total want of comprehension of it; but she had never given up her plan for consoling the sufferer. She had admired Augustine as well as loved her; she had always found what she did excellent; she had made Augustine’s plans important by believing in them, and her opinions weighty, even while, within herself, she saw the plans to be impracticable and the opinions futile. The elder sister would pause in the midst of a hundred real and pressing occupations, a hundred weighty cares, to condole with, or to assist, or support, the younger, pulling her through some parish imbroglio, some almshouse squabble, as if these trifling annoyances had been affairs of state. But of the serious matters which occupied her own mind, she said nothing to Augustine, knowing that she would find no comprehension, and willing to avoid the certainty that her sister would take no interest in her proceedings. Indeed, it was quite possible that Augustine might have gone further than mere failure of sympathy; Susan knew very well that she would be disapproved of, perhaps censured, for being engrossed by the affairs of this world. The village people, and everybody on the estate, were, I think, of the same opinion. They thought Miss Susan “the hard one”—doing her ineffable injustice, one of those unconsidered wrongs that cut into the heart. At first, I suppose, this had not been the state of affairs—between the sisters, at least; but it would be difficult to tell how many disappointments the strong and hard Susan had gone through before she made up her mind never to ask for the sympathy which never came her way. This was her best philosophy, and saved her much mortification; but it cost her many trials before she could make up her mind to it, and had not its origin in philosophy at all, but in much wounding and lacerating of a generous and sensitive heart.

Therefore she did not breathe a word to her sister about the present annoyance and anxiety in her mind. When it was their hour to go upstairs—and everything was done like clock-work at Whiteladies—she went with Augustine to her room, as she always did, and heard over again for the third or fourth time the complaint of the rudeness of the butler, Stevens, who did not countenance Augustine’s “ways.”

“Indeed, he is a very honest fellow,” said Miss Susan, thinking bitterly of Farrel-Austin and of the last successful stroke he had made.

“He is a savage, he is a barbarian—he cannot be a Christian,” Miss Augustine had replied.

“Yes, yes, my dear; we must take care not to judge other people. I will scold him well, and he will never venture to say anything disagreeable to you again.”

“You think I am speaking for myself,” said Augustine. “No, what I feel is, how out of place such a man is in a household like ours. You are deceived about him now, and think his honesty, as you call it, covers all his faults. But, Susan, listen to me. Without the Christian life, what is honesty? Do you think it would bear the strain if temptation—to any great crime, for instance—”

“My dear, you are speaking nonsense,” said Miss Susan.

“That is what I am afraid of,” said her sister solemnly. “A man like this ought not to be in a house like ours; for you are a Christian, Susan.”

“I hope so at least,” said the other with a momentary laugh.

“But why should you laugh? Oh, Susan! think how you throw back my work—even, you hinder my atonement. Is not this how all the family have been—treating everything lightly—our family sin and doom, like the rest? and you, who ought to know better, who ought to strengthen my hands! perhaps, who knows, if you could but have given your mind to it, we two together might have averted the doom!”

Augustine sat down in a large hard wooden chair which she used by way of mortification, and covered her face with her hands. Susan, who was standing by holding her candle, looked at her strangely with a half smile, and a curious acute sense of the contrast between them. She stood silent for a moment, perhaps with a passing wonder which of the two it was who had done the most for the old house; but if she entertained this thought, it was but for the moment. She laid her hand upon her sister’s shoulder.

“My dear Austine,” she said, “I am Martha and you are Mary. So long as Martha did not find fault with her sister, our good Lord made no objection to her housewifely ways. So, if I am earthly while you are heavenly, you must put up with me, dear; for, after all, there are a great many earthly things to be looked after. And as for Stevens, I shall scold him well,” she added with sudden energy, with a little outburst of natural indignation at the cause (though innocent) of this slight ruffling of the domestic calm.

The thoughts in her mind were of a curious and mixed description as she went along the corridor after Augustine had melted, and bestowed, with a certain lofty and melancholy regret, for her sister’s imperfections, her good-night kiss. Miss Susan’s room was on the other side of the house, over the drawing-room. To reach it she had to go along the corridor, which skirted the staircase with its dark oaken balustrades, and thence into another casemented passage, which led by three or four oaken steps to the ante-room in which her maid slept, and from which her own room opened. One of her windows looked out upon the north side, the same aspect as the dining-hall, and was, indeed, the large casement which occupied one of the richly-carved gables on that side of the house. The other looked out upon the west side, over the garden, and facing the sunset. It was a large panelled room, with few curtains, for Miss Susan loved air. A shaded night-lamp burned faintly upon a set of carved oaken drawers at the north end, and the moonlight slanting through the western window threw two lights, broken by the black bar of the casement, on the broad oak boards—for only the centre of the room was carpeted. Martha came in with her mistress, somewhat sleepy, and slightly injured in her feelings, for what with Everard’s visits and other agitations of the day, Miss Susan was half an hour late. It is not to be supposed that she, who could not confide in her sister, would confide in Martha; but yet Martha knew, by various indications, what Augustine would never have discovered, that Miss Susan had “something on her mind.” Perhaps it was because she did not talk as much as usual, and listened to Martha’s own remarks with the indifference of abstractedness; perhaps because of the little tap of her foot on the floor, and sound of her voice as she asked her faithful attendant if she had done yet, while Martha, aggrieved but conscientious, fumbled with the doors of the wardrobe, in which she had just hung up her mistress’s gown; perhaps it was the tired way in which Miss Susan leaned back in her easy chair, and the half sigh which breathed into her good-night. But from all these signs together Martha knew, what nothing could have taught Augustine. But what could the maid do to show sympathy? At first, I am sorry to say, she did not feel much, but was rather glad that the mistress, who had kept her half an hour longer than usual out of bed, should herself have some part of the penalty to pay; but compunctions grew upon Martha before she left the room, and I think that her lingering, which annoyed Miss Susan, was partly meant to show that she felt for her mistress. If so, it met the usual recompense of unappreciated kindness, and at last earned a peremptory dismissal for the lingerer. When Miss Susan was alone, she raised herself a little from her chair and screwed up the flame of the small silver lamp on her little table, and put the double eyeglass which she used, being slightly short-sighted, on her nose. She was going to think; and she had an idea, not uncommon to short-sighted people, that to see distinctly helped her faculties in everything.

She felt instinctively for her eyeglass when any noise woke her in the middle of the night; she could hear better as well as think better with that aid. The two white streaks of moonlight, with the broad bar of shadow between, and all the markings of the diamond panes, indicated on the gray oaken board and fringe of Turkey carpet, moved slowly along the floor, coming further into the room as the moon moved westward to its setting. In the distant corner the night-light burned dim but steady. Miss Susan sat by the side of her bed, which was hung at the head with blue-gray curtains of beautiful old damask. On her little table was a Bible and Prayer Book, a long-stalked glass with a rose in it, another book less sacred, which she had been reading in the morning, her handkerchief, her eau-de-cologne, her large old watch in an old stand, and those other trifles which every lady’s-maid who respects herself keeps ready and in order by her mistress’s bedside. Martha, too sleepy to be long about her own preparations, was in bed and asleep almost as soon as Miss Susan put on her glasses. All was perfectly still, the world out-of-doors held under the spell of the moonlight, the world inside rapt in sleep and rest. Miss Susan wrapped her dressing-gown about her, and sat up in her chair to think. It was a very cosey, very comfortable chair, not hard and angular like Austine’s, and everything in the room was pleasant and soft, not ascetical and self-denying. Susan Austin was not young, but she had kept something of that curious freshness of soul which some unmarried women carry down to old age. She was not aware in her innermost heart that she was old. In everything external she owned her years fully, and felt them; but in her heart she, who had never passed out of the first stage of life, retained so many of its early illusions as to confuse herself and bewilder her consciousness. When she sat like this thinking by herself, with nothing to remind her of the actual aspect of circumstances, she never could be quite sure whether she was young or old. There was always a momentary glimmer and doubtfulness about her before she settled down to the consideration of her problem, whatever it was—as to which problem it was, those which had come before her in her youth, which she had settled, or left to float in abeyance for the settling of circumstances—or the actual and practical matter-of-fact of to-day. For a moment she caught her own mind lingering upon that old story between Augustine and their cousin Farrel, as if it were one of the phases of that which demanded her attention; and then she roused herself sharply to her immediate difficulty, and to consider what she was to do.

It is forlorn in such an emergency to be compelled to deliberate alone, without any sharer of one’s anxieties or confidante of one’s thoughts. But Miss Susan was used to this, and was willing to recognize the advantage it gave her in the way of independence and prompt conclusion. She was free from the temptation of talking too much, of attacking her opponents with those winged words which live often after the feeling that dictated them has passed. She could not be drawn into any self-committal, for nobody thought or cared what was in her mind. Perhaps, however, it is more easy to exercise that casuistry which self-interest produces even in the most candid mind, when it is not necessary to put one’s thoughts into words. I cannot tell on what ground it was that this amiable, and, on the whole, good woman concluded her opposition to Farrel-Austin, and his undoubted right of inheritance, to be righteous, and even holy. She resisted his claim—because it was absolutely intolerable to her to think of giving up her home to him, because she hated and despised him—motives very comprehensible, but not especially generous, or elevated in the abstract. She felt, however, and believed—when she sat down in her chair and put on her glasses to reflect how she could baffle and overthrow him—that it was something for the good of the family and the world that she was planning, not anything selfish for her own benefit. If Augustine in one room planned alms and charities for the expiation of the guilt of the family, which had made itself rich by church lands, with the deepest sense that her undertaking was of the most pious character—Susan in another, set herself to ponder how to retain possession of these lands, with a corresponding sense that her undertaking, her determination, were, if not absolutely pious, at least of a noble and elevated character. She did not say to herself that she was intent upon resisting the enemy by every means in her power. She said to herself that she was determined to have justice, and to resist to the last the doing of wrong, and the victory of the unworthy. This was her way of putting it to herself—and herself did not contradict her, as perhaps another listener might have done. A certain enthusiasm even grew in her as she pondered. She felt no doubt whatever that Farrel-Austin had gained his point by false representations, and had played upon the ignorance of the unknown Austin who had transferred his rights to him, as he said. And how could she tell if this was the true heir? Even documents were not to be trusted to in such a case, nor the sharpest of lawyers—and old Mr. Lincoln, the family solicitor, was anything but sharp. Besides, if this man in Bruges were the right man, he had probably no idea of what he was relinquishing. How could a Flemish tradesman know what were the beauties and attractions of “a place” in the home counties, amid all the wealth and fulness of English lands, and with all the historical associations of Whiteladies? He could not possibly know, or he would not give them up. And if he had a wife, she could not know, or she would never permit such a sacrifice.

Miss Susan sat and thought till the moonlight disappeared from the window, and the Summer night felt the momentary chill which precedes dawn. She thought of it till her heart burned. No, she could not submit to this. In her own person she must ascertain if the story was true, and if the strangers really knew what they were doing. It took some time to move her to this resolution; but at last it took possession of her. To go and undo what Farrel-Austin had done, to wake in the mind of the heir, if this was the heir, that desire to possess which is dominant in most minds, and ever ready to answer to any appeal; she rose almost with a spring of youthful animation from her seat when her thoughts settled upon this conclusion. She put out her lamp and went to the window, where a faint blueness was growing—that dim beginning of illumination which is not night but day, and which a very early bird in the green covert underneath was beginning to greet with the first faint twitter of returning existence. Miss Susan felt herself inspired; it was not to defeat Farrel-Austin, but to prevent wrong, to do justice, a noble impulse which fires the heart and lights the eye.

Thus she made up her mind to an undertaking which afterward had more effect upon her personal fate than anything else that had happened in her long life. She did it, not only intending no evil, but with a sense of what she believed to be generous feeling expanding her soul. Her own personal motives were so thrust out of sight that she herself did not perceive them—and indeed, had it been suggested to her that she had personal motives, she would have denied it strenuously. What interest could she have in substituting one heir for another? But yet Miss Susan’s blue eyes shot forth a gleam which was not heavenly as she lay down and tried to sleep. She could not sleep, her mind being excited and full of a thousand thoughts—the last distinct sensation in it before the uneasy doze which came over her senses in the morning being a thrill of pleasure that Farrel-Austin might yet be foiled. But what of that? Was it not her business to protect the old stock of the family, and keep the line of succession intact? The more she thought of it, the more did this appear a sacred duty, worthy of any labor and any sacrifice.

CHAPTER VI.

The breakfast-table was spread in the smaller dining-room, a room furnished with quaint old furniture like the hall, which looked out upon nothing but the grass and trees of the garden, bounded by an old mossy wall, as old as the house. The windows were all open, the last ray of the morning sun slanting off the shining panes, the scent of the flowers coming in, and all the morning freshness. Miss Susan came downstairs full of unusual energy, notwithstanding her sleepless night. She had decided upon something to do, which is always satisfactory to an active mind; and though she was beyond the age at which people generally plan long journeys with pleasure, the prick of something new inspired her and made a stir in her veins. “People live more when they stir about,” she said to herself, when, with a little wonder and partial amusement at herself, she became conscious of this sensation, and took her seat at the breakfast-table with a sense of stimulated energy which was very pleasant.

Miss Augustine came in after her sister, with her hands folded in her long sleeves, looking more than ever like a saint out of a painted window. She crossed herself as she sat down. Her blue eyes seemed veiled so far as external life went. She was the ideal nun of romance and poetry, not the ruddy-faced, active personage who is generally to be found under that guise in actual life. This was one of her fast-days—and indeed most days were fast-days with her. She was her own rule, which is always a harsher kind of restraint than any rule adapted to common use. Her breakfast consisted of a cup of milk and a small cake of bread. She gave her sister an abstracted kiss, but took no notice of her lively looks. When she withdrew her hands from her sleeves a roll of paper became visible in one of them, which she slowly opened out.

“These are the plans for the chantry, finished at last,” she said. “Everything is ready now. You must take them to the vicar, I suppose, Susan. I cannot argue with a worldly-minded man. I will go to the almshouses while you are talking to him, and pray.”

“The vicar has no power in the matter,” said Miss Susan. “So long as we are the lay rectors we can build as we please; at the chancel end at least.”

Augustine put up her thin hands, just appearing out of the wide sleeves, to her ears. “Susan, Susan! do not use those words, which have all our guilt in them! Lay rectors! Lay robbers! Oh! will you ever learn that this thought is the misery of my life?”

“My dear, we must be reasonable,” said Miss Susan. “If you like to throw away—no, I mean to employ your money in building a chantry, I don’t object; but we have our rights.”

“Our rights are nothing but wrongs,” said the other, shaking her head, “unless my poor work may be accepted as an expiation. Ours is not the guilt, and therefore, being innocent, we may make the amends.”

“I wonder where you got your doctrines from?” said Miss Susan. “They are not Popish either, so far as I can make out; and in some things, Austine, you are not even High Church.”

Augustine made no reply. Her attention had failed. She held the drawings before her, which at last, after many difficulties, she had managed to bring into existence—on paper at least. I do not think she had very clear notions in point of doctrine. She had taken up with a visionary mediævalism which she did not very well understand, and which she combined unawares with many of the ordinary principles of a moderate English Church-woman. She liked to cross herself, without meaning very much by it, and the idea of an Austin Chantry, where service should be said every day, “to the intention of” the Austin family, had been for years her cherished fancy, though she would have been shocked had any advanced Ritualists or others suggested to her that what she meant was a daily mass for the dead. She did not mean this at all, nor did she know very clearly what she meant, except to build a chantry, in which daily service should be maintained forever, always with a reference to the Austins, and making some sort of expiation, she could not have told what, for the fundamentals in the family. Perhaps it was merely inability of reasoning, or perhaps a disinclination to entangle herself in doctrine at all, that made her prefer to remain in this vagueness and confusion. She knew very well what she wanted to do, but not exactly why.

While her sister looked at her drawings Miss Susan thought it a good moment to reveal her own plans, with, I suppose, that yearning for some sort of sympathy which survives even in the minds of those who have had full experience of the difficulty or even impossibility of obtaining it. She knew Augustine would not, probably could not, enter into her thoughts, and I am not sure that she desired it—but yet she longed to awaken some little interest.

“I am thinking,” she said, “of going away—for a few days.”

Augustine took no notice. She examined first the front elevation, then the interior of the chantry. “They say it is against the law,” she remarked after awhile, “to have a second altar; but every old chantry has it, and without an altar the service would be imperfect. Remember this Susan; for the vicar, they tell me, will object.”

“You don’t hear what I say, then? I am thinking of—leaving home.”

“Yes, I heard—so long as you settle this for me before you go, that it may be begun at once. Think, Susan! it is the work of my life.”

“I will see to it,” said Miss Susan with a sigh. “You shall not be crossed, dear, if I can manage it. But you don’t ask where I am going or why I am going.”

“No,” said Augustine calmly; “it is no doubt about business, and business has no share in my thoughts.”

“If it had not a share in my thoughts things would go badly with us,” said Miss Susan, coloring with momentary impatience and self-assertion. Then she fell back into her former tone. “I am going abroad, Austine; does not that rouse you? I have not been abroad since we were quite young, how many years ago?—when we went to Italy with my father—when we were all happy together. Ah me! what a difference! Austine, you recollect that?”

“Happy, were we?” said Augustine looking up, with a faint tinge of color on her paleness; “no, I was never happy till I saw once for all how wicked we were, how we deserved our troubles, and how something might be done to make up for them. I have never really cared for anything else.”

This she said with a slight raising of her head and an air of reality which seldom appeared in her visionary face. It was true, though it was so strange. Miss Susan was a much more reasonable, much more weighty personage, but she perceived this change with a little suspicion, and did not understand the fanciful, foolish sister whom she had loved and petted all her life.

“My dear, we had no troubles then,” she said, with a wondering look.

“Always, always,” said Augustine, “and I never knew the reason, till I found it out.” Then this gleam of something more than intelligence faded all at once from her face. “I hope you will settle everything before you go,” she said, almost querulously; “to be put off now and have to wait would surely break my heart.”

“I’ll do it, I’ll do it, Austine. I am going—on family business.”

“If you see poor Herbert,” said Augustine, calmly, “tell him we pray for him in the almshouses night and day. That may do him good. If I had got my work done sooner he might have lived. Indeed, the devil sometimes tempts me to think it is hard that just when my chantry is beginning and continual prayer going on Herbert should die. It seems to take away the meaning! But what am I, one poor creature, to make up, against so many that have done wrong?”

“I am not going to Herbert, I am going to Flanders—to Bruges,” said Miss Susan, carried away by a sense of the importance of her mission, and always awaiting, as her right, some spark of curiosity, at least.

Augustine returned to her drawings; the waning light died out of her face; she became again the conventional visionary, the recluse of romance, abstracted and indifferent. “The vicar is always against me,” she said; “you must talk to him, Susan. He wants the Browns to come into the vacant cottage. He says they have been honest and all that; but they are not praying people. I cannot take them in; it is praying people I want.”

“In short, you want something for your money,” said her sister; “a percentage, such as it is. You are more a woman of business, my dear, than you think.”

Augustine looked at her, vaguely, startled. “I try to do for the best,” she said. “I do not understand why people should always wish to thwart me; what I want is their good.”

“They like their own way better than their good, or rather than what you think is for their good,” said Miss Susan. “We all like our own way.”

“Not me, not me!” said the other, with a sigh; and she rose and crossed herself once more. “Will you come to prayers at the almshouse, Susan? The bell will ring presently, and it would do you good.”

“My dear, I have no time,” said the elder sister, “I have a hundred things to do.”

Augustine turned away with a soft shake of the head. She folded her arms into her sleeves, and glided away like a ghost. Presently her sister saw her crossing the lawn, her gray hood thrown lightly over her head, her long robes falling in straight, soft lines, her slim figure moving along noiselessly. Miss Susan was the practical member of the family, and but for her probably the Austins of Whiteladies would have died out ere now, by sheer carelessness of their substance, and indifference to what was going on around them; but as she watched her sister crossing the lawn, a sense of inferiority crossed her mind. She felt herself worldly, a pitiful creature of the earth, and wished she was as good as Augustine. “But the house, and the farm, and the world must be kept going,” she said, by way of relieving herself, with a mingling of humor and compunction. It was not much her small affairs could do to make or mar the going on of the world, but yet in small ways and great the world has to be kept going. She went off at once to the bailiff, who was waiting for her, feeling a pleasure in proving to herself that she was busy and had no time, which is perhaps a more usual process of thought with the Marthas of this world than the other plan of finding fault with the Marys, for in their hearts most women have a feeling that the prayer is the best.

The intimation of Miss Susan’s intended absence excited the rest of the household much more than it had excited her sister. “Wherever are you going to, miss?” said cook, who was as old as her mistress, and had never changed her style of addressing her since the days when she was young Miss Susan and played at house-keeping.

“I am going abroad,” she answered, with a little innocent pride; for to people who live all their lives at home there is a certain grandeur in going abroad. “You will take great care of my sister, and see that she does not fast too much.”

It was a patriarchal household, with such a tinge of familiarity in its dealings with its mistress, as—with servants who have passed their lives in a house—it is seldom possible, even if desirable, to avoid. Stevens the butler stopped open-mouthed, with a towel in his hand, to listen, and Martha approached from the other end of the kitchen, where she had been busy tying up and labelling cook’s newly-made preserves.

“Going abroad!” they all echoed in different keys.

“I expect you all to be doubly careful and attentive,” said Miss Susan, “though indeed I am not going very far, and probably won’t be more than a few days gone. But in the meantime Miss Augustine will require your utmost care. Stevens, I am very much displeased with the way you took it upon you to speak at dinner yesterday. It annoyed my sister extremely, and you had no right to use so much freedom. Never let it happen again.”

Stevens was taken entirely by surprise, and stood gazing at her with the bewildered air of a man who, seeking innocent amusement in the hearing of news, is suddenly transfixed by an unexpected thunderbolt. “Me, mum!” said Stevens bewildered, “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.” It was an unfair advantage to take.

“Precisely, you,” said Miss Susan; “what have you to do with the people at the almshouses? Nobody expects you to be answerable for what they do or don’t do. Never let me hear anything of the kind again.”

“Oh,” said Stevens, with a snort of suppressed offence, “it’s them! Miss Austin, I can’t promise at no price! if I hears that old ’ag a praised up to the skies—”

“You will simply hold your tongue,” said Miss Susan peremptorily. “What is it to you? My sister knows her own people best.”

Upon this the two women in attendance shook their heads, and Stevens, encouraged by this tacit support, took courage.

“She don’t, mum, she don’t,” he said; “if you heard the things they’ll say behind her back! It makes me sick, it does, being a faithful servant. If I don’t dare to speak up, who can? She’s imposed upon to that degree, and made game of as your blood would run cold to see it; and if I ain’t to say a word when I haves a chance, who can? The women sees it even—and it’s nat’ral as I should see further than the women.”

“Then you’ll please set the women a good example by holding your tongue,” said Miss Susan. “Once for all, recollect, all of you, Miss Augustine shall never be crossed while I am mistress of the house. When it goes into other hands you can do as you please.”

“Oh, laws!” said the cook, “when it comes to that, mum, none of us has nothing to do here.”

“That is as you please, and as Mr.—as the heir pleases,” Miss Susan said, making a pause before the last words. Her cheek colored, her blue eyes grew warm with the new life and energy in her. She went out of the kitchen with a certain swell of anticipated triumph in her whole person. Mr. Farrel-Austin should soon discover that he was not to have everything his own way. Probably she would find he had deceived the old man at Bruges, that these poor people knew nothing about the true value of what they were relinquishing. Curiously enough, it never occurred to her, to lessen her exhilaration, that to leave the house of her fathers to an old linen-draper from the Low-Countries would be little more agreeable than to leave it to Farrel-Austin—nay, even as Everard had suggested to her, that Farrel-Austin, as being an English gentleman, was much more likely to do honor to the old house than a foreigner of inferior position, and ideas altogether different from her own. She thought nothing of this; she ignored herself, indeed, in the matter, which was a thing she was pleased to think of afterward, and which gave her a little consolation—that is, she thought of herself only through Farrel-Austin, as the person most interested in, and most likely to be gratified by, his downfall.

As the day wore on and the sun got round and blazed on the south front of the house, she withdrew to the porch, as on the former day, and sat there enjoying the coolness, the movement of the leaves, the soft, almost imperceptible breeze. She was more light-hearted than on the previous day when poor Herbert was in her mind, and when nothing but the success of her adversary seemed possible. Now it seemed to her that a new leaf was turned, a new chapter commenced.

Thus the day went on. In the afternoon she had one visitor, and only one, the vicar, Mr. Gerard, who came by the north gate, as her visitors yesterday had done, and crossed the lawn to the porch with much less satisfaction of mind than Miss Susan had to see him coming.

“Of course you know what has brought me,” he said at once, seating himself in a garden-chair which had been standing outside on the lawn, and which he brought in after his first greeting. “This chantry of your sister’s is a thing I don’t understand, and I don’t know how I can consent to it. It is alien to all the customs of the time. It is a thing that ought to have been built three hundred years ago, if at all. It will be a bit of bran new Gothic, a thing I detest; and in short I don’t understand it, nor what possible meaning a chantry can have in these days.”

“Neither do I,” said Miss Susan smiling, “not the least in the world.”

“If it is meant for masses for the dead,” said Mr. Gerard—“some people I know have gone as far as that—but I could not consent to it, Miss Austin. It should have been built three hundred years ago, if at all.”

“Augustine could not have built it three hundred years ago,” said Miss Susan, “for the best of reasons. My own opinion is, between ourselves, that had she been born three hundred years ago she would have been a happier woman; but neither she nor I can change that.”

“That is not the question,” said the vicar. He was a man with a fine faculty for being annoyed. There was a longitudinal line in his forehead between his eyes, which was continually moving, marking the passing irritations which went and came, and his voice had a querulous tone. He was in the way of thinking that everything that happened out of the natural course was done to annoy him specially, and he felt it a personal grievance that the Austin chantry had not been built in the sixteenth century. “There might have been some sense in it then,” he added, “and though art was low about that time, still it would have got toned down, and been probably an ornament to the church; but a white, staring, new thing with spick and span pinnacles! I do not see how I can consent.”

“At all events,” said Miss Susan, showing the faintest edge of claw under the velvet of her touch, “no one can blame you at least, which I think is always a consolation. I have just been going over the accounts for the restoration of the chancel, and I think you may congratulate yourself that you have not got to pay them. Austine would kill me if she heard me, but that is one good of a lay rector. I hope you won’t oppose her, seriously, Mr. Gerard. It is not masses for the dead she is thinking of. You know her crotchets. My sister has a very fine mind when she is roused to exert it,” Miss Susan said with a little dignity, “but it is nonsense to deny that she has crotchets, and I hope you are too wise and kind to oppose her. The endowment will be good, and the chantry pretty. Why, it is by Sir Gilbert Scott.”

“No, no, not Sir Gilbert himself; at least, I fear not,” said Mr. Gerard, melting.

“One of his favorite pupils, and he has looked at it and approved. We shall have people coming to see it from all parts of the country; and it is Augustine’s favorite crotchet. I am sure, Mr. Gerard, you will not seriously oppose.”

Thus it was that the vicar was taken over. He reflected afterward that there was consolation in the view of the subject which she introduced so cunningly, and that he could no more be found fault with for the new chantry which the lay rector had a right to connect with his part of the church if he chose—than he could be made to pay the bills for the restoration of the chancel. And Miss Susan had put it to him so delicately about her sister’s crotchets that what could a gentleman do but yield? The longitudinal line on his forehead smoothed out accordingly, and his tone ceased to be querulous. Yes, there was no doubt she had crotchets, poor soul; indeed, she was half crazy, perhaps, as the village people thought, but a good religious creature, fond of prayers and church services, and not clever enough to go far astray in point of doctrine. As Mr. Gerard went home, indeed, having committed himself, he discovered a number of admirable reasons for tolerating Augustine and her crotchets. If she sank money enough to secure an endowment of sixty pounds a year, in order to have prayers said daily in her chantry, as she called it, it was clear that thirty or forty from Mr. Gerard instead of the eighty he now paid, would be quite enough for his curate’s salary. For what could a curate want with more than, or even so much as, a hundred pounds a year? And then the almshouses disposed of the old people of the parish in the most comfortable way, and on the whole, Augustine did more good than harm. Poor thing! It would be a pity, he thought, to cross this innocent and pious creature, who was “deficient,” but too gentle and good to be interfered with in her crotchets. Poor Augustine, whom they all disposed of so calmly! Perhaps it was foolish enough of her to stay alone in the little almshouse chapel all the time that this interview was going on, praying that God would touch the heart of His servant and render it favorable toward her, while Miss Susan managed it all so deftly by mere sleight of hand; but on the whole, Augustine’s idea of the world as a place where God did move hearts for small matters as well as great, was a more elevated one than the others. She felt quite sure when she glided through the Summer fields, still and gray in her strange dress, that God’s servants’ hearts had been moved to favor her, and that she might begin her work at once.

CHAPTER VII.

SUSAN AUSTIN said no more about her intended expedition, except to Martha, who had orders to prepare for the journey, and who was thrown into an excitement somewhat unbecoming her years by the fact that her mistress preferred to take Jane as her attendant, which was a slight very trying to the elder woman. “I cannot indulge myself by taking you,” said Miss Susan, “because I want you to take care of my sister; she requires more attendance than I do, Martha, and you will watch over her.” I am afraid that Miss Susan had a double motive in this decision, as most people have, and preferred Jane, who was young and strong, to the other, who required her little comforts, and did not like to be hurried, or put out; but she veiled the personal preference under a good substantial reason which is a very good thing to do in all cases, where it is desirable that the wheels of life should go easily. Martha had “a good cry,” but then consoled herself with the importance of her charge. “Not as it wants much cleverness to dress Miss Augustine, as never puts on nothing worth looking at—that gray thing for ever and ever!” she said, with natural contempt. Augustine herself was wholly occupied with the chantry, and took no interest in her sister’s movements; and there was no one else to inquire into them or ask a reason. She went off accordingly quite quietly and unobserved, with one box, and Jane in delighted attendance. Miss Susan took her best black silk with her, which she wore seldom, having fallen into the custom of the gray gown to please Augustine, a motive which in small matters was her chief rule of action;—on this occasion, however, she intended to be as magnificent as the best contents of her wardrobe could make her, taking, also, her Indian shawl and newest bonnet. These signs of superiority would not, she felt sure, be thrown away on a linen-draper. She took with her also, by way of appealing to another order of feelings, a very imposing picture of the house of Whiteladies, in which a gorgeous procession, escorting Queen Elizabeth, who was reported to have visited the place, was represented as issuing from the old porch. It seemed to Miss Susan that nobody who saw this picture could be willing to relinquish the house, for, indeed, her knowledge of it was limited. She set out one evening, resolved, with heroic courage, to commit herself to the Antwerp boat, which in Miss Susan’s early days had been the chief and natural mode of conveyance. Impossible to tell how tranquil the country was as she left it—the laborers going home, the balmy kine wandering devious and leisurely with melodious lowings through the quiet roads. Life would go on with all its quiet routine unbroken, while Miss Susan dared the dangers of the deep, and prayer bell and dinner bell ring just as usual, and Augustine and her almshouse people go through all their pious habitudes. She was away from home so seldom, that this universal sway of common life and custom struck her strangely, with a humiliating sense of her own unimportance—she who was so important, the centre of everything. Jane, her young maid, felt the same sentiment in a totally different way, being full of pride and exultation in her own unusualness, and delicious contempt for those unfortunates to whom this day was just the same as any other.

Jane did not fear the dangers of the deep, which she did not know—while Miss Susan did, who was aware what she was about to undergo; but she trusted in Providence to take care of her, and smooth the angry waves, and said a little prayer of thanksgiving when she felt the evening air come soft upon her face, though the tree-tops would move about against the sky more than was desirable. I do not quite know by what rule of thought it was that Miss Susan felt herself to have a special claim to the succor of Providence as going upon a most righteous errand. She did manage to represent her mission to herself in this light, however. She was going to vindicate the right—to restore to their natural position people who had been wronged. If these said people were quite indifferent both to their wrongs and to their rights, that was their own fault, and in no respect Miss Susan’s, who had her duty to do, whatever came of it. This she maintained very stoutly to herself, ignoring Farrel-Austin altogether, who might have thought of her enterprize in a different light. All through the night which she passed upon the gloomy ocean in a close little berth, with Jane helpless and wretched, requiring the attention of the stewardess, Miss Susan felt her spirit supported by the consciousness of virtue which was almost heroic: How much more comfortable she would have been at home in the west room, which she remembered so tenderly; how terrible was the rushing sound of waves in her ears, waves separated from her by so fragile a bulwark, “only a plank between her and eternity!” But all this she was undergoing for the sake of justice and right.

She felt herself, however, like a creature in a dream, when she walked out the morning of her arrival, alone, into the streets of Bruges, confused by the strangeness of the place, which so recalled her youth to her, that she could scarcely believe she had not left her father and brother at the hotel. Once in these early days, she had come out alone in the morning, she remembered, just as she was doing now, to buy presents for her companions; and that curious, delightful sense of half fright, half freedom, which the girl had felt thrilling her through while on this escapade, came back to the mind of the woman who was growing old, with a pathetic pleasure. She remembered how she had paused at the corner of the street, afraid to stop, afraid to go on, almost too shy to go into the shops where she had seen the things she wanted to buy. Miss Susan was too old to be shy now. She walked along sedately, not afraid that anybody would stare at her or be rude to her, or troubled by any doubts whether it was “proper;” but yet the past confused her mind. How strange it all was! Could it be that the carillon, which chimed sweetly, keenly in her ears, like a voice out of her youth, startling her by reiterated calls and reminders, had been chiming out all the ordinary hours—nay, quarters of hours—marking everybody’s mealtimes and ordinary every-day vicissitudes, for these forty years past? It was some time before her ear got used to it, before she ceased to start and feel as if the sweet chimes from the belfry were something personal, addressed to her alone. She had been very young when she was in Bruges before, and everything was deeply impressed upon her mind. She had travelled very little since, and all the quaint gables, the squares, the lace-makers seated at their doors, the shop-windows full of peasant jewellery, had the strangest air of familiarity.

It was some time even in the curious bewildering tumult of her feelings before she could recollect her real errand. She had not asked any further information from Farrel-Austin. If he had found their unknown relation out by seeing the name of Austin over a shop-door, she surely could do as much. She had, however, wandered into the outskirts of the town before she fully recollected that her mission in Bruges was, first of all, to walk about the streets and find out the strange Austins who were foreigners and tradespeople. She came back, accordingly, as best she could, straying through the devious streets, meeting English travellers with the infallible Murray under their arms, and wondering to herself how people could have leisure to come to such a place as this for mere sight-seeing. That day, however, perhaps because of the strong hold upon her of the past and its recollections, perhaps because of the bewildering sense of mingled familiarity and strangeness in the place, she did not find the object of her search—though, indeed, the streets of Bruges are not so many, or the shops so extensive as to defy the scrutiny of a passer-by. She got tired, and half ashamed of herself to be thus walking about alone, and was glad to take refuge in a dim corner of the Cathedral, where she dropped on one knee in the obscurity, half afraid to be seen by any English visitor in this attitude of devotion in a Roman Catholic church, and then sat down to collect herself, and think over all she had to do. What was it she had to do? To prevent wrong from being done; to help to secure her unknown cousins in their rights. This was but a vague way of stating it, but it was more difficult to put the case to herself if she entered into detail. To persuade them that they had been over-persuaded, that they had too lightly given up advantages which, had they known their real value, they would not have given up; to prove to them how pleasant a thing it was to be Austins of Whiteladies. This was what she had to do.

Next morning Miss Susan set out with a clear head and a more distinct notion of what she was about. She had got used to the reiterations of the carillon, to the familiar distant look of the quaint streets. And, indeed, she had not gone very far when her heart jumped up in her breast to see written over a large shop the name of Austin, as Farrel had told her. She stopped and looked at it. It was situated at a bend in the road, where a narrow street debouched into a wider one, and had that air of self-restrained plainness, of being above the paltry art of window-dressing, which is peculiar to old and long-established shops whose character is known, where rich materials are sold at high prices, and everything cheap is contemned. Piles of linen and blankets, and other unattractive articles, were in a broad but dingy window, and in the doorway stood an old man with a black skullcap on his head, and blue eyes, full of vivacity and activity, notwithstanding his years. He was standing at his door looking up and down, with the air of a man who looked for news, or expected some incident other than the tranquil events around. When Miss Susan crossed the narrow part of the street, which she did with her heart in her mouth, he looked up at her, noting her appearance; and she felt sure that some internal warning of the nature of her errand came into his mind. From this look Miss Susan, quick as a flash of lightning, divined that he was not satisfied with his bargain, that his attention and curiosity were aroused, and that Farrel-Austin’s visit had made him curious of other visits, and in a state of expectation. I believe she was right in the idea she thus formed, but she saw it more clearly than M. Austin did, who knew little more than that he was restless, and in an unsettled frame of mind.

“Est-ce vous qui êtes le propriétaire?” said Miss Susan, speaking bluntly, in her bad French, without any polite prefaces, such as befit the language; she was too much excited, even had she been sufficiently conversant with the strange tongue, to know that they were necessary. The shopkeeper took his cap off his bald head, which was venerable, with an encircling ring of white locks, and made her a bow. He was a handsome old man, with blue eyes, such as had always been peculiar to the Austins, and a general resemblance—or so, at least, Miss Susan thought—to the old family pictures at Whiteladies. Under her best black silk gown, and the Indian shawl which she had put on to impress her unknown relation with a sense of her importance, she felt her heart beating. But, indeed, black silk and India shawls are inconvenient wear in the middle of Summer in the Pays Bas; and perhaps this fact had something to do with the flush and tremor of which she was suddenly conscious.

M. Austin, the shopkeeper, took off his cap to her, and answered “Oui, madame,” blandly; then, with that instant perception of her nationality, for which the English abroad are not always grateful, he added, “Madame is Inglese? we too. I am Inglese. In what can I be serviceable to madame?”

“Oh, you understand English? Thank heaven!” said Miss Susan, whose French was far from fluent. “I am very glad to hear it, for that will make my business so much the easier. It is long since I have been abroad, and I have almost forgotten the language. Could I speak to you somewhere? I don’t want to buy anything,” she said abruptly, as he stood aside to let her come in.

“That shall be at the pleasure of madame,” said the old man with the sweetest of smiles, “though miladi will not find better damask in many places. Enter, madame. I will take you to my counting-house, or into my private house, if that will more please you. In what can I be serviceable to madame?”

“Come in here—anywhere where we can be quiet. What I have to say is important,” said Miss Susan. The shop was not like an English shop. There was less light, less decoration, the windows were half blocked up, and behind, in the depths of the shop, there was a large, half-curtained window, opening into another room at the back. “I am not a customer, but it may be worth your while,” said Miss Susan, her breath coming quick on her parted lips.

The shopkeeper made her a bow, which she set down to French politeness, for all people who spoke another language were French to Miss Susan. He said, “Madame shall be satisfied,” and led her into the deeper depths, where he placed a chair for her, and remained standing in a deferential attitude. Miss Susan was confused by the new circumstances in which she found herself, and by the rapidity with which event had followed event.

“My name is Austin too,” she said, faltering slightly. “I thought when I saw your name, that perhaps you were a relation of mine—who has been long lost to his family.”

“It is too great an honor,” said the old shopkeeper, with another bow; “but yes—but yes, it is indeed so. I have seen already another gentleman, a person in the same interests. Yes, it is me. I am Guillaume Austin.”

“Guillaume?”

“Yes. William you it call. I have told my name to the other monsieur. He is, he say, the successive—what you call it? The one who comes—”

“The heir—”

“That is the word. I show him my papers—he is satisfied; as I will also to madame with pleasure. Madame is also cousin of Monsieur Farrel? Yes?—and of me? It is too great honor. She shall see for herself. My grandfather was Ingleseman—trés Inglese. I recall to myself his figure as if I saw it at this moment. Blue eyes, very clear, pointed nose—ma foi! like the nose of madame.”

“I should like to see your papers,” said Miss Susan. “Shall I come back in the evening when you have more time? I should like to see your wife—for you have one, surely? and your children.”

“Yes, yes; but one is gone,” said the shopkeeper. “Figure to yourself, madame, that I had but one son, and he is gone! There is no longer any one to take my place—to come after me. Ah! life is changed when it is so. One lives on—but what is life? a thing we must endure till it comes to an end.”

“I know it well,” said Miss Susan, in a low tone.

“Madame, too, has had the misfortune to lose her son, like me?”

“Ah, don’t speak of it! But I have no son. I am what you call a vile fee,” said Miss Susan; “an old maid—nothing more. And he is still living, poor boy; but doomed, alas! doomed. Mr. Austin, I have a great many things to speak to you about.”

“I attend—with all my heart,” said the shopkeeper, somewhat puzzled, for Miss Susan’s speech was mysterious, there could be little doubt.

“If I return, then, in the evening, you will show me your papers, and introduce me to your family,” said Miss Susan, getting up. “I must not take up your time now.”

“But I am delighted to wait upon madame now,” said the old man, “and since madame has the bounty to wish to see my family—by here, madame, I beg—enter, and be welcome—very welcome.”

Saying this he opened the great window-door in the end of the shop, and Miss Susan, walking forward somewhat agitated, found herself all at once in a scene very unexpected by her, and of a kind for which she was unprepared. She was ushered in at once to the family room and family life, without even the interposition of a passage. The room into which this glass door opened was not very large, and quite disproportionately lofty. Opposite to the entrance from the shop was another large window, reaching almost to the roof, which opened upon a narrow court, and kept a curious dim day-light, half from without, half from within, in the space, which seemed more narrow than it need have done by reason of the height of the roof. Against this window, in a large easy chair, sat an old woman in a black gown, without a cap, and with one little tail of gray hair twisted at the back of her head, and curl-papers embellishing her forehead in front. Her gown was rusty, and not without stains, and she wore a large handkerchief, with spots, tied about her neck. She was chopping vegetables in a dish, and not in the least abashed to be found so engaged. In a corner sat a younger woman, also in black, and looking like a gloomy shadow, lingering apart from the light. Another young woman went and came toward an inner room, in which it was evident the dinner was going to be cooked.

A pile of boxes, red and blue, and all the colors of the rainbow, was on a table. There was no carpet on the floor, which evidently had not been frotté for some time past, nor curtains at the window, except a melancholy spotted muslin, which hung closely over it, making the scanty daylight dimmer still. Miss Susan drew her breath hard with a kind of gasp. The Austins were people extremely well to do—rich in their way, and thinking themselves very comfortable; but to the prejudiced English eye of their new relation, the scene was one of absolute squalor. Even in an English cottage, Miss Susan thought, there would have been an attempt at some prettiness or other, some air of nicety or ornament; but the comfortable people here (though Miss Susan supposed all foreigners to be naturally addicted to show and glitter), thought of nothing but the necessities of living. They were not in the least ashamed, as an English family would have been, of being “caught” in the midst of their morning’s occupations. The old lady put aside the basin with the vegetables, and wiped her hands with a napkin, and greeted her visitor with perfect calm; the others took scarcely any notice. Were these the people whose right it was to succeed generations of English squires—the dignified race of Whiteladies? Miss Susan shivered as she sat down, and then she began her work of temptation. She drew forth her picture, which was handed round for everybody to see. She described the estate and all its attractions. Would they let this pass away from them? At least they should not do it without knowing what they had sacrificed. To do this, partly in English, which the shopkeeper translated imperfectly, and partly in very bad French, was no small labor to Miss Susan; but her zeal was equal to the tax upon it, and the more she talked, and the more trouble she had to overcome her own repugnance to these new people, the more vehement she became in her efforts to break their alliance with Farrel, and induce them to recover their rights. The young woman who was moving about the room, and whose appearance had at once struck Miss Susan, came and looked over the old mother’s shoulder at the picture, and expressed her admiration in the liveliest terms. The jolie maison it was, and the dommage to lose it, she cried: and these words were very strong pleas in favor of all Miss Susan said.

“Ah, what an abominable law,” said the old lady at length, “that excludes the daughters!—sans ça, ma fille!” and she began to cry a little. “Oh, my son, my son! if the good God had not taken him, what joy to have restored him to the country of his grandfather, to an establishment so charming!”

Miss Susan drew close to the old woman in the rusty black gown, and approached her mouth to her ear.

“Cette jeune femme-là est veuve de voter fils?”

“No. There she is—there in the corner; she who neither smiles nor speaks,” said the mother, putting up the napkin with which she had dried her hands, to her eyes.

The whole situation had in it a dreary tragi-comedy, half pitiful, half laughable; a great deal of intense feeling veiled by external circumstances of the homeliest order, such as is often to be found in comfortable, unlovely bourgeois households. How it was, in such a matter-of-fact interior, that the great temptation of her life should have flashed across Miss Susan’s mind, I cannot tell. She glanced from the young wife, very soon to be a mother, who leant over the old lady’s chair, to the dark shadow in the corner, who had never stirred from her seat. It was all done in a moment—thought, plan, execution. A sudden excitement took hold upon her. She drew her chair close to the old woman, and bent forward till her lips almost touched her ear.

“L’autre est—la même—que elle?”

“Que voulez-vous dire, madame?”

The old lady looked up at her bewildered, but, caught by the glitter of excitement in Miss Susan’s eye, and the panting breath, which bore evidence to some sudden fever in her, stopped short. Her wondering look turned into something more keen and impassioned—a kind of electric spark flashed between the two women. It was done in a moment; so rapidly, that at least (as Miss Susan thought after, a hundred times, and a hundred to that) it was without premeditation; so sudden, that it was scarcely their fault. Miss Susan’s eyes gleaming, said something to those of the old Flamande, whom she had never seen before, Guillaume Austin’s wife. A curious thrill ran through both—the sting, the attraction, the sharp movement, half pain, half pleasure, of temptation and guilty intention; for there was a sharp and stinging sensation of pleasure in it, and something which made them giddy. They stood on the edge of a precipice, and looked at each other a second time before they took the plunge. Then Miss Susan laid her hand upon the other’s arm, gripping it in her passion.

“Venez quelque part pour parler,” she said, in her bad French.

CHAPTER VIII.

I CANNOT tell the reader what was the conversation that ensued between Miss Susan and Madame Austin of Bruges, because the two naturally shut themselves up by themselves, and desired no witnesses. They went upstairs, threading their way through a warehouse full of goods, to Madame Austin’s bedroom, which was her reception-room, and, to Miss Susan’s surprise, a great deal prettier and lighter than the family apartment below, in which all the ordinary concerns of life were carried on. There were two white beds in it, a recess with crimson curtains drawn almost completely across—and various pretty articles of furniture, some marqueterie cabinets and tables, which would have made the mouth of any amateur of old furniture water, and two sofas with little rugs laid down in front of them. The boards were carefully waxed and clean, the white curtains drawn over the window, and everything arranged with some care and daintiness. Madame Austin placed her visitor on the principal sofa, which was covered with tapestry, but rather hard and straight, and then shut the door. She did not mean to be overheard.

Madame Austin was the ruling spirit in the house. It was she that regulated the expenses, that married the daughters, and that had made the match between her son and the poor creature downstairs, who had taken no part in the conversation. Her husband made believe to supervise and criticise everything, in which harmless gratification she encouraged him; but in fact his real business was to acquiesce, which he did with great success. Miss Susan divined well when she said to herself that his wife would never permit him to relinquish advantages so great when she knew something of what they really implied; but she too had been broken down by grief, and ready to feel that nothing was of any consequence in life, when Farrel-Austin had found them out. I do not know what cunning devil communicated to Miss Susan the right spell by which to wake up in Madame Austin the energies of a vivacious temperament partially repressed by grief and age; but certainly the attempt was crowned with success.

They talked eagerly, with flushed faces and voices which would have been loud had they not feared to be overheard; both of them carried out of themselves by the strangely exciting suggestion which had passed from one to the other almost without words; and they parted with close pressure of hands and with meaning looks, notwithstanding Miss Susan’s terribly bad French, which was involved to a degree which I hardly dare venture to present to the reader; and many readers are aware, by unhappy experience, what an elderly Englishwoman’s French can be. “Je reviendrai encore demain,” said Miss Susan. “J’ai beaucoup choses à parler, et vous dira encore à votre mari. Si vous voulez me parler avant cela, allez à l’hôtel; je serai toujours dans mon appartement. Il est pas ung plaisir pour moi de marcher autour la ville, comme quand j’étais jeune. J’aime rester tranquil; et je reviendrai demain, dans la matin, á votre maison ici. J’ai beaucoup choses de parler autour.”

Madame Austin did not know what “parler autour” could mean, but she accepted the puzzle and comprehended the general thread of the meaning. She returned to her sitting-room downstairs with her head full of a hundred busy thoughts, and Miss Susan went off to her hotel, with a headache, caused by a corresponding overflow in her mind. She was in a great excitement, which indeed could not be quieted by going to the hotel, but which prompted her to “marcher autour la ville,” trying to neutralize the undue activity of her brain by movement of body. It is one of nature’s instinctive ways of wearing out emotion. To do wrong is a very strange sensation, and it was one which, in any great degree, was unknown to Miss Susan. She had done wrong, I suppose, often enough before, but she had long outgrown that sensitive stage of mind and body which can seriously regard as mortal sins the little peccadilloes of common life—the momentary failures of temper or rashness of words, which the tender youthful soul confesses and repents of as great sins. Temptation had not come near her virtuous and equable life; and, to tell the truth, she had often felt with a compunction that the confession she sometimes made in church, of a burden of guilt which was intolerable to her, and of sins too many to be remembered, was an innocent hypocrisy on her part. She had taken herself to task often enough for her inability to feel this deep penitence as she ought; and now a real and great temptation had come in her way, and Miss Susan did not feel at all in that state of mind which she would have thought probable. Her first sensation was that of extreme excitement—a sharp and stinging yet almost pleasurable sense of energy and force and strong will which could accomplish miracles: so I suppose the rebel angels must have felt in the first moment of their sin—intoxicated with the mere sense of it, and of their own amazing force and boldness who dared to do it, and defy the Lord of heaven and earth. She walked about and looked in at the shop-windows, at that wonderful filagree work of steel and silver which the poorest women wear in those Low Countries, and at the films of lace which in other circumstances Miss Susan was woman enough to have been interested in for their own sake. Why could not she think of them?—why could not she care for them now?—A deeper sensation possessed her, and its first effect was so strange that it filled her with fright; for, to tell the truth, it was an exhilarating rather than a depressing sensation. She was breathless with excitement, panting, her heart beating.

Now and then she looked behind her as if some one were pursuing her. She looked at the people whom she met with a conscious defiance, bidding them with her eyes find out, if they dared, the secret which possessed her completely. This thought was not as other thoughts which come and go in the mind, which give way to passing impressions, yet prove themselves to have the lead by returning to fill up all crevices. It never departed from her for a moment. When she went into the shops to buy, as she did after awhile by way of calming herself down, she was half afraid of saying something about it in the midst of her request to look at laces, or her questions as to the price; and, like other mental intoxications, this unaccomplished intention of evil seemed to carry her out of herself altogether; it annihilated all bodily sensations. She walked about as lightly as a ghost, unconscious of her physical powers altogether, feeling neither hunger nor weariness. She went through the churches, the picture galleries, looking vaguely at everything, conscious clearly of nothing, now and then horribly attracted by one of those terrible pictures of blood and suffering, the martyrdoms which abound in all Flemish collections. She went into the shops, as I have said, and bought lace, for what reason she did not know, nor for whom; and it was only in the afternoon late that she went back to her hotel, where Jane, frightened, was looking out for her, and thinking her mistress must have been lost or murdered among “them foreigners.” “I have been with friends,” Miss Susan said, sitting down, bolt upright, on the vacant chair, and looking Jane straight in the face, to make sure that the simple creature suspected nothing. How could she have supposed Jane to know anything, or suspect? But it is one feature of this curious exaltation of mind, in which Miss Susan was, that reason and all its limitations is for the moment abandoned, and things impossible become likely and natural. After this, however, the body suddenly asserted itself, and she became aware that she had been on foot the whole day, and was no longer capable of any physical exertion. She lay down on the sofa dead tired, and after a little interval had something to eat, which she took with appetite, and looked on her purchases with a certain pleasure, and slept soundly all night—the sleep of the just. No remorse visited her, or penitence, only a certain breathless excitement stirring up her whole being, a sense of life and strength and power.

Next morning Miss Susan repeated her visit to her new relations at an early hour. This time she found them all prepared for her, and was received not in the general room, but in Madame Austin’s chamber, where M. Austin and his wife awaited her coming. The shopkeeper himself had altogether changed in appearance: his countenance beamed; he bowed over the hand which Miss Susan held out to him, like an old courtier, and looked gratefully at her.

“Madame has come to our house like a good angel,” he said. “Ah! it is madame’s intelligence which has found out the good news, which cette pauvre chérie had not the courage to tell us. I did never think to laugh of good heart again,” said the poor man, with tears in his eyes, “but this has made me young; and it almost seems as if we owed it to madame.”

“How can that be?” said Miss Susan. “It must have been found out sooner or later. It will make up to you, if anything can, for the loss of your boy.”

“If he had but lived to see it!” said the old man with a sob.