PART 1

When I concluded my last book, I made a solemn resolve that I would write no more till I had somewhat to write about, and at the time I had a sort of notion that perhaps many years might elapse before aught should transpire novel and smart enough to induce me to resume my relinquished pen. But lo you! scarce three moons have waxed and waned ere ‘the creature’s at his dirty work again’.¹

And yet it is no novelty, no fresh and startling position of affairs, that has dipped my quill in ink and spread the blank sheet before me. I have but been looking forth as usual over the face of society; I have but been eating my commons in Chapel Street, dressing and dining out daily, reading newspapers, attending the theatres nightly, taking my place about once a week in the fire-flaught Angrian Mail, rushing as far as Zamorna, sometimes continuing my career till I saw the smoke of Adrianapolis, snatching a look at the staring shops and raw new palaces of that great baby capital, then, like a water-god, taking to the Calabar – not, however, robing myself in flags and crowning myself with sedge, but with a ticket in my fist getting on board a steamer, and away, all fizz and foam, down past Mouthton and coasting it along by Doverham back to Verdopolis again. When subdued by a fit of pathos and sentimentalities, I’ve packed a hamper with sandwiches and gone to Alnwick or somewhere there awa’ – but I’ll try that no more, for last time I did it, chancing to sit down under a willow² in the grounds to eat a cold fowl and drink a bottle of ginger-beer, I made use of the pedestal of a statue for my table, whereat a keeper thought fit to express himself eminently scandalized, and in an insolent manner to give notice that such liberties were not permitted at the castle, that strangers were excluded from this part of the grounds, that the statue was considered a valuable piece of sculpture, being the likeness of some male or female of the house of Wharton who had died twenty years ago,³ with a lot of rhodomontade all tending to shew that I had committed sacrilege or something like it by merely placing a mustard-glass and pepper-box with a dinner-bun and knife and fork at the base of a stupid stone idol representing somebody in their chemise fatuitously gazing at their own naked toes.

Howsumdever, even in this course of life I’ve seen and heard a summat that, like the notes of a tourist,⁴ may sell when committed to paper. Lord, a book-wright need never be at a loss! One cannot expect earthquakes and insurrections every day. There’s not always

An Angrian campaign going on in the rain,

Nor a gentleman squire lighting his fire

Up on the moors with his blackguards and boors,

Nor a duke and a lord drawing the sword,

Hectoring and lying, the whole world defying,

Then sitting down crying.

There’s not always

A shopkeeper militant coming out iligant,

With King Boy and King Jack both genteelly in black,

Forming Holy Alliance and breathing defiance,

Nor a prince finding brandy every day coming handy,

While he’s conquering of lands with his bold nigger bands,

Like a man of his hands.

There’s not always

A death and a marriage, a hearse and a carriage,

A bigamy cause, a king versus laws,

Nor a short transportation for the good of the nation,

Nor a speedy returning, mid national mourning,

While him and his father refuse to foregather,

’Cause the Earl hadn’t rather.⁵

Reader, these things don’t happen every day. It’s well they don’t, for a constant recurrence of such stimulus would soon wear out the public stomach and bring on indigestion.

But surely one can find something to talk about, though miracles are no longer wrought in the world. Battle-fields, it is true, are now growing corn. According to a paragraph in a westland newspaper which I had a while since in my hand, ‘Barley and oats are looking well in the neighbourhood of Leyden, and all the hay is carried from the fields about Evesham.⁶ Nay, they tell us the navigation of the Cirhala is about to be improved by a canal which will greatly facilitate the conveyance of goods up the country, and that subscriptions are on foot for erecting a new and commodious piece-hall in the borough of Westwood.’ What then? Is all interest to stagnate, because blood has ceased to flow? Has life no variety now? Is all crime the child of war? Does Love fold his wings when Victory lowers her pennons?⁷ Surely not! It is true a tone of respectability has settled over society, a business-like calm. Many that were wild in their youth have grown rational and sober. I really trust morals, even court morals, have improved. We hear of no outbreaks now. Some small irregularities, indeed, of a certain very elevated nobleman are occasionally rumoured in the public ear; but habit with him has become second nature, and the exquisite susceptibility of his feelings is too well known to need comment. And elsewhere there is certainly a change, a reformation.⁸ Let us now who have so long gazed on glaring guilt solace ourselves with a chastened view of mellowed morality.

CHAPTER I

On the morning of the 1^st of July a remarkable event happened at Ellrington House. The Earl and Countess were both eating their breakfast – at least the Countess was, the Earl was only looking at his – when all at once the Earl, without previous warning or apparent cause, laughed!

Now, the scene of this singular occurrence was the Countess’s own dressing-room. Her Ladyship had that morning coaxed his Lordship to rise early, with the intention that, as it was a very fine summer day, they should take a drive out to Alnwick for the benefit of his Lordship’s health and spirits. For about a fortnight or three weeks past, his Lordship had ceased certain eccentric deviations from his lawful path. The saloons – I should rather say, the boudoirs – of certain noble mansions had vainly waited to reverberate the gentle echo of his voice and step. Mesdames Greville, Lalande and St James had been mourning like nightingales on their perches, or like forsaken turtle-doves cooing soft reproaches to their faithless mate.⁹ He came not, and bootless was the despatch of unnumbered tender billets charged at once with sighs and perfumes and bedewed with tears and rose-water. More than one such delicate messenger had been seen shrivelling ‘like a parched scroll’ in the grate of his Lordship’s apartment, and answer there was none. Sick of music, surfeited with sentiment, the great ex-president¹⁰ had come home to his unmusical, plain-spoken Countess. The roll of languishing eyes gave him the exies, so he sought relief in the quick, piercing glances that bespoke more hastiness than artifice of temper.

Her Ladyship was very cross-grained and intractable at first. She would not come to at all for about a week. But after the Earl had exhibited a proper modicum of hopeless melancholy and lain on the sofa for two or three days in half-real, half-feigned illness, she began first to look at him, then to pity him, then to speak to him, and last of all to make much of him and caress him. This re-awakened interest was at its height about the time when my chapter opens. On the very morning in question, she had been quite disquieted to see how little appetite her noble helpmate evinced for his breakfast, and when, after an unbroken silence of about half an hour, he all at once, while looking down at his untasted cup, dissipated that silence by a laugh – an unexpected, brief, speechless, but still indisputable laugh – Zenobia was half alarmed.

‘What is it, Alexander?’ said she. ‘What do you see?’

‘You, and that’s enough in all conscience,’ answered the Earl, turning upon her an eye that had more of sarcasm than mirth in it, and more of languor than either.

‘Me! Are you laughing at me, then?’

‘Who, I? No.’ And he relapsed again into silence, a silence so pensive and dejected that the worthy Countess began to doubt her ears, and to think she had only fancied the laugh which still rang in them.

Breakfast being concluded, she rose from table and, advancing to the window, drew up the blind which had hitherto screened the sunshine. She opened the sash top, and a free admission of morning light and air cheered the apartment. It was a fine day, too, bright and summer-like for a city. Every heart and every eye under the influence of such a day longs for the country.

‘Let the carriage be got ready quickly,’ said the Countess, turning to a servant who was clearing the breakfast-table and, as the servant closed the door, she sat down at her glass to complete the arrangement of her dress, for as yet she was only in deshabille. She had plaited and folded her hair, and thought with some pride that its sable profusion became her handsome features as well now as it had done ten years ago. She had adjusted her satin apparel to a shape that, though it might not befit a sylph, did well enough for a fine, tall woman who had the weight of as much pride and choler to support as would overwhelm any two ordinary mortals. She had put on her watch, and was embellishing her white, round hands with sundry rings, when the profound hush which had till now attended her operations was interrupted by a repetition of that low, involuntary laugh.

‘My lord!’ exclaimed the Countess, turning quickly round. She would have started, if her nerves would have permitted such a proof of sensitiveness.

‘My lady!’ was the dry answer.

‘Why do you laugh?’ said she.

‘Don’t know.’

‘Well, but what are you laughing at?’

‘Can’t tell.’

‘Are you ill? Is it hysterical?’¹¹

‘I’m never in rude health that I know of, Zenobia; but as to hysterics, ask Miss Delph.’¹²

With a gesture of scorn, the Countess turned again to her glass. Wrath is seldom prudent, and as her Ladyship’s was vented upon her hair, on which she had so recently lavished such care and taste, combs and fillets flew, and the becoming braids which had wreathed her temples and brow quickly floated in a confused cloud of darkness over her shoulders. Again the Earl laughed, but now it was evidently at her. He approached her toilette, and leaning on the back of the arm-chair she filled (emphatically I say filled, for indeed, there was no room for anybody else), he began to talk.

‘Softly, Zenobia. I thought you had done your hair. It was well enough, rather a little sombre or so, not quite enough in the floating, airy tendril style. But then, that requires a lightish figure, and yours – ahem!’

Here, the glass was shifted with a hasty movement, the brush thrown down and the comb snatched up with emphatic promptitude. The Earl continued with gentleness.

‘The Furies,¹³ I believe, had hair of live snakes,’ said he. ‘What a singular taste! How was it, eh, Zenobia? Eh?’

‘How was it, my lord? What do you mean? I have not the honour of understanding your Lordship.’

‘Don’t know exactly what I meant. It was some dim notion of analogy haunting my mind that made me put the question. I’ve so many embryo ideas nowadays, Zenobia, that are crushed, blighted by the stormy climate I live in. Gentler nurture, a little soft sunshine and quiet showers might encourage the infant buds to expand, and in the tender shining after rain I might now and then say a good thing, make a hit,¹⁴ but as it is, I daren’t speak, lest I should be snapped up and snarled at out of all reason. It makes me quite low.’

The Countess, as she brushed her tresses, whisked a thick, dark mass over her face, to conceal the smile she could not repress.

‘You’re hardly used,’ said she.

‘But, Zenobia,’ pursued the Earl, ‘I’ve something to tell, something to shew you.’

‘Indeed, my lord?’

‘Aye. We all love them that love us, Zenobia.’

‘Do we?’ was the succint answer.

‘And,’ pursued his Lordship with pathos, ‘when we’ve neglected an attached friend, you know, turned a cold shoulder to him, kicked him, perhaps, by mistake, how touching it is to find that, after long years of separation and misunderstanding, he still remembers us, and is still willing to borrow that half-crown he has asked for seventy and seven times and has seventy and seven times¹⁵ been refused. Zenobia, they brought this letter last night.’

‘Who, my lord?’

‘The people. James, I think. I don’t often get a letter, you know. Mr Steaton manages these things.’

‘And I suppose your letter is from Zamorna?’

‘Oh, no. Mr Steaton generally relieves me of the trouble of correspondence in that quarter. Besides, I think his documents are more frequently addressed to you than me. I object, you know, to his style. It is unpleasant; smells so very strong of oat-cake and grouse.’

‘Alexander!’ expostulated Zenobia.

‘And then,’ continued the Earl, ‘you forget that he is in the country at present, and therefore too fully occupied in devising a new compost for Thornton’s beans, farming Warner’s turnips and curing the rot in Sir Markham Howard’s sheep, to think of writing letters. Besides, his own hay about Hawkscliffe is not all carried; and depend on it, he’s making the most of this fine morning, out in his shirt sleeves, with straw hat on his head, swearing at the hay-tenters,¹⁶ now and then giving a hand to help to load the waggons, and at noon and drinking-time sitting down on a cock to eat his bread and cheese and drink his pot of ale like a king and a clod-hopper. Can’t you fancy him, Zen, all in a muck of sweat, for it’s hard work and hot weather, arrayed in his shirt and white tights and nothing else, and then, you know, “at the close of the day when the hamlet is still”¹⁷ going with his dear brother in arms, Lord Arundel, to take a prudent dip and swim in the beck, and coming out with a bad inflammation occasioned by a sudden check of the perspiration, and going home to be blistered and bled ad libitum, and then with interesting wilfulness insisting on t’other tankard and a fresh go of bathing when he’s in a raging fever and, being very properly yielded to, allowed to have his way, and so waxing delirious, cutting his throat and walking off stage with a flourish of trumpets worthy of the most mighty and magnanimous monarch that ever understood dog-diseases or practised the noble science of farrier?’

‘Who is that letter from, please, my lord?’

‘Ah, the letter! You shall read it, and the signature will tell you who it is from.’

His Lordship took out his pocket-book and handed therefrom a singularly folded epistle, directed in a large black autograph whose terrible down-strokes, cross-dashes and circular flourishes seemed to defy all hands, mercantile, genteel and juvenile, that ever existed. The Countess read as follows:

Boulogne, June 29^th 1839

Daddy Long-legs,

Sober¹⁸ I am, and sober I have been, and by the bleached bones of my fathers, sober I mean to be to the end of the chapter. Aye, by the bones of my fathers, and by their souls, their burning souls, which in the likeness of game-cocks, cropped and spurred, are even now sitting on my right hand and on my left,¹⁹ and crowing aloud for vengeance!

The night was dark when I saw them; it lightened and there was thunder. Who bowed from the cloud as it rolled? Who spake a word in mine ear? Didst not thou, O dark but comely one, Sai Too-Too, and thou, the brother of my mother’s grand-mother, Sambo Mungo Anamaboo?²⁰

I’ll tell ye what, ye’re a cozening old rascal. Ye never made me a promise in your life but you broke it. Deny that, deny it, I say, will ye? Give me the lie, beard me, spit in my face, tweak my nose! Come on, I’m your man, up with your daddles! Who’s afraid? ‘What’s the fun?’²¹

The marrow of the affair, the root of the matter, is this: a more scoundrelly set of men than some that I could mention were never beheld, nor a more horrifying series of transactions than some that I have in my eye. Why, the earth reels, the heavens stagger, the seas totter to their downfall, and old Ocean himself trembles²² in his highest hills and shudders horror-struck through all his woods.

To come to the point at once. May I forget myself and be counted as a child of perdition if the present generation be not very little better than the last. Why, I remember when there was a Bible in every house, and as much brandy sold for a cab of dove’s dung²³ as you could buy now for half a sovereign. The fact is, and I am certain of it, religion’s not popular – real, genuine religion I mean. I’ve seen more Christianity in the desert than it would be worth any man’s while to take account of.

Daddy, where are you? There seems to be a kind of a darkness, a sort of a mist in the hoyle, a round-about whirligig circumferential cloudiness. Prop the leg of this here table, will ye, daddy? It’s sinking with me through the floor. Snuff out the candlestick – there, we’ve a better light now, we write steadier. Hark ye, then, the play’s nearly played out.²⁴

Bloody old robber, you walk in silks and velvets, and live in a diamond house with golden windows, while I have foxes and holes and the birds of the air have neither. You toil and spin, while I am Solomon in all his glory arrayed like one of these. But I warn you, Scaramouch,²⁵ you’d better provide for me, for my wife must share my poverty, and then what will you say? I’ve made up my mind to marry. I tell you it’s a done thing, and the Queen of Heaven herself should not prevail on me to alter it.

Beautiful and benign being, thou pinest in captivity! Loved lady of my heart, thou weepest in the prison-house! But heaven opens, and thy bridegroom waits.²⁶ She shall be mine!

Won’t you give your consent, old scum? You promised me another, but she ‘like a lily drooping bowed her head and died’ – at least as good as died, for was not that a living death that consigned her to the arms of a numb-scull?²⁷

A better lot is thine, fair maid,²⁸

A happier lot is thine,

And who would weep in dungeon shade

Whom fate has marked for mine?

Come, do not pine,

But fly to arms that open to receive

Thy youthful form divine.

Clasped to this heart of fire thoul’t never grieve,

No, thou shalt shine

Happy as houris fair that braid their hair

Glorious in Eden’s bowers

Where noxious flowers

With fragrant reptiles twine.

But thou, my blooming gem, wilt far out-flourish them,

My radiant Caroline!

Now, daddy, what d’ye say to that? Shew her them lines and see if they won’t plead my cause for me.

She’s young, you say. The more need she has of a father, and won’t I be both father and husband to her in one? T’other was not much older when you gave me the refusal of her fair, snow-white hand. True, I rejected her,²⁹ but what then? I’d my eye on the younger, softer bud. Caroline’s a more alluring name than Mary, more odoriferously and contumaciously musical. Then, she loves me. So did the other, you’ll say; desperately, divinely. I know it, old cock, I know it. I have it under her hand, sealed and signed in legal form. But this sweet blossom, this little, fluttering, fickle, felicitous fairy, this dear, delicious, delirious morsel, comes into my dreams and announces her intention of marrying me straight away off-hand, whether I will or no.

I’ll be moderate on the subject of settlements. A handsome house, ten thousand a year, the custody of your will, and the making of it all over again according to my own directions, that’s what I want and what I’ll have. Answer by return of post, and enclose a letter from my lovely one, also a bank-note or two. In the shadows of approaching sunrise and the profound roar of the storm when it subsides to silence, in Love’s intoxication, Hope’s fury and Despair’s wild madness, in Beauty’s blaze, in

Eden’s bliss, in hell’s troubled and terrific turbulence, in Death’s deep and dangerous delirium,

I am, and was not, a squire of high degree,

Q in the corner.³⁰

‘You know the fine Roman hand,³¹ I presume?’ said the Earl, when his Countess had finished reading this surprising lucubration.

‘Yes, Quashia, of course. But who does he mean? What is he driving at?’

‘He wants to marry a little girl of ten or eleven years old,’ returned Northangerland.

‘What, Miss Vernon?’ said her ladyship, uttering the name between her teeth.

‘Aye.’

‘And is Miss Vernon no more than ten or eleven?’

‘No, I think not.’

A servant just then entered to announce the carriage. The Countess went on dressing herself very fast and looking very red and choleric. While she finished her toilette, Northangerland stood by the window, thinking. His thoughts were wound up by a word that seemed to burst involuntary from his lips. It was ‘D—n—t—n!’ He then asked his wife where she was going. She said, to Alnwick.

‘No,’ he replied. ‘I’ll go to Angria. Bid them turn the horses’ heads east.’

Mr Jas Shaver brought his hat and gloves, and he went down into the hall, and so vanished.

CHAPTER II

Zamorna was literally standing in a hay-field, just below the house at Hawkscliffe, talking to a respectable man in black. It was a hot afternoon, and he wore a broad-brimmed hat of straw, and though not exactly in his shirt sleeves, yet a plaid jacket and trousers testified but a remote approximation to full dress.

It was a large field, and at the further end about a score of hay-makers, male and female, were busily engaged at their work. Zamorna, leaning against the trunk of a fine tree, with a dog laid on the hay at his feet, was watching them. Especially, his eyes followed one or two smart, active girls, who were amongst the number of the tenters. At the same time, he talked to his companion, and thus their conversation ran.

‘I reckon, now,’ said the respectable man in black, ‘if your Grace gets this hay well in, it’ll be a varry fair crop.’

‘Yes, it’s good land,’ returned the monarch, ‘very good grazing land.’

‘I sud thin[k] grain would hardly answer so well. Have ye tryed it wi’ ony mak o’corn seed?’

‘There’s a croft on the other side of the beck where the soil is just like this. I sowed it with red wheat last spring, and it’s bearing beautifully now.’

‘Humph – wha, ye see, ye cannot err mich, for where trees grow as they do here there’s hardly any mak o’ grain but what’ll prosper. I find t’ truth o’ that at Girnington. Now, up i’t’ north, about Mr Warner’s place, it’s clear different.’

‘Yes, Warner has a great deal of bother with tillage and manure. That bog-soil is so cold and moist, it rots the seed instead of cherishing it. Well, my lass, are you tired?’ going forward, and speaking to a tight girl with cheeks like a rose who, with her rake, had approached nearer to the royal station.

‘Nay, sir,’ was the answer, while the young rustic’s vanity, gratified by the notice of a fine gentleman with whiskers and mustaches, sent a deeper colour than ever to her brown, healthy complexion.

‘But it’s hot, don’t you think so?’ continued his Grace.

‘Nay, not so varry.’

‘Have ye been working all day among the hay?’

‘Nay, nobbut sin’ nooin.’

‘It’s Hawkscliffe Fair tomorrow, is not it, my lass?’

‘Yes, sir, they call’t so.’

‘And you’ll go there, no doubt?’

‘I happen sall,’ giggling, and working with her rake very busily to conceal her embarrassment.

‘Well, there’s something to buy a fairing with.’

There was a shew of reluctance to accept the present which was tendered. But his Grace said ‘Pshaw!’ and pressed it more urgently, so the damsel suffered her fingers to close upon it, and, as she put it in her pocket, dropped two or three short, quick curtseys in acknowledgement.

‘You’d give me a kiss, I daresay, if that gentleman was not by,’ said Zamorna, pointing to his friend, who regarded the scene with an expression that shewed he thought it excellent fun. The lass looked up at both the gentlemen, coloured again very deeply and, laughing, began to withdraw in silence. Zamorna let her go.

‘There’s a deal of vanity there,’ said he, as he returned to the oak tree.

‘Aye, and coquetry too.’

‘Look, the witch is actually turning back, and surveying me with the corner of her eye.’

‘I doubt she’s a jilt,’ replied Thornton.

His Grace pushed out his under-lip, smiled, and said something about ‘palace and cottage’ and ‘very little difference’.

‘But she’s a bonny lass,’ pursued the Laird of Girnington.

‘Tight and trim and fresh and healthy,’ was the reply.

‘There’s mony a lady would be glad to exchange shapes with her,’ remarked Sir Wilson again.

‘Varry like,’ said his Grace, leaning lazily against the bank, and looking down with a bantering smile at Thornton as he imitated his tone.

‘Does your Grace know the lass’s name?’ asked the General, not noticing his master’s aspect. A pause, closed by a laugh, was the answer. Thornton turned to him in surprise.

‘What the D—l!’ said he hastily, when he saw the sarcasm expressed by eye and lip. ‘Does your Grace mean to insinuate –?’

‘Nay, Thornton, be cool. I’m only thinking what a soft heart you have.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ returned Sir Wilson. ‘But your Grace is like to have your own cracks. As if I had spokken to t’ lass – when it was all your Majesty, ’at cannot let ought be under thirty.’

‘Cannot I? That’s a lie. Here I stand, and I care as much for that foolish little jilt, or any other you can mention – high or low – as Bell here at my feet does. Bell’s worth them all. Hey, old girl, there’s some truth in thy carcase! There, there. Down now, that’s enough.’

‘I know yer Grace is steadier nor you used to be, and that’s raight enough, but you have been wild.’

‘Never!’ was the unblushing rejoinder.

‘But I know better.’

‘Never, by G—d, never!’ repeated his Grace.

‘Oh whah!’ said Thornton, coolly. ‘Your Majesty’s a right to lie abaat yese’ln. It’s naught to me ’at I know on.’³²

Could it possibly have been Quashia’s mad letter which induced Lord Northangerland to set off then and there to Hawkscliffe at the far end of Angria, a house and a country³³ where he had not shewn his nose for years? His Lordship’s movements are often very inexplicable, but this, as Mr Jas Shaver expressed it (when he received sudden orders to pack up the Earl’s dressing-case and wardrobe) was the beat’em of all. The Countess offered to go with her lord, but he made answer that she ‘had better not’. So he put himself into the carriage solus, and solus he continued through the whole of the journey. Neither did he speak word to man or beast, except to desire them ‘to get on’.

And get on they did, for they stopped neither day nor night, till half the breadth of Angria was traversed and the Moray Hills began to undulate on the horizon. He did not travel incognito, and of course he was known at every inn and alehouse, where the horses got a pailful of meal and water and the postillions a bottle of Madeira. Trivial preparations were commenced in Zamorna for a riot and a stoning. But before Mr Edward Percy could loose his mill and furnish his people with brick-bats, the object of filial attention was a mile out of town, and cleaving the woods of Hartford in a whirlwind of summer dust. His progress was similarly hailed at the other towns and villages that intercepted his route. At Islington, a dead cat, nimble as when alive, leapt up at the carriage window and broke it. At Grantley, the hissing and yelling rivalled the music of a legion of cats, and at Rivaulx, the oblations of mud offered to his divinity were so profuse as to spread over the chariot panels a complete additional coating of varnish. Whether the Earl derived pleasure or vexation from these little testimonials of national regard, it would be hard to say, inasmuch as the complexion of his countenance varied no more than the hue of his coat, and his brow and features looked, evermore, to the full as placid as the glass-face of a repeater which he held in his hand and continually gazed at.

One thinks there is something pleasant in slowly approaching solitude towards the close of a bustling journey. Driving over the burning pavements, through the smoke and filth of manufacturing towns in the height of summer, must form, one would fancy, no unimpressive preparation for the entrance on a fine, green country of woods, where everything seems remote, fresh and lonely. Yet for all Jas Shaver Esqre could see in Lord Northangerland, and for all Lord Northangerland could remark in Jas Shaver, neither of these illustrious persons found any remarkable difference when a July afternoon saw their carriage entering the vast and silent domain of Hawkscliffe, town and tumult being left far behind, and only a rustling of trees and a trickling of becks being audible. Where the habitation of man is fixed, there are always signs of its proximity. The perfect freshness of nature disappears; her luxuriousness is cleared away. And so, erelong, Hawkscliffe began to break into glades, the path grew rolled and smooth, and more frequent prospects of distant hills burst through the widening glimpses of foliage.

Out at last they rolled upon a broad and noble road, as well beaten, as white and as spacious as the far-distant highway from Zamorna to Adrianapolis. That track, however, seems endless; but this, at the close of about a hundred yards was crossed by the arch of an architectural gateway. The turret on each side served for a lodge, and the heavy iron gates were speedily flung back by the keeper. As the carriage paused for a moment, ere it shot through, the yelping of a kennel of hounds was heard somewhere near, and a large Newfoundlander laid under the lodge-porch rose up and gave a deep-mouthed bark of welcome. Beyond these gates, there was no more forest, only detached clumps of trees and vast solitary specimens varying the expanse of a large and wild park, which ascended and half clothed with light verdure the long aclivity³⁴ of one of the Sydenhams. The remoter hills of the same range rolled away, clad in dusky woodland, till distance softened them and the summer sky embued them with intense violet. Near the centre of the park stood Hawkscliffe House, a handsome pile, but by no means so large nor so grand as the extent of the grounds seemed to warrant. It could aspire to the title neither of palace nor castle; it was merely a solitary hall, stately from its loneliness, and pleasant from the sunny and serene effect of the green region which expanded round it. Deer, a herd of magnificent cattle, and a troop of young unbroken horses shared the domain between them.

As the carriage stopped at the front door, Northangerland put up³⁵ his repeater, whose hand was pointing to six o’clock p.m. and, the steps being let down and door opened, he alighted and quietly walked into the house. He had got half through the hall before he asked a question of any servant, but the butler, advancing with a bow, inquired to what apartment he should conduct him. North[angerland] stopped, as if at fault.

‘Perhaps I am wrong,’ said he. ‘This is not Hawkscliffe.’ And he looked dubiously round on the plain, unadorned walls and oak-painted doors about him, so unlike the regal splendours of Victoria Square. A noble branch of stag’s antlers seemed to strike him with peculiar horror. He recoiled instantly and, muttering something indistinct about ‘Angrian squire’s den – a strange mistake’, he was commencing a precipitate retreat to his carriage when James Shaver interposed.

‘Your Lordship is in the right,’ said he, whispering low. ‘This is the royal residence’ (with a sneer). ‘But country plainness – no style kept up. Fear I sha’n’t be able to muster proper accommodations for your Lordship.’

‘James,’ said the Earl after a pause, ‘will you ask those people where the Duke of Zamorna is?’

James obeyed.

‘Gone out,’ was the reply. ‘His Grace is generally out all day.’

‘And where was the Duchess?’

‘Gone out too, but most likely would be back presently.’

‘Shew me into a room,’ said the Earl, and his Lordship was ushered into a library where, without looking round him, he sat down, his back to the window and his face to an enormous map, unrolled and covering half the opposite wall. There was nothing else in the room except books, a few chairs, a desk, and a table loaded with pamphlets and papers; no busts, or pictures, or any of the other elegant extras³⁶ commonly seen in a nobleman’s library. A large quarto lay on the floor at Northangerland’s feet. He kicked it open with a slight movement of his toe. It was full of gay feathers, coloured wools and brilliant flies for fishing. Another and apparently still slighter movement sufficed to discharge the volume to the other end of the room. It fell by a row of thick volumes standing side by side in the lowest shelf of books; the words Agricultural Magazine glittered in gilt letters on the back of each.

When Northangerland was quite tired of sitting, he got up and restlessly paced through the apartment, pausing at a side-table where a small book was lying open. He began mechanically to finger the leaves. It was the planter’s vade mecum.³⁷ Northangerland withdrew his fingers as if they had been burnt. On the same table lay two packets neatly tied up and labelled ‘Sample of red wheat from General Thornton’, ‘Sample of Oats from Howard’. The Earl was still gazing at these packets, riveted by them, apparently, as if they had been the two eyes of a basilisk, when a shade crossed the window outside. Soon after, somebody was heard entering by the front door. A word or two passed in the hall, and then a step quietly approached the library.

It was the Duchess who came. She went to her father, and he had to stoop to give the kiss for which she looked up in silent eagerness.

‘I thought it was a farm-house,’ said he, when he had held her a moment and surveyed her face. ‘But I suppose, Mary, you don’t milk cows?’

‘How long have you been here?’ returned his daughter, evading his sarcasm with a smile. ‘They should have fetched me in before. I was only walking down the avenue.’

‘Down the yard, I thought you would say,’ continued the Earl. ‘Surely, Mary, you term that a croft?’ (pointing to the park). ‘And this bigging, we are in no doubt, is called the grange. Have you a room to yourself? Or [do] you sit in the house,³⁸ and eat your porridge with the plough-men and dairy-maids?’

The Duchess still smiled, and she slipped the obnoxious packets into a drawer. ‘Is there a small inn in the place?’ went on her father. ‘Because if there is, I’ll put up there. You know I can’t eat bacon and eggs, and though your kitchen may be very comfortable, it will smell, perhaps, of the stable – which, you know, comes close up to the door for convenience sake, because when the big farmer comes home from the market a trifle sprung or so, it’s more convenient to dismount him rather nigh the house, as he’s a good weight to carry in.’

‘Don’t, Father,’ said the Duchess, as, half-vexed, she held her head down, looking at her father’s hand, which she retained in hers, and pulling the ring from his little finger.

‘What then, is he a better horse-jockey or cow-jobber?’ inquired the inexorable Northangerland. ‘Does he kill his own meat? Or he buys it? Does he feed pigs, Mary?’

The Duchess pouted.

‘I should like to see him riding home a-horseback, after driving a hard bargain down at Grantley there about a calf which he is to bring home in a rope.³⁹ The excellent fellow, of course, will be very drunk, extremely so, for the bargain has been on and off at least ten times, and it took at least sixteen tumblers of whisky and water to consolidate it in the end. Then the calf will be amazingly contrary, as bad to get on as himself; and what with tumbling from his saddle, rolling in the mud, fighting with his bargain etc., he will, I should imagine, cut much such a figure as I have seen that fool Arthur O’Connor do under similar circumstances.’

‘Hush, Father!’ said the Duchess earnestly. ‘Don’t talk so! I hear him in the passage; now pray –’

She had not time to complete her entreaty, when the door was promptly opened and his Grace walked in. Some dogs walked in, too. The whole party, equally heedless of who might or might not be in the room, advanced to a cabinet with some drawers in it; and while the Duke sought in one of the drawers for a coil of gut that he wanted for his line, the dogs pushed their noses in his face as he stooped down, or smelt at his pannier which he had laid on the carpet.

‘Be quiet, Juno,’ said Zamorna, putting a large pointer from him, whose caresses interrupted him in his sedulous search; then, calling to somebody in the passage, ‘William, tell Homes I can’t find the tackle; it must be at his lodge. But I shall not want it tonight, so he may send it up first thing to-morrow morning.’

‘Very well, my lord,’ answered a gruff voice without. Zamorna shut up the drawers.

‘Oh, stop!’ said he, speaking suddenly to himself. ‘I had almost forgotten.’ He walked quickly out of the room. ‘William!’ (standing on the front-door steps and calling down the park).

‘Yes, please your Grace.’

‘You may give my compliments to Homes, and say that the river has been poached on. I was fishing there to-day, and I only got three trout. Tell him he’s a d—d idle dog, and keeps no right look-out at all when I’m away. But things must be managed differently. I’ll have law and order observed here, or else I’ll try for it.’⁴⁰

He came back, crossing the passage with firm, even stride. He entered the library again, rather more deliberately. He had now time to notice that it was occupied by other persons besides himself and his dogs. His wife caught his eye first.

‘Well, Mary, have you been walking?’

‘Yes.’

‘Rather late, isn’t it? You should mind not to be out after sunset.’

‘It was very warm.’

‘Yes, fine weather.’ And he pulled off his gloves and began to take his long fishing rod to pieces.

As he was busily intent on disengaging the hook from the line, Northangerland advanced a little step from the sort of recess where he had been standing. Zamorna, attracted by the movement, turned. He looked keenly, pausing from his employment. He was obviously astonished for a moment at this unexpected apparition of his father-in-law. Only for a moment. There was no salutation on either side. Zamorna stared; Northangerland gazed coolly. Zamorna turned his back, went on disjointing his rod, hung up that and his pannier, took off a broad-brimmed straw hat which had hitherto diademed his head, and then, at last, as he sat down in an arm-chair by the table, found time to ask, ‘When the Earl had arrived?’

‘I didn’t look at the clock,’ was the answer; and, ‘Yet ’faith, I remember, I did. It was about six this evening.’

‘Hmm. Have ye had any dinner? We dine early; seldom later than three.’⁴¹

‘James gave me a biscuit in the carriage. ’Tis as well he did so, for, as I’ve been remarking to Mrs Wellesley, I can’t take porridge and fried bacon.’

‘No, nor omlets and patés⁴² either, for that matter,’ muttered the Duke in an under-tone. ‘Nor hardly a mouthful of any Christian edible under the sun.’ Then he continued aloud, ‘Pray, have ye been ordered to take a journey here for your health?’

‘What, to a fish-monger’s and farrier’s? No, stale herring gives me the nausea. I’m come on business. But may that basket of stinking sprat be sent away?’ (pointing to the pannier, and holding a perfumed cambric handkerchief to his nose).

‘It’s fresh trout,’ answered his son, calmly. ‘But you’re a valetudinarian, and must be excused for having sickly antipathies. Come, I’ll humour you for once.’ He rung the bell, and the nuisance was quickly removed. ‘How did ye get along through the country?’ continued the Duke, taking up a newspaper and unfolding it. ‘Were you much fêted and flattered? Or they forgot to ring the bells and call out the bands in your honour?’

‘I don’t remember,’ responded Northangerland.

‘Don’t you? Humph! But perhaps your postillions and horses will. I have some dim notion that the kennel rubbish of Edwardston and Zamorna and Islington and some of those places has been made uncommon useful not long since.’

The Duchess here approached his Grace’s chair and, leaning over the back as if to look at the newspaper which he was still reading or feigning to read, she whispered, ‘Don’t try to vex him to-night, Adrian. I am sure he’s tired with his journey.’

The Duke merely seated her beside him and, resting his hand on her shoulder, went on talking.

‘Where d’ye think you’re most popular now, sir?’ said he.

‘With a small handful of coloured men under the command of Mr Kashua,’⁴³ returned Northangerland.

‘Long may your popularity be confined to that limited and devoted band,’ rejoined his dutiful son.

‘What for, Arthur?’ inquired the Earl, in a gentle insinuating tone.

‘Because you’ll never more be fit for the confidence of decent Christians.’

‘Was I once?’

‘Not that I can remember.’

‘No, only for such debauched dogs as Douro the dandy,’⁴⁴ returned Northangerland.

‘Could you get up a meeting now anywhere in Angria, or form a Society for the Diffusion of Genuine Vitality?’⁴⁵

‘I could, if my dear young friend, Arthur Wellesley, would stick the bills as he used to do.’

‘Arthur Wellesley, instead of sticking the bills now, would stick⁴⁶ the whole concern – aye, to the D—l.’

‘As he does everything else he meddles with,’ said Northangerland, closing the verbal sparring match with a gentle nicher.

His son’s reply was prevented by the Duchess, who sat between the combatants, trembling with anxiety, lest this skirmish of words should overstep the brink of mere sarcasm and plunge into invective.

‘Well,’ said the Duke, in answer to her silent entreaty for forbearance. ‘He shall have it his own way this time, in consideration that he’s done up with riding a few miles in an easy carriage like a bed. But I’ll balance the reckoning to-morrow.’

‘Good-night, Mary,’ said the Earl, rising abruptly. She followed her father from the room, and the Duke, being left by himself, rang for candles, and sat down to write a lot of letters.

CHAPTER III

Well, reader, you have not yet heard what business it was that brought Northangerland all that long way from Ellrington House to Hawkscliffe Hall. But you shall, if you’ll suppose it to be morning, and step with the Earl out of this little parlour where the Duchess is at work, sitting by a window surrounded with roses.

As soon as ever Zamorna had had his breakfast, he had set off and the Earl was now following him. Fortunately, he met him on the steps at the front door, leaning against the pillar and enjoying the morning sunshine and the prospect of his wild park, but half-reclaimed from the forest, for one tranquil moment, before starting on a day-long campaign in the fields.

‘Where are you going, Arthur?’ asked the Earl.

‘To that wood beyond the river.’

‘What to do there?’

‘To see some young trees transplanted.’

‘Will there be an earthquake if you defer that important matter until I have spoken a word with you on a trivial business of my own?’

‘Perhaps not. What have you to say?’

Northangerland did not immediately answer. He paused, either from reluctance to commence, or from a wish to ascertain that all was quiet and safe around and that no intruder was nigh. The Hall behind was empty. The grounds in front were still dewy and solitary. He and his son-in-law stood by themselves. There was no listener.

‘Well, why don’t you begin?’ repeated Zamorna, who was whistling carelessly and evincing no inclination to attach special importance to the coming communication.

When our own minds are intensely occupied with a subject, we are apt to imagine that those near us are able to pry into our thoughts. The side-glance with which Northangerland viewed his son was strange, dubious and distorted. At last he said, in a remarkable tone,

‘I wish to know how my daughter Caroline is.’

‘She was very well when I saw her last,’ replied the Duke of Zamorna, not moving a muscle, but looking straight before him at the waving and peaked hills which marked the unclouded horizon.

There was another pause. Zamorna began his whistle again. It was more studiedly careless than before, for whereas it had just flowed occasionally into a pensive strain, it now only mimicked rattling and reckless airs broken into fragments.

‘My daughter must be grown,’ continued Northangerland.

‘Yes, healthy children always grow.’

‘Do you know anything about the progress of her studies? Is she well educated?’

‘I took care that she should be provided with good masters, and from their report I should imagine she has made very considerable proficiency for her age.’

‘Does she evince any talent? Musical talent she ought to inherit.’⁴⁷

‘I like her voice,’ answered Zamorna, ‘and she plays well enough, too, for a child.’

Northangerland took out a pocket-book. He seemed to calculate in silence for a moment, and writing down the result with a silver pencil-case,⁴⁸ he returned the book to his pocket, quietly remarking,

‘Caroline is fifteen years old.’

‘Aye, her birthday was the first or second of this month, was it not?’ returned Zamorna. ‘She told me her age the other day. I was surprised; I thought she had hardly been more than twelve or thirteen.’

‘She looks childish, then, does she?’

‘Why, no; she is well-grown and tall. But time in some cases cheats us. It seems only yesterday when she was quite a little girl.’

‘Time has cheated me,’ said the Earl. There was another pause. Zamorna descended the steps.

‘Well, good-morning,’ said he. ‘I’ll leave you for the present.’ He was moving off, but the Earl followed him.

‘Where is my daughter?’ asked he. ‘I wish to see her.’

‘Oh, by all means. We can ride over this afternoon. The house is not above three miles off.’

‘She must have a separate establishment instantly,’ pursued the Earl.

‘She has,’ said Zamorna. ‘That is, in conjunction with her mother.’

‘I shall either have Selden House or Eden Hall fitted up for her,’ continued his Lordship, without heeding this remark. He and his son-in-law were now pacing slowly through the grounds side by side. Zamorna fell a little into the rear. His straw hat was drawn over his eyes, and it was not easy to tell with what kind of a glance he regarded his father-in-law.

‘Who is to go with her and take care of her?’ he asked after a few minutes’ silence. ‘Do you mean to retire into the north or south yourself, and take up your abode at Eden Hall or Selden House?’

‘Perhaps I may.’

‘Indeed, and will Zenobia adopt her, and allow the girl to live under the same roof without the penalty of a daily chastisement?’

‘Don’t know. If they can’t agree, Caroline must marry. But I think you once told me she was not pretty?’

‘Did I? Well, tastes differ, but the girl is a mere child. She may improve. In the meantime, to talk of marrying her is rather good; I admire the idea. If she were my daughter, sir, she should not marry these ten years. But the whole scheme sounds excessively raw, just like one of your fantastic, expensive whims. About establishments etc. – you know nothing of management, nor of the value of money; you never did.’

‘She must be established; she must have her own servants and carriage and allowance,’ repeated the Earl.

‘Fudge!’ said the Duke, impatiently.

‘I have spoken to Steaton, and matters are in train,’ continued his father-in-law, in a deliberate tone.

‘Unbusinesslike, senseless ostentation!’ was the reply. ‘Have you calculated the expense, sir?’

‘No, I’ve only calculated the fitness of things.’⁴⁹

‘Pshaw!’

Both gentlemen pursued their path in silence. Northangerland’s face looked serene, but extremely obstinate. Zamorna could compose his features, but not his eye; it was restless and glittering.

‘Well,’ he said after the lapse of some minutes, ‘do as you like. Caroline is your daughter, not mine. But you go to work strangely. That is, according to my notions as to how a young, susceptible girl ought to be managed.’

‘I thought you said she was a mere child.’

‘I said, or I meant to say, I considered her as such. She may think herself almost a woman. But take your own way, give her this separate establishment, give her money and servants and equipages, and see what will be the upshot.’

Northangerland spoke not. His son-in-law continued,

‘It would be only like you, like your unaccountable, frantic folly, to surround her with French society,⁵⁰ or Italian if you could get it. If the circle in which you lavished your own early youth were now in existence, I ver[il]y believe you’d allow Caroline to move as a queen in its centre.’

‘Could my little daughter be the queen of such a circle?’ asked Northangerland. ‘You said she was no beauty, and you speak as if her talents were only ordinary.’

‘There!’ replied his son. ‘That question confirms what I say. Sir,’ he continued, stopping, and looking full at Northangerland and speaking with marked emphasis, ‘if your fear is that Caroline will not have beauty sufficient to attract licentiousness, and imagination warm enough to understand approaches, to meet them and kindle at them, and a mind and passions strong enough to carry her a long way in the career of dissipation if she once enters it, set yourself at rest, for she is, or will be, fit for all this and much more.’

‘You may as well drop that assumed tone,’ said Northangerland, squinting direfully at his comrade. ‘You must be aware that I know your royal Grace, and cannot for a moment be deluded into the supposition that you are a saint, or even a repentant sinner.’

‘I’m not affecting either saintship or repentance,’ replied the Duke, ‘and I’m well aware that you know me. But I happen to have taken some pains with the education of Miss Vernon. She has grown up an interesting, clever girl, and I should be sorry to hear of her turning out no better than she should be, to find that I have been rearing and training a mistress for some blackguard Frenchman. And this, or something worse, would certainly be the result of your plans. I have studied her character; it is one that ought not to be exposed to dazzling temptation. She is at once careless and imaginative; her feelings are mixed with her passions; both are warm, and she never reflects. Guidance like yours is not what such a girl ought to have. She could ask you for nothing which you would not grant. Indulgence would foster all her defects. When she found that winning smiles and gentle words passed current for⁵¹ reason and judgment, she would speedily purchase her whole will with that cheap coin, and that will would be as wild as the wildest bird, as fantastic and perverse as if the caprice and perverseness of her whole sex were concentrated in her single little head and heart.’

‘Caroline has lived in a very retired way hitherto, has she not?’ asked Northangerland, not at all heeding the Duke’s sermonizing.

‘Not at all too retired for her age,’ was the reply. ‘A girl with lively spirits and good health needs no company, until it is time for her to be married.’

‘But my daughter will be a little rustic,’ said the Earl, ‘a milkmaid. She will want manners when I wish to introduce her to the world.’

‘Introduce her to the world!’ repeated Zamorna, impatiently. ‘What confounded folly! And I know in your own mind you are attaching as much importance to the idea of bringing out this half-grown schoolgirl – providing her with an establishment and all that sort of humbug – as if it were an important political manoeuvre, on the issue of which the existence of half a nation depended.’

‘Oh!’ replied the Earl, with a kind of dry, brief laugh. ‘I assure you, you quite underrate my ideas on the subject. As to your political manoeuvres, I care nothing at all about them. But if my Caroline should turn out a fine woman, handsome and clever, she will give me pleasure. I shall once more have a motive for assembling a circle about me, to see her mistress and directress of it.’

An impatient ‘Pshaw!’ was Zamorna’s sole answer to this.

‘I expect she will have a taste for splendour,’ continued the Earl, ‘and she must have the means to gratify it.’

‘Pray, what income do you intend to allow her?’ asked his son.

‘Ten thousand per annum to begin with!’

Zamorna whistled, and put his hands in his pockets. After a pause he said,

‘I shall not reason with you, for on this subject you’re just a natural-born fool, incapable of understanding reason. I’ll just let you go on your own way, without raising a hand either to aid or oppose you. You shall take your little girl just as she is, strip her of her frock and sash and put on a gown and jewels, take away her child’s playthings and give her a carriage and an establishment, place her in the midst of one of your unexceptionable Ellrington House and Eden Hall coteries, and see what will be the upshot. God d—n! I can hardly be calm about it! Well enough do I know what she is now – a pretty, intelligent, innocent girl; and well enough can I guess what she will be some few years hence – a beautiful, dissipated, dissolute woman, one of your syrens, your Donna Julias, your Signora Cecilias.⁵² Faugh! Good-morning, sir. We dine at three. After dinner we’ll take a ride over to see Miss Vernon.’

His Grace jumped over a field wall and, as he walked away very fast, he was soon out of sight.

CHAPTER IV

Punctually at three o’clock, dinner was served in a large antique dining-room at Hawkscliffe, whose walls, rich in carved oak and old pictures, received a warm but dim glow from the bow-window screened with amber curtains. While one footman removed the silver covers from two dishes, another opened the folding door to admit a tall middle-aged gentleman with a very sweet young lady resting on his arm and another gentleman walking after. They seated themselves, and when they were seated there was as much an air of state about the table as if it had been surrounded by a large party instead of this select trio. The gentlemen, as it happened, were both very tall; they were both, too, dressed in black, for the young man had put off the plaid jacket and checked trousers which it was his pleasure to sport in the morning, and had substituted in their stead the costume of a well-dressed clergyman. As for the young lady, a very fair neck and arms, well displayed by a silk dress made low and with short sleeves, were sufficient of themselves to throw an air of style and elegance over the party. Besides that, her hair was beautiful and profusely curled, and her mien and features were exceedingly aristocratic and exclusive.⁵³

Very little talk passed during dinner. The younger gentleman ate uncommon well; the elderly one trifled a considerable time with a certain mess in a small silver tureen, which he did not eat. The young lady drank wine with her husband when he asked her, and made no bones of some three or four glasses of champagne. The Duke of Zamorna looked as grave as a judge. There was an air about him, not of unhappiness, but as if the cares of a very large family rested on his shoulders. The Duchess was quiet; she kept glancing at her help-mate from under her eye-lids. When the cloth was taken away, and the servants had left the room, she asked him if he was well – a superfluous question, one would think, to look at his delicate Grace’s damask complexion and athletic form and to listen to his sounding, steady voice. Had he been in a good humour, he would have answered her question by some laughing banter about her over-anxiety. As it was, he simply said he was well. She then inquired if he wished the children to come down. He said, ‘No; he should hardly have time to attend to them that afternoon. He was going out directly.’

‘Going out! What for? There was nothing to call him out.’

‘Yes, he had a little business to transact.’

The Duchess was nettled, but she swallowed her vexation and looked calm upon it.

‘Very well,’ said she. ‘Your Grace will be back to tea, I presume?’

‘Can’t promise, indeed, Mary.’

‘Then I had better not expect you till I see you.’

‘Just so. I’ll return as soon as I can.’

‘Very well,’ said she, assuming as complacent an air as she possibly could, for her tact told her this was not a time for the display of wife-like petulance and irritation. What would amuse his Grace in one mood she knew would annoy him in another. So she sat a few minutes longer, made one or two cheerful remarks on the weather and the growth of some young trees his Grace had lately planted near the window, and then quietly left the table. She was rewarded for this attention to the Duke’s humours by his rising to open the door for her. He picked up her handkerchief, too, which she had dropped, and as he returned it to her he favoured her with a peculiar look and smile, which as good as said he thought she was looking very handsome that afternoon. Mrs Wellesley considered that glance sufficient compensation for a momentary chagrin. Therefore, she went into her drawing-room and, sitting down to the piano, soothed away the remains of irritation with sundry soft songs and solemn psalm tunes which, better than gayer music, suited her own fine, melancholy voice.

She did not know where Northangerland and Zamorna were going, nor who it was that occupied their minds, or she would not have sung at all. Most probably, could she have divined the keen interest which each took in little Caroline Vernon, she would have sat down and cried. It is well for us that we cannot read the hearts of our nearest friends. It is an old saying, ‘where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise’,⁵⁴ and if it makes us happy to believe that those we love unreservedly give us, in return, affections unshared by another, why should the veil be withdrawn and a triumphant rival be revealed to us? The Duchess of Zamorna knew that such a person as Miss Vernon existed, but she had never seen her. She imagined that Northangerland thought and cared little about her, and as to Zamorna, the two ideas of Caroline and the Duke never entered her head at the same time.

While Mrs Wellesley sung to herself ‘Has sorrow thy young days shaded?’,⁵⁵ and while the sound of her piano came through closed doors with faint sweet effect, Mr Wellesley Junr and Mr Percy Senior sat staring opposite to each other like two bulls. They didn’t seem to have a word to say, not a single word; but Mr Wellesley manifested a disposition to take a good deal of wine, much more than was customary with him, and Mr Percy seemed to be mixing and swallowing a number of little tumblers of brandy and water. At last, Mr Wellesley asked Mr Percy ‘whether he meant to stir his stumps that afternoon or not?’ Mr Percy said he felt very well where he was, but however, as the thing must be done some day, he thought they had better shog. Mr Wellesley intimated that it was not his intention to make any further objection, and that therefore Mr Percy should have his way, but he further insinuated that that way was the direct road to hell, and that he wished with all his heart Mr Percy had already reached the end of his journey. Only it was a pity a poor, foolish little thing like Caroline Vernon should be forced to trot off along with him.

‘You, I suppose,’ said Mr Percy drily, ‘would have taken her to heaven. Now, I’ve an odd sort of a crotchety notion that the girl will be safer in hell with me than in heaven with thee, friend Arthur.’

‘You consider my plan of education defective, I suppose,’ said his Grace with the air of a schoolmaster.

‘Rather,’ was the reply.

‘You’re drinking too much brandy and water,’ pursued the royal mentor.

‘And you have had quite enough champagne,’ responded his friend.

‘Then we’d better both be moving,’ suggested the Duke, and he rose, rung the bell and ordered horses. Neither of them were quite steady when they mounted their saddles and, unattended by servants, started from the front door at a mad gallop as if they were chasing wild-fire.⁵⁶

People are not always in the same mood of mind, and thus, though Northangerland and Zamorna had been on the point of quarrelling in the morning, they were wondrous friends this afternoon, quite jovial. The little disagreement between them as to the mode of conducting Miss Caroline’s further education was allowed to rest. Indeed, Miss Caroline herself seemed quite forgotten. Her name was never mentioned as they rode on through sombre Hawkscliffe, talking fast and high and sometimes laughing loud. I don’t mean to say that Northangerland laughed loud, but Zamorna did very frequently. For a little while, it was Ellrington and Douro resuscitated.⁵⁷ Whether champagne and brandy had any hand in bringing about this change, I can’t pretend to decide. However, neither of them were ree; they were only gay. Their wits were all about them, but they were sparkling.

We little know what fortune the next breath of wind may blow us, what strange visitor the next moment may bring to our door. So Lady Louisa Vernon may be thinking just now, as she sits by her fireside in this very secluded house, whose casements are darkened by the boughs of large trees. It is near seven o’clock, and the cloudy evening is closing in somewhat comfortless and chill, more like October than July. Her Ladyship consequently has the vapours.⁵⁸ In fact, she has had them all day. She imagines herself very ill, though what her ailments are she can’t distinctly say, so she sits upstairs in her dressing-room, with her head reclined on a pillow and some drops and a smelling-bottle close at hand. Did she but know what step was now near her door, even at her threshold, she would hasten to change her dress and comb her hair, for in that untidy deshabille, with that pouting look and those dishevilled tresses, her Ladyship looks haggard.

‘I must go to bed, Elise. I can’t bear to sit up any longer,’ says she to her French maid, who is sewing in a window recess near.

‘But your Ladyship will have your gown tried on first?’ answered the girl. ‘It is nearly finished.’

‘Oh no! Nonsense! What is the use of making gowns for me? Who will see me wear them? My God! Such barbarous usage I receive [from] that man who has no heart!’

‘Ah, Madame!’ interposed Elise. ‘He has a heart, don’t doubt it. Attendez un peu, Monsieur loves you jusqu’à folie.’⁵⁹

‘Do you think so, Elise?’

‘I do. He looks at you so fondly.’

‘He never looks at me at all. I look at him.’

‘But when your back is turned, Madame, then he measures you with his eyes.’

‘Aye, scornfully.’

‘Non, avec tendresse, avec ivresse.’⁶⁰

‘Then why does not he speak? I’m sure I’ve told him often enough that I am very fond of him, that I adore him, though he is so cold and proud and tyrannical and cruel!’

‘C’est trop modeste,’⁶¹ replied Elise, very sagely. Apparently, this remark struck her Ladyship in a ludicrous point of view. She burst into a laugh.

‘I can’t quite swallow that, either,’ said she. ‘You are almost an idiot, Elise. I daresay you think he loves you too. Ecoutez la fille! C’est un homme dur. Quant’à l’amour, il ne sait guère qu’est-ce que c’est. Il regarde les femmes comme des esclaves. Il s’amuse de leur beauté pour un instant, et alors il les aban-donne. Il faut haïr un tel homme et l’éviter, et moi, je le haïs beaucoup. Oui, je le déteste. Hèla! combien il est different de mon Alexandre! Elise, souvenez vous de mon Alexandre, du beau Northangerland!’⁶²

‘C’etait fort gentil,’⁶³ responded Elise.

‘Gentil!’ ejaculated her ladyship. ‘Elise, c’etait un ange! Il me semble que je le vois dans ce chambre même, avec ses yeux bleus, sa physiognomy qui exprimait tant de douceur, et son front de marbre environné des cheveux chataignes.’⁶⁴

‘Mais le Duc a des cheveux chataignes aussi,’⁶⁵ interposed Elise.

‘Pas comme ceux de mon pre[cie]ux Percy,’⁶⁶ sighed her faithful Ladyship. And she continued in her own tongue, ‘Percy had so much soul, such a fine taste. Il sut apprécier mes talen[t]s.⁶⁷ He gave me trinkets. His first present was a broach like a heart set with diamonds; in return he asked for a lock of his lovely Allan’s hair. My name was Allan then, Elise. I sent him such a long, streaming tress. He knew how to receive the gift like a gentleman; he had it plaited into a watch-guard. And the next night I acted at the Fidena Theatre. When I came on to the stage, there he was in a box just opposite, with the black braid across his breast. Ah, Elise, talk of handsome men! He was irresistible in those days – stronger and stouter than he is now. Such a chest he shewed! And he used to wear a green Newmarket coat and a white beaver – well, anything became him. But you can’t think, Elise, how all the gentlemen admired me when I was a girl, what crowds used to come to the theatre to see me act, and how they used to cheer me. But he never did, he only looked – ah, just as if he worshipped me. And when I used to clasp my hands, and raise my eyes just so, and shake back my hair in this way, which I often did in singing solemn things, he seemed as if he could hardly hold from coming on to the stage and falling at my feet, and I enjoyed that.

‘The other actresses did envy me so. There was a woman called Morton, whom I always hated so much. I could have run a spit through her or stuck her full of needles any day, and she and I once quarrelled about him. It was in the green room; she was dressing for a character. She took one of her slippers and flung it at me; I got all my fingers into her hair, and I twisted them round and round and pulled and dragged till she was almost in fits with pain. I never heard anybody scream so. The manager tried to get me off, but he couldn’t, nor could anybody else. At last he said, “Call Mr Percy. He’s in the saloon.” Alexander came, but he had had a good deal of wine, and Price, the manager, could not rightly make him comprehend what he wanted him for. He was in a swearing passionate humour, and he threatened to shoot Price for attempting to humbug him, as he said. He took out his pistols and cocked them. The green room was crowded with actors and actresses and dressers. Every body was so terrified, they appealed to me to go and pacify him. I was so proud to shew my influence before them all. I knew that, drunk as he was, I could turn him round my little finger, so at last I left Morton, with her head almost bald and her hair torn off by handfuls, and went to the Drover. I believe he would really have shot Price if I hadn’t stopped him, but I soon changed his mood. You can’t think, Elise, what power I had over him. I told him I was frightened of his pistols, and began to cry. He laughed at me first, and when I cried more, he put them away. Lord George,⁶⁸ poor man, was standing by, watching. I did used to like to coquette between Vernon and Percy. Ah, what fun I had in those days! But it’s all gone by now – nothing but this dismal house, and that garden with its high wall like a convent, and these great dark trees, always groaning and rustling. Whatever have I done, to be punished so?’

Her Ladyship began to sob.

‘Monseigneur will change all this,’ suggested Elise.

‘No, no, that’s worst of all,’ returned her Ladyship. ‘He does not know how to change – such an impenetrable, iron man, so austere and sarcastic. I can’t tell how it is I always feel glad when he comes. I always wish for the day to come round when he will visit us again, and every time I hope he’ll be kinder, and less stately and laconic and abrupt, and yet, when he does come, I’m so tormented with mortification and disappointment. It’s all nonsense looking into his handsome face; his eyes won’t kindle any more than if they were of glass. It’s quite in vain that I go and stand by him and speak low. He won’t bend to listen to me, though I’m so much less than him.⁶⁹ Sometimes, when he bids me good-bye, I press his hand tenderly; sometimes I’m very cold and distant. It makes no difference; he does not seem to notice the change. Sometimes I try to provoke him, for if he would only be exceedingly savage, I might fall into great terror and faint, and then perhaps he would pity me afterwards. But he won’t be provoked. He smiles as if he were amused at my anger and that smile of his is so – I don’t know what, vexing, maddening! It makes him look so handsome, and yet it tears one’s heart with passion. I could draw my nails down his face, till I had scraped it bare of flesh; I could give him some arsenic in a glass of wine. Oh, I wish something would happen, that I could get a better hold of him! I wish he would fall desperately sick in this house, or shoot himself by accident, so that he would be obliged to stay here and let me nurse him. It would take down his pride if he were so weak that he could do nothing for himself, and then, if I did everything for him, he would be thankful. Perhaps he would begin to take a pleasure in having me with him, and I could sing his kind of songs and seem to be very gentle. He’d love me, I’m sure he would. If he didn’t, and if he refused to let me wait on him, I’d come at night to his room and choke him while he was asleep – smother him with the pillow, as Mr Ambler used to smother me when he had the part of Othello and I had that of Desdemona. I wonder if I dare do such a thing?’

Her Ladyship paused for a minute, as if to meditate on the moral problem she had thus proposed for her own solution. Ere long she proceeded:

‘I should like to know, now, how he behaves towards people that he does love, if indeed he ever loved anybody. His wife, now, does he always keep her at a distance? And they say he has a mistress or two. I’ve heard all sorts of queer stories about him. It’s very odd; perhaps he likes only blondes. But no, Miss Gordon⁷⁰ was as dark as me, and eight years ago what a talk there was in the north about him and her. He was a mere schoolboy then, to be sure. I remember hearing Vernon and O’Connor bantering Mr Gordon about it, and they joked him for being cut out by a beardless lad. Gordon did not like the joke. He was an ill-tempered man, that. Elise, you’re making my gown too long; you know I always like rather short skirts. Morton used to wear long ones because, as I often told her, she’d ugly, thick ancles. My ancles, now, were a straw-breadth less in circumference than Julia Corelli’s, who was the first figurante at the Verdopolitan Opera. How vexed Corelli was that night that we measured, and my ancles were found to be slimmer than hers! Then neither she nor any of the other dancers could put on my shoes; and – it’s a fact, Elise – a colonel in the army stole a little black satin slipper of mine, and wore it a whole week in his cap as a trophy. Poor man, Percy challenged him. They had such a dreadful duel across a table. He was shot dead. They called him Markham, Sydenham Markham; he was an Angrian.’

‘Madame, c’est finie,’⁷¹ said Elise, holding up the gown which she had just completed.

‘Oh well, put it away. I can’t try it on; I don’t feel equal to the fatigue. My head’s so bad, and I’ve such a faintness and such a fidgetty restlessness. What’s that noise?’

A distant sound of music in a room below was heard, a piano very well touched.⁷²

‘Dear, dear! There’s Caroline strumming over that vile instrument again! I really cannot bear it, and so it doesn’t signify. That girl quite distracts me with the racket she keeps up.’

Here, her Ladyship rose very nimbly, and going to the top of the stairs, which was just outside her room, called out with much power of lungs,

‘Caroline! Caroline!’

No answer, except a brilliant bravura run down the keys of the piano.

‘Caroline!’ was reiterated. ‘Give up playing this instant! You know how ill I have been all day, and yet you will act in this way.’

A remarkably merry jig responded to her Ladyship’s objurgations, and a voice was heard far off, saying,

‘It will do you good, Mamma!’

‘You are very insolent,’ cried the fair invalid, leaning over the bannisters. ‘Your impertinence is beyond bearing. You will suffer for it one day. You little forward piece, do as I bid you!’

‘So I will directly,’ replied the voice. ‘I have only to play “Jim Crow”⁷³ and then –’, and ‘Jim Crow’ was played, with due spirit and sprightliness. Her Ladyship cried once again, with a volume of voice that filled the whole house,

‘D’ye know I’m your mother, madam? You seem to think you are grown out of my control. You have given yourself fine impudent airs of late. It’s high time your behaviour was looked to, I think. Do ye hear me?’

While ‘Jim Crow’ was yet jigging his round, while Lady Vernon, bent above the bannisters, was still shaking the little passage with her voice, the wire of the door-bell vibrated. There was a loud ring, and thereafter a pealing aristocratic knock. ‘Jim Crow’ and Lady Louisa were silenced simultaneously. Her Ladyship effected a precipitate retreat to her dressing-room. It seemed also as if Miss Caroline were making herself scarce, for there was a slight rustle and run heard below, as of some one retiring to hidden regions.

I need not say who stood without. Of course, it was Messrs Percy and Wellesley. In due time the door was opened to them by a manservant, and they walked straight on to the drawing-room. There was no one to receive them in that apartment, but it was evident somebody had lately been there. An open piano and a sheet of music with a grinning, capering nigger lithographed on the title-page,⁷⁴ a capital good fire, an easy chair drawn close to it, all gave direct evidence to that effect.

His Grace the Duke of Zamorna looked warily round. Nothing alive met his eye. He drew off his gloves and, as he folded them one in the other, he walked to the hearth. Mr Percy was already bent over a little work-table near the easy chair. Pushed out of sight, under a drapery of half-finished embroidery, there was a book. Percy drew it out; it was a novel, and by no means a religious one, either. While Northangerland was turning over the leaves, Zamorna rung the bell.

‘Where is Lady Vernon?’ he asked of the servant who answered it.

‘Her Ladyship will be downstairs directly. I have told her your Grace is here.’

‘And where is Miss Caroline?’ The servant hesitated.

‘She’s in the passage,’ he said, half smiling and looking behind him. ‘She’s rather bashful, I think, because there’s company with your Grace.’

‘Tell Miss Vernon I wish to see her, will you, Cooper?’ replied the Duke. The footman withdrew. Presently the door reopened, very slowly. Northangerland started, and walked quickly to the window, where he stood gazing intently into the garden. Meantime, he heard Zamorna say ‘How do you do?’ in his deep low voice, most thrilling when it is most subdued. Somebody answered ‘Very well, thank ye’, in an accent indicating girlish mauvaise honte⁷⁵ mixed with pleasure. There was then a pause. Northangerland turned round.

It was getting dusk, but daylight enough remained to shew him distinctly what sort of a person it was that had entered the room and was now standing by the fire-place, looking as if she did not exactly know whether to sit down or to remain on her feet. He saw a girl of fifteen, exceedingly well-grown and well-made of her age,⁷⁶ not thin or delicate, but, on the contrary, very healthy and very plump. Her face was smiling. She had fine dark eyelashes and very handsome eyes. Her hair was almost black; it curled as nature let it, though it was now long and thick enough to be trained according to the established rules of art. This young lady’s dress by no means accorded with her years and stature. The short-sleeved frock, worked trousers,⁷⁷ and streaming sash would better have suited the age of nine or ten than that of fifteen. I have intimated that she was somewhat bashful, and so she was, for she would neither look Zamorna nor Northangerland in the face; the fire and the rug were the objects of her fixed contemplation. Yet it was evident that it was only the bashfulness of a raw schoolgirl unused to society. The dimpled cheek and arch, animated eye indicated a constitutional vivacity which a very little encouragement would soon foster into sprightly play enough; perhaps it was a thing rather to be repressed than fostered.

‘Won’t you sit down?’ said Zamorna, placing a seat near her. She sat down. ‘Is your mamma very well?’ he continued.

‘I don’t know. She’s never been down to-day, and so I haven’t seen her.’

‘Indeed! You should have gone up-stairs and asked her how she did.’

‘I did ask Elise, and she said Madame had the megrims.’⁷⁸

Zamorna smiled, and Northangerland smiled too.

‘What have you been doing, then, all day?’ continued the Duke.

‘Why, I’ve been drawing and sewing. I couldn’t practise, because Ma said it made her head ache.’

‘What is “Jim Crow” doing on the piano then?’ asked Zamorna.

Miss Vernon giggled. ‘I only just jigged him over once,’ she replied. ‘And Ma did fly!⁷⁹ She never likes “Jim Crow”.’

Her guardian shook his head. ‘And have you never walked out this fine day?’ he continued.

‘I was riding on my pony most of the morning.’

‘Oh, you were! Then how did the French and Italian lessons get on, in that case?’

‘I forgot them,’ said Miss Caroline.

‘Well,’ pursued the Duke, ‘look at this gentleman, now, and tell me if you know him.’

She raised her eyes from the carpet, and turned them furtively on Percy. Frolic and shyness was the mixed expression of her face as she did so.

‘No,’ was her first answer.

‘Look again,’ said the Duke, and he stirred the fire to elicit a brighter glow over the now darkening apartment.

‘I do!’ exclaimed Caroline, as the flame flashed over Northangerland’s pallid features and marble brow. ‘It’s Papa!’ she said, rising, and without agitation or violent excitement she stepped across the rug towards him. He kissed her. The first minute, she only held his hand; and then she put her arms round his neck, and would not leave him for a little while, though he seemed oppressed and would have gently put her away.

‘You remember something of me, then?’ said the Earl at last, loosening her arms.

‘Yes, Papa, I do.’ She did not immediately sit down, but walked two or three times across the room, her colour heightened and her respiration hurried.

‘Would you like to see Lady Vernon tonight?’ asked Zamorna of his father-in-law.

‘No, not to-night. I’d prefer being excused.’

But who was to prevent it? Rustle and sweep, a silk gown traversed the passage. In she came.

‘Percy! Percy! Percy!’ was her thrice repeated exclamation. ‘My own Percy, take me again! Oh, you shall hear all, you shall! But I’m safe now, you’ll take care of me. I’ve been true to you, however.’

‘God bless me, I shall be choked!’ ejaculated the Earl, as the little woman vehemently kissed and embraced him. ‘I never can stand this,’ he continued. ‘Louisa, just be quiet, will ye?’

‘But you don’t know what I’ve suffered,’ cried her Ladyship, ‘nor what I’ve had to contend against! He has used me so ill, and all because I couldn’t forget you.’

‘What, the Duke there?’ asked Percy.

‘Yes, yes. Save me from him! Take me away with you! I cannot exist if I remain in his power any longer.’

‘Ma, what a fool you are,’ interposed Caroline very angrily.

‘Does he make love to you?’ said the Earl.

‘He persecutes me; he acts in a shameful, unmanly, brutal manner.’

‘You’ve lost your senses, Ma,’ said Miss Vernon.

‘Percy, you love me, I’m sure you do,’ continued her Ladyship. ‘Oh, protect me! I’ll tell you more when we’ve got away from this dreadful place.’

‘She’ll tell you lies,’ exclaimed Caroline in burning indignation. ‘She’s just got up a scene, Papa, to make you think she’s treated cruelly, and nobody ever says a word against her.’

‘My own child is prejudiced and made to scorn me,’ sobbed the little actress. ‘Every source of happiness I have in the world is poisoned, and all from his revenge, because –’

‘Have done, Mamma,’ said Caroline promptly. ‘If you are not quiet, I shall take you up-stairs.’

‘You hear how she talks,’ cried her Ladyship, ‘my own daughter, my darling Caroline – ruined, miserably ruined!’

‘Papa, Mamma’s not fit to be out of her room, is she?’ again interrupted Miss Vernon. ‘Let me take her in my arms and carry her upstairs. I can do it easily.’

‘I’ll tell you all!’ almost screamed her Ladyship. ‘I’ll lay bare the whole vile scheme! Your father shall know you, Miss, what you are, and what he is. I never mentioned the subject before, but I’ve noticed, and I’ve laid it all up, and nobody shall hinder me from proclaiming your baseness aloud.’

‘Good heavens, this won’t do,’ said Caroline, blushing as red as fire. ‘Be silent, Mother! I hardly know what you mean, but you seem to be possessed. Not another word, now. Go to bed, do. Come, I’ll help you to your room.’

‘Don’t fawn, don’t coax,’ cried the infuriated little woman. ‘It’s too late. I’ve made up my mind. Percy, your daughter is a bold, impudent minx. Young as she is, she’s a –’

She could not finish the sentence. Caroline fairly capsized her mother, took her in her arms, and carried her out of the room. She was heard in the passage, calling Elise and firmly ordering her to undress her lady and put her to bed. She locked the door of her bed-room, and then she came downstairs with the key in her hand. She did not seem to be aware that she had done anything at all extraordinary, but she looked very much distressed and excited.

‘Papa, don’t believe Mamma,’ were her first words as she returned to the drawing-room. ‘She talks such mad stuff when she’s in a passion, and sometimes she seems as if she hated me. I can’t tell why. I’m never insolent to her. I only make fun sometimes.’

Miss Vernon lost command over herself and burst into tears. His Grace of Zamorna, who had been all this time a perfectly silent spectator of the whole strange scene, rose and left the room. Miss Vernon sobbed more bitterly when he was gone.

‘Come here, Caroline,’ said Northangerland. He placed his daughter on a seat close to his side, and patted her curled hair soothingly. She gave up crying very soon and said, smiling, she didn’t care a fig about it now, only Mamma was so queer and vexatious.

‘Never mind her, Caroline,’ said the Earl. ‘Always come to me when she’s cross. I can’t do with your spirit being broken by such termagant whims. You shall leave her and come and live with me.’

‘I wonder what in the world Mamma would do quite by herself,’ said Caroline. ‘She would fret away to nothing. But to speak truth, Papa, I really don’t mind her scolding. I’m so used to it, it does not break my spirit at all. Only she set off on a new tack just now. I didn’t expect it; she never talked in that way before.’

‘What did she mean, Caroline?’

‘I can’t tell. I’ve almost forgot what she did say now, Papa, but it put me into a regular passion.’

‘It was something about the Duke of Zamorna,’ said Northangerland, quietly. Caroline’s excitement returned.

‘She’s lost her senses,’ she said. ‘Such wild, mad trash!’

‘What mad trash?’ asked Percy. ‘I heard nothing but half sentences, which amazed me, I confess, but certainly didn’t inform me.’

‘Nor me, either,’ replied Miss Vernon. ‘Only I had an idea that she was going to tell some tremendous lie.’

‘Of what nature?’

‘I can’t tell, Papa. I know nothing about it. Ma vexed me.’

There was a little pause, then Northangerland said,

‘Your mother used to be fond of you, Caroline, when you were a little child. What is the reason of this change? Do you provoke her unnecessarily?’

‘I never provoke her but when she provokes me worse. She’s like as if she was angry with me for growing tall, and when I want to be dressed more like a woman, and to have scarfs and veils and such things, it does vex her so. Then, when she’s raving and calling me vain and conceited and a hussey, I can’t help sometimes letting her hear a bit of the real truth.’

‘And what do you call the real truth?’

‘Why, I tell her that she’s jealous of me, because people will think she is old if she has such a woman as I am for her daughter.’

‘Who tells you you are a woman, Caroline?’

‘Elise Touquet. She says I’m quite old enough to have a gown, and a watch, and a desk, and a maid to wait on me. I wish I might. I’m quite tired of wearing frocks⁸⁰ and sashes, and indeed, Papa, they’re only fit for little girls. Lord Enara’s children came here once, and the eldest, Senora Maria as they call her, was quite fashionable compared to me, and she’s only fourteen, more than a year younger than I am. When the Duke of Zamorna gave me a pony, Mamma would hardly let me have a riding habit. She said a skirt was quite sufficient for a child. But his Grace said I should have one, and a beaver too, and I got them. Oh, how Ma did go on! She said the Duke of Zamorna was sending me to ruin as fast as I could go, and whenever I put them on to ride out she plays up beautifully. You shall see me wear them to-morrow, Pa, if I may ride somewhere with you. Do let me!’

Northangerland smiled.

‘Are you very fond of Hawkscliffe?’ he asked, after a brief interval of silence.

‘Yes, I like it well enough. Only I want to travel somewhere. I should like when winter comes to go to Adrianopolis; and if I were a rich lady, I’d have parties and go to the theatre and opera every night, as Lady Castlereagh does. Do you know Lady Castlereagh, Papa?’

‘I’ve seen her.’

‘And have you seen Lady Thornton too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, they’re both very fine fashionable ladies, aren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘And very handsome, too. Do you think them handsome?’

‘Yes.’

‘Which is the best looking, and what are they like? I often ask the Duke of Zamorna what they’re like, but he’ll tell me nothing, except that Lady Castlereagh is very pale and that Lady Thornton is extremely stout. But Elise Touquet, who was Lady Castlereagh’s dress-maker once, says they’re beautiful. Do you think them so?’

‘Lady Thornton is very well,’ replied Northangerland.

‘Well, but has she dark eyes and a Grecian nose?’

‘I forget,’ answered the Earl.

‘I should like to be exceedingly beautiful,’ pursued Caroline. ‘And to be very tall, a great deal taller than I am. And slender – I think I’m a great deal too fat. And fair – my neck is so brown, Ma says I’m quite a negro. And I should like to be dashing and to be very much admired. Who is the best-looking woman in Verdopolis, Papa?’

Northangerland was considerably nonplussed.

‘There are so many, it’s difficult to say,’ he answered. ‘Your head runs very much on these things, Caroline.’

‘Yes, when I walk out in the wood by myself, I build castles in the air, and I fancy how beautiful and rich I should like to be, and what sort of adventures I should like to happen to me – for you know, Papa, I don’t want a smooth common-place life, but something strange and unusual.’

‘Do you talk in this way to the Duke of Zamorna?’ asked Mr Percy.

‘In what way, Papa?’

‘Do you tell him what kind of adventures you should like to encounter, and what sort of nose and eyes you should choose to have?’

‘Not exactly. I sometimes say I’m sorry I’m not handsome, and that I wish a fairy would bring me a ring, or a magician would appear and give me a talisman like Aladdin’s lamp,⁸¹ that I could get everything I want.’

‘And pray what does his Grace say?’

‘He says time and patience will do much, that plain girls with manners and sense often make passable women, and that he thinks reading Lord Byron has half turned my head.’⁸²

‘You do read Lord Byron, then?’

‘Yes, indeed I do; and Lord Byron and Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and Lord Edward Fitzgerald are the four best men that ever lived.’

‘Lord Edward Fitzgerald? Who the d—il is he?’ asked the Earl in momentary astonishment.

‘A young nobleman that Moore⁸³ wrote a life about,’ was the reply. ‘A regular grand republican. He would have rebelled against a thousand tyrants if they’d dared to trample on him. He went to America because he wouldn’t be hectored over in England, and he travelled in the American forests, and at night he used to sleep on the ground like Miss Martineau.’⁸⁴

‘Like Miss Martineau!’ exclaimed the Earl, again astounded out of his propriety.

‘Yes, Papa, a lady who must have been the cleverest woman that ever lived. She travelled like a man, to find out the best way of governing a country. She thought a republic far the best, and so do I. I wish I had been born an Athenian. I would have married Alcibiades, or else Alexander the Great.⁸⁵ Oh, I do like Alexander the Great!’

‘But Alexander the Great was not an Athenian, neither was he a republican,’ interposed the Earl in a resigned, deliberate tone.

‘No, Papa, he was a Macedonian, I know, and a king too. But he was a right kind of king – martial, and not luxurious and indolent. He had such power over all his army! They never dared mutiny against him, though he made them suffer such hardships. And he was such an heroic man! Haephestion⁸⁶ was nearly as nice as he was, though; I always think he was such a tall, slender, elegant man. Alexander was little – what a pity!’

‘What other favourites have you?’ asked Mr Percy. The answer was not quite what he expected. Miss Caroline, who probably had not often an opportunity of talking so unreservedly, seemed to warm with her subject. In reply to her excellent father’s question, the pent-up enthusiasm of her heart came out in full tide. The reader will pardon any little inconsistencies he may observe in the young lady’s declaration.

‘O Papa, I like a great many people, but soldiers most of all! I do adore soldiers! I like Lord Arundel, Papa, and Lord Castlereagh, and General Thornton, and General Henri Fernando di Enara, and I like all gallant rebels. I like the Angrians because they rebelled, in a way, against the Verdopolitans. Mr Warner is an insurgent, and so I like him. As to Lord Arundel, he’s the finest man that can be. I saw a picture of him once on horseback. He was reining in his charger and turning round with his hand stretched out, speaking to his regiment as he did before he charged at Leyden. He was so handsome.’

‘He is silly,’⁸⁷ whispered Northangerland, very faintly.

‘What, Pa?’

‘He is silly, my dear. A big man, but nearly idiotic; calfish, quite heavy and poor-spirited. Don’t mention him.’

Caroline looked as blank as the wall. She was silent for a time.

‘Bah!’ said she at last. ‘That’s disagreeable.’ And she curled her lip as if nauseating the recollection of him. Arundel was clearly done for in her opinion.

‘You are a soldier, aren’t you, Papa?’ she said, erelong.

‘No, not at all.’

‘But you are a rebel and a republican,’ continued Miss Vernon. ‘I know that, for I’ve read it over and over again.’

‘Those facts won’t deny,’ said Northangerland.

She clapped her hands, and her eyes sparkled with delight.

‘And you’re a pirate and a democrat too,’ said she. ‘You scorn worn-out constitutions and old rotten monarchies, and you’re a terror to those ancient doddered kings up at Verdopolis. That crazy, ill-tempered old fellow, Alexander, dreads you, I know. He swears in broad Scotch whenever your name is mentioned. Do get up an insurrection, Papa, and send all those doting constitutionalists to Jericho.’⁸⁸

‘Rather good for a young lady that has been educated under royal auspices,’ remarked Northangerland. ‘I suppose these ideas on politics have been carefully instilled into you by his Grace of Zamorna, eh, Caroline?’

‘No, I’ve taken them all up myself. They’re just my unbiased principles.’

‘Good!’ again said the Earl, and he could not help laughing quietly, while he added in an undertone, ‘I suppose it’s hereditary, then. Rebellion runs in the blood.’

By this time, the reader will have acquired a slight idea of the state of Miss Caroline Vernon’s mental development, and will have perceived that it was as yet only in the chrysalis form; that in fact she was not altogether so sage, steady and consistent as her best friends might have wished. In plain terms, Mademoiselle was evidently raw, flighty and romantic. Only there was a something about her, a flashing of her eye, an earnestness, almost an impetuosity, of manner, which I cannot convey in words, and which yet, if seen, must have irresistibly impressed the spectator that she had something of an original and peculiar character under all her rubbish of sentiment and inconsequence. It conveyed the idea that though she told a great deal, rattled on, let out, concealed neither feeling nor opinion, neither predilection nor antipathy, it was still just possible that something might remain behind, which she did not choose to tell nor even to hint at. I don’t mean to say that she’d any love-secret, or hate-secret either, but she’d sensations somewhere that were stronger than fancy or romance. She shewed it when she stepped across the rug to give her father a kiss and could not leave him for a minute; she shewed it when she blushed at what her mother said and, in desperation lest she should let out more, whisked her out of the room in a whirlwind.

All the rattle about Alexander and Alcibiades and Lord Arundel and Lord Edward Fitzgerald was, of course, humbug and the rawest hash of ideas imaginable, yet she could talk better sense if she liked, and often did do so when she was persuading her mother to reason. Miss Caroline had a fund of vanity about her, but it was not yet excited. She really did not know that she was good-looking, but rather, on the contrary, considered herself unfortunately plain. Sometimes, indeed, she ventured to think that she had a nice foot and ancle and a very little hand. But then, alas, her form was not half slight and sylph-like enough for beauty – according to her notions of beauty, which of course, like those of all school-girls, approached the farthest extreme of the thread-paper and maypole style.⁸⁹ In fact, she was made like a model. She could not but be graceful in her movements, she was so perfect in her proportions. As to her splendid eyes, dark enough and large enough to set twenty poets raving about them, her sparkling, even teeth and her profuse tresses, glossy, curling and waving, she never counted these as beauties; they were nothing. She had neither rosy cheeks, nor a straight Grecian nose, nor an alabaster neck, and so she sorrowfully thought to herself she could never be considered as a pretty girl. Besides, no one ever praised her, ever hinted that she possessed a charm. Her mother was always throwing out strong insinuations to the contrary, and as to her royal guardian, he either smiled in silence when she appealed to him, or uttered some brief and grave admonition to think less of physical and more of moral attraction.

It was after eleven when Caroline bade her papa good-night. His Grace the Duke did not make his appearance again that evening in the drawing-room. Miss Vernon wondered often what he was doing so long up-stairs, but he did not come. The fact is, he was not up-stairs, but comfortably enough seated in the dining-room, quite alone, with his hands in his pockets, a brace of candles on the table by him, unsnuffed⁹⁰ and consequently burning rather dismally dim. It would seem he was listening with considerable attention to the various little movements in the house, for, the moment the drawing-room door opened, he rose, and when Caroline’s ‘Good-night, Papa’ had been softly spoken, and her step had crossed the passage and tripped up the staircase, Mr Wellesley emerged from his retreat. He went straight to the apartment Miss Vernon had just left.

‘Well,’ said he, appearing suddenly before the eyes of his father-in-law. ‘Have ye told her?’

‘Not exactly,’ returned the Earl. ‘But I will do, to-morrow.’

‘You mean it still, then?’ continued his Grace, with a look indicating thunder.

‘Of course I do.’

‘You’re a d—d noodle,’ was the mild reply, and therewith the door banged to and the Majesty of Angria vanished.

CHAP[TER] V

To-morrow came. The young lover of rebels and regicides awoke as happy as could be. Her father, whom she had so long dreamed about, was at last come. One of her dearest wishes had been realized, and why might not others, in due course of time? While Elise Touquet dressed her hair, she sat pondering over a reverie of romance, something so delicious, yet so undefined – I will not say that it was all love, yet neither will I affirm that love was entirely excluded therefrom. Something there was of a hero, yet nameless and formless, a mystic being, a dread shadow, that crowded upon Miss Vernon’s soul, haunted her day and night when she had nothing useful to occupy her head or her hands. I almost think she gave him the name of Ferdinand Alonzo Fitz-Adolphus, but I don’t know. The fact was, he frequently changed his designation, being sometimes no more than simple Charles Seymour or Edward Clifford and at other times soaring to the title of Harold Aurelius Rinaldo Duke of Montmorency di Valdacella, a very fine man no doubt – though whether he was to have golden or raven hair, or straight or aquiline proboscis, she had not quite decided. However, he was to drive all before him in the way of fighting, to conquer the world and build himself a city like Babylon, only it was to be in the Moorish style, and there was to be a palace called the Alhambra, where Mr Harold Aurelius was to live, taking upon himself the title of Caliph,⁹¹ and she, Miss C Vernon, the professor of republican principles, was to be his chief lady and to be called the Sultana Zara Esmerelda, with at least a hundred slaves to do her bidding. As for the gardens of roses and the halls of marble and the diamonds and the pearls and the rubies, it would be vanity to attempt a description of such heavenly sights. The reader must task his imagination and try if he can conceive them.

In the course of that day Miss Vernon got something better to think of than the crudities of her own over-stretched fancy. That day was an era in her life. She was no longer to be a child; she was to be acknowledged a woman. Farewell to captivity, where she had been reared like a bird! Her father was come to release her, and she was to go with him to be his daughter and his darling. The Earl’s splendid houses, which she had never entered, were to be opened to her, and she was to be almost mistress there. She was to have servants and wealth, and whatever delighted her eye she was to ask for and receive. She was to enter life, to see society; to live all the winter in a great city, Verdopolis; to be dressed as gaily as the gayest ladies; to have jewels of her own; to vie even with those demi-goddesses, the Ladies Castlereagh and Thornton. It was too much. She could hardly realize it.

It may be supposed, from her enthusiastic character, that she received this intelligence with transport, that as Northangerland unfolded these coming glories to her view, she expressed her delight and astonishment and gratitude in terms of extacy. But the fact is, she sat by the table with her head on her hand, listening to it all with a very grave face. Pleased she was, of course, but she made no stir. It was rather too important a matter to clap her hands about; she took it soberly. When the Earl told her she must get all in readiness to set off early to-morrow she said, ‘To-morrow, Papa!’ and looked up with an excited glance.

‘Yes, early in the morning.’

‘Does Mamma know?’

‘I shall tell her.’

‘I hope she’ll not take it to heart,’ said Caroline. ‘Let her go with us for about a week or so, Papa! It will be so dreary to leave her behind.’

‘She’s not under my control,’ replied Percy.

‘Well,’ continued Miss Vernon, ‘if she were not so excessively perverse and bad to manage as she is, I’m sure she might get leave to go. But she makes the Duke of Zamorna think she’s out of her wits by her frantic ways of going on, and he says she’s not fit to be let loose on society. Actually, Papa, one day when the Duke was dining with us she started up without speaking a word in the middle of dinner and flew at him with a knife. He could hardly get the knife from her, and afterwards he was obliged to tell Cooper to hold her hands. And another time, she brought him a glass of wine, and he just tasted it and threw the rest at the back of the fire. He looked full at her, and Mamma began to cry and scream as if somebody was killing her. She’s always contriving to get laudanum and prussic acid and such trash. She says she’ll murder either him or herself, and I’m afraid if she’s left quite alone she’ll really do some harm.’

‘She’ll not hurt herself,’ replied the Earl. ‘And as to Zamorna, I think he’s able to mind his own affairs.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Vernon, ‘I must go and tell Elise to pack up.’ And she jumped up and danced away as if care laid but lightly on her.

I believe the date of these present transactions is July, but I’ve almost forgotten. If so, summer days were not gone by, nor summer evenings either, and it is with a summer evening that I have now to do. Miss Caroline Vernon, alias Percy, had finished her packing up, and she had finished her tea too. She was in the drawing-room alone, and she was sitting in the window-seat as quiet as a picture. I don’t exactly know where the other inmates of the house were, but I believe Mr Percy was with Lady Louisa, and Lady Louisa was in her own room, as sick as you please. Whether, at this particular moment of time, she was playing the houri or the fiend, kissing or cuffing the Earl, her lover, I really can’t tell. Neither, as far as I know, does it much signify. However, be that as it may, Caroline was by herself, and also she was very still and pensive. What else could she be, looking out on to the quiet walks of that garden and on to that lawn, where the moon is already beginning dimly to shine? A summer moon is yellow, and a summer evening sky is often more softly blue than pen can describe, especially when that same moon is but newly risen, and when its orb hangs low and large over a background of fading hills, and looks into your face from under the boughs of forest beeches. Miss Caroline is to leave Hawkscliffe to-morrow, so she is drinking in all its beauties to-night.

So you suppose, reader, but you’re mistaken. If you observe her eyes, she’s not gazing, she’s watching. She’s not contemplating the moon; she’s following the motions of that person who, for the last half hour, has been leisurely pacing up and down that gravel walk at the bottom of the garden. It is her guardian, and she is considering whether she shall go and join him and have a bit of talk with him for the last time – that is, for the last time at Hawkscliffe; she’s by no means contemplating anything like the solemnity of an eternal separation. This guardian of hers has a blue frock-coat on, white inexpugnables,⁹² and a stiff black stock; consequently, he considerably resembles that angelic existence called a military man. You’ll suppose Miss Vernon considers him handsome, because other people do. All the ladies in the world, you know, hold the Duke of Zamorna to be matchless, irresistible. But Miss Vernon doesn’t think him handsome. In fact, the question of his charms has never yet been mooted in her mind. The idea as to whether he is a god of perfection or a demon of defects has not crossed her intellect once, neither has she once compared him with other men. He is himself, a kind of abstract isolated being, quite distinct from aught beside under the sun. He can’t be handsome, because he has nothing at all in common with Messrs Ferdinand Alonzo Fitzadolphus, Harold Aurelius Rinaldo and company. His complexion is not like a lady’s, nor has he cheeks tinged with transparent roses, nor glossy golden hair, nor blue eyes. The Duke’s whiskers and mustaches are rather terrible than beautiful, and the Duke’s high mien and upright port and carriage are more awful than fascinating, and yet Miss Caroline is only theoretically afraid of him. Practically, she is often familiar enough. To play with the lion’s mane is one of her greatest pleasures. She would play with him now, but he looks grave, and is reading a book.

It seems, however, that Miss Vernon has at length conquered her timidity, for lo! as the twilight deepens and the garden is all dim and obscure, she, with her hat on, comes stealing quietly out of the house, and through the shrubs, the closed blossoms and dewy leaves, trips like a fairy to meet him. She thought she would surprise him, so she took a circuit and came behind. She touched his hand before he was aware. Cast iron, however, can’t be startled, and so no more was he.

‘Where did you come from?’ said the guardian, gazing down from supreme altitude upon his ward, who passed her arm through his and hung upon him, according to her custom when they walked together.

‘I saw you walking by yourself, and so I thought I’d come and keep you company,’ she replied.

‘Perhaps I don’t want you,’ said the Duke.

‘Yes, you do. You’re smiling, and you’ve put your book away as if you meant to talk to me instead of reading.’

‘Well, are you ready to set off to-morrow?’ he asked.

‘Yes, all is packed.’

‘And the head and the heart are in as complete a state of preparation as the trunk, I presume?’ continued his Grace.

‘My heart is wae,’⁹³ said Caroline. ‘At last of all, I’m sorry to go – especially this evening. I was not half so sorry in the middle of the day while I was busy, but now –’

‘You’re tired, and therefore low-spirited. Well, you’ll wake fresh in the morning, and see the matter in a different light. You must mind how you behave, Caroline, when you get out into the world. I shall ask after you sometimes.’

‘Ask after me? You’ll see me. I shall come to Victoria Square almost constantly when you’re in Verdopolis.’

‘You will not be in Verdopolis longer than a few days.’

‘Where shall I be, then?’

‘You will go either to Paris, or Fidena, or Rossland.’ Caroline was silent. ‘You will enter a new sphere,’ continued her guardian, ‘and a new circle of society, which will mostly consist of French people. Don’t copy the manners of the ladies you see at Paris or Fontainebleau.⁹⁴ They are most of them not quite what they should be. They have very free, obtrusive manners, and will often be talking to you about love, and endeavouring to make you their confidante. You should not listen to their notions on the subject, as they are all very vicious and immodest. As to the men, those you will see will be almost universally gross and polluted. Avoid them.’

Caroline spoke not.

‘In a year or two, your father will begin to talk of marrying you,’ continued her guardian, ‘and I suppose you think it would be the finest thing in the world to be married. It is not at all impossible that your father may propose a Frenchman for your husband. If he does, decline the honour of such a connexion.’

Still Miss Vernon was mute.

‘Remember always,’ continued his Grace, ‘that there is one nation under heaven filthier even than the French; that is, the Italians. The women of Italy should be excluded from your presence, and the men of Italy should be spurned with disgust even from your thoughts.’

Silence still. Caroline wondered why his Grace talked in that way. He had never been so stern and didactic before.⁹⁵ His allusions to matrimony etc., too, confounded her. It was not that the idea was one altogether foreign to the young lady’s mind. She had most probably studied the subject now and then, in those glowing day-dreams before hinted at; nay, I would not undertake to say how far her speculations concerning it had extended, for she was a daring theorist. But as yet these thoughts had all been secret and untold. Her guardian was the last person to whom she would have revealed their existence, and now it was with a sense of shame that she heard his grave counsel on the subject. What he said, too, about the French ladies and the Italian men and women made her feel very queer. She could not for the world have answered him, and yet she wished to hear more. She was soon gratified.

‘It is not at all improbable,’ pursued his Grace, after a brief pause, during which he and Caroline had slowly paced the long terrace-walk at the bottom of the garden, which skirted a stately aisle of trees, ‘it is not at all improbable that you may meet occasionally in society a lady of the name of Lalande and another of the name of St James,⁹⁶ and it is most likely that these ladies will shew you much attention, flatter you, ask you to sing or play, invite you to their houses, introduce you to their particular circles, and offer to accompany you to public places. You must decline it all.’

‘Why?’ asked Miss Vernon.

‘Because,’ replied the Duke, ‘Madame Lalande and Lady St James are easy about their characters. Their ideas on the subject of morality are very free. They would get you into their boudoirs, as the ladies of Paris call the little rooms where they sit in a morning and read gross novels⁹⁷ and talk over their own secrets with their intimate friends. You would hear of many love-intrigues, and of a great deal of amorous manoeuvering. You would get accustomed to impudent conversation, and perhaps become involved in foolish adventures which would disgrace you.’

Zamorna still had all the talk to himself, for Miss Vernon seemed too busily engaged in contemplating the white pebbles on which the moon was shining that lay here and there on the path at her feet to take much share in the conversation. At last she said in rather a low voice,

‘I never intended to make friends with any Frenchwomen. I always thought that when I was a woman I would visit chiefly with such people as Lady Thornton and Mrs Warner, and that lady who lives about two miles from here, Miss Laury. They are all very well-behaved, are they not?’

Before the Duke answered this question, he took out a red silk handkerchief and blew his nose. He then said,

‘Mrs Warner is a remarkably decent woman. Lady Thornton is somewhat too gay and flashy; in other respects I know no harm in her.’

‘And what is Miss Laury like?’ asked Caroline.

‘What is she like? She’s rather tall, and pale.’

‘But I mean, what is her character? Ought I to visit with her?’

‘You will be saved the trouble of deciding on that point, as she will never come in your way. She always resides in the country.’

‘I thought she was very fashionable,’ continued Miss Vernon, ‘for I remember, when I was in Adrianopolis, I often saw pictures in the shops of her, and I thought her very nice-looking.’

The Duke was silent in his turn.

‘I wonder why she lives alone,’ pursued Caroline, ‘and I wonder she has no relations. Is she rich?’

‘Not very.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does Papa?’

‘No.’

‘Do you like her?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘Why don’t you like her always?’

‘I don’t always think about her.’

‘Do you ever go to see her?’

‘Now and then.’

‘Does she ever give parties?’

‘No.’

‘I believe she’s rather mysterious and romantic,’ continued Miss Vernon. ‘She’s a romantic look in her eyes. I should not wonder if she has had adventures.’

‘I daresay she has,’ remarked her guardian.

‘I should like to have some adventures,’ added the young lady. ‘I don’t want a dull, droning life.’

‘You may be gratified,’ replied the Duke. ‘Be in no hurry. You are young enough yet; life is only just opening.’

‘But I should like something very strange and uncommon, something that I don’t at all expect.’

Zamorna whistled.

‘I should like to be tried to see what I had in me,’ continued his ward. ‘Oh, if I were only rather better looking! Adventures never happen to plain, fat people.’

‘No, not often.’

‘I’m so sorry I’m not as pretty as your wife, the Duchess. If she had been like me, she would never have been married to you.’

‘Indeed, how do you know that?’

‘Because I’m sure you would not have asked her. But she’s so nice and fair, and I’m all dark – like a mulatto, Mamma says.’

‘Dark yet comely,’ muttered the Duke involuntarily, for he looked down at his ward and she looked up at him, and the moonlight disclosed a clear forehead, pencilled with soft, dusk curls, dark and touching eyes, and a round, youthful cheek, smooth in texture and fine in tint as that of some portrait hung in an Italian palace, where you see the raven eyelash and southern eye relieving a complexion of pure, colourless olive, and the rosy lips smiling brighter and warmer for the absence of bloom elsewhere.

Zamorna did not tell Miss Vernon what he thought, at least not in words. But when she would have ceased to look up at him and returned to the contemplation of the scattered pebbles, he retained her face in that raised attitude by the touch of his finger under her little oval chin. His Grace of Angria is an artist. It is probable that that sweet face, touched with soft lunar light, struck him as a fine artistical study.

No doubt it is terrible to be looked fixedly at by a tall, powerful man, who knits his brows, and whose dark hair and whiskers and mustaches combine to shadow the eyes of a hawk and the features of a Roman statue. When such a man puts on an expression that you can’t understand, stops suddenly as you are walking with him alone in a dim garden, removes your hand from his arm, and places his hand on your shoulder, you are justified in feeling nervous and uneasy.

‘I suppose I’ve been talking nonsense,’ said Miss Vernon, colouring, and half frightened.

‘In what way?’

‘I’ve said something about my sister Mary that I shouldn’t have said.’

‘How?’

‘I can’t tell. But you don’t like her to be spoken of, perhaps. I remember you once said that she and I ought to have nothing to do with each other, and you would never take me to see her.’

‘Little simpleton!’ remarked Zamorna.

‘No,’ said Caroline, deprecating the scornful name with a look and smile; and shewed her transient alarm was evaporating. ‘No, don’t call me so.’

‘Pretty little simpleton. Will that do?’ said her guardian.

‘No, I’m not pretty.’

Zamorna made no reply – whereat, to confess the truth Miss Vernon was slightly disappointed, for of late she had begun to entertain some latent, embryo idea that his Grace did think her not quite ugly. What grounds she had for supposing so it would not be easy to say. It was an instinctive feeling, and one that gave her little, vain, female heart too much pleasure not to be encouraged and fostered as a secret prize. Will the reader be exceedingly shocked if I venture to conjecture that all the foregoing lamentations about her plainness were uttered with some half-defined intent of drawing forth a little word or two of cheering praise? Oh, human nature! human nature! And oh, inexperience! In what an obscure, dim, unconscious dream Miss Vernon was enveloped! How little she knew of herself!

However, time is advancing and the hours – those ‘wild-eyed charioteers’, as Shelley calls them – are driving on. She will gather knowledge by degrees. She is one of the gleaners of grapes in that vineyard where all man- and woman-kind have been plucking fruit since the world began, the vineyard of experience. At present, though, she rather seems to be a kind of Ruth in a corn-field. Nor does there want a Boaz to complete the picture, who also is well disposed to scatter handfuls⁹⁸ for the damsel’s special benefit. In other words, she has a mentor who, not satisfied with instilling into her mind the precepts of wisdom by words, will, if not prevented by others, do his best to enforce his verbal admonitions by practical illustrations that will dissipate the mists on her vision at once and shew her, in light both broad and burning,⁹⁹ the mysteries of humanity now hidden, its passions and sins and sufferings, all its passages of strange error and all its after-scenes of agonized atonement. A skilful preceptor is that same; one accustomed to tuition. Caroline has grown up under his care a fine and accomplished girl, unspoilt by flattery, unused to compliment, unhackneyed in trite fashionable conventionalities, fresh, naïve and romantic, really romantic, throwing her heart and soul into her dreams, longing only for an opportunity to do what she feels she could do, to die for somebody she loves – that is, not actually to become a subject for the undertaker, but to give up heart, soul, sensations to one adored hero, to lose independent existence in the perfect adoption of her lover’s being. This is all very fine, isn’t it, reader? Almost as good as the notion of Mr Rinaldo Aurelius! Caroline has yet to discover that she is as clay in the hands of the potter, that the process of moulding is even now advancing, and that erelong she will be turned off the wheel a perfect polished vessel of grace.¹⁰⁰

Mr Percy Senr had been a good while up-stairs, and Lady Louisa had talked him nearly deaf, so at last he thought he would go down into the drawing-room by way of change and ask his daughter to give him a tune on the piano. That same drawing-room was a nice little place with a clean bright fire, no candles, and the furniture shining in a quiet glow. But however, as there was nobody there, Mr Percy regarded the vacant sofa, the empty easy chair, and the mute instrument with an air of gentle discontent. He would never have thought of ringing and asking after the missing indvidual; but however, as a footman happened to come in with four wax candles, he did just inquire where Miss Vernon was. The footman said,

‘He really didn’t know, but he thought she was most likely gone to bed, as he had heard her saying to Mademoiselle Touquet that she was tired of packing.’

Mr Percy stood a little while in the room. Erelong he strayed into the passage, laid his hand on a hat, and wandered placidly into the garden. Mr Percy was very poetical in his youth.¹⁰¹ Consequently, he must have been very much smitten with the stillness of the summer night, the fine, dark, unclouded blue of the sky, and the glitter of the pin-point stars that swarmed over it like mites. All this must have softened his spirit; not to mention anything of a full moon, which was up a good way in the element just opposite, and gazed down on him as he stood on the front door steps just as if she mistook him for Endymion.¹⁰²

Mr Percy, however, would have nothing to say to her. He pulled the brim of his hat a trifle lower down on his forehead, and held the noiseless tenor of his way¹⁰³ amongst the shades and flowers of the garden. He was just entering the terrace-walk when he heard somebody speak. The voice came from a dim nook where the trees were woven into a bower and a seat was placed at their roots.

‘Come, it is time for you to go in,’ were the words. ‘I must bid you good-bye.’

‘But won’t you go in, too?’ said another voice, pitched in rather a different key to that of the first speaker.

‘No, I must go home.’

‘But you’ll come again in the morning before we set off?’

‘No.’

‘Won’t you?’

‘I cannot.’

There was silence. A little repressed sound was heard, like a sob.

‘What is the matter, Caroline? Are you crying?’

‘Oh, I am so sorry to leave you! I knew, when Papa told me I was to go, I should be grieved to bid you good-bye. I’ve been thinking about it all day. I can’t help crying.’

The sound of weeping filled up another pause.

‘I love you so much,’ said the mourner. ‘You don’t know what I think about you, or how much I’ve always wanted to please you, or how I’ve cried by myself whenever you’ve seemed angry with me, or what I’d give to be your little Caroline and to go with you through the world. I almost wish I’d never grown a woman, for when I was a little girl you cared for me far more than you do now. You’re always grave now.’

‘Hush, and come here to me,’ was the reply, breathed in a deep, tender tone. ‘There, sit down as you did when you were a little girl. Why do you draw back?’

‘I don’t know. I didn’t mean to draw back.’

‘But you always do, Caroline, now, when I come near you, and you turn away your face from me if I kiss you – which I seldom do, because you are too old to be kissed and fondled like a child.’

Another pause succeeded, during which it seemed that Miss Vernon had had to struggle with some impulses of shame. For her guardian said, when he resumed the conversation,

‘Nay, now, there is no need to distress yourself and blush so deeply; and I shall not let you leave me at present. So sit still.’

‘You are so stern,’ murmured Caroline. Her stifled sobs were heard again.

‘Stern, am I? I could be less so, Caroline, if circumstances were somewhat different. I would leave you little to complain of on that score.’

‘What would you do?’ asked Miss Vernon.

‘God knows.’

Caroline cried again, for unintelligible language is very alarming.

‘You must go in, child,’ said Zamorna. ‘There will be a stir if you stay here much longer. Come, a last kiss.’

‘Oh, my lord!’ exclaimed Miss Vernon, and she stopped short, as if she had uttered that cry to detain him and could say no more. Her grief was convulsive.

‘What, Caroline?’ said Zamorna, stooping his ear to her lips.

‘Don’t leave me so! My heart feels as if it would break.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know.’

Long was the paroxysm of Caroline’s sore distress. She could not speak. She could only tremble and sob wildly. Her mother’s excitable temperament was roused within her. Zamorna held her fast in his arms, and sometimes he pressed her more closely, but for a while he was as silent as she was.

‘My little darling,’ he said, softening his austere tone at last, ‘take comfort. You will see or hear from me again soon. I rather think neither mountains nor woods nor seas will form an impassable barrier between you and me; no, nor human vigilance, either. The step of separation was delayed till too late. They should have parted us a year or two ago, Caroline, if they had meant the parting to be a lasting one. Now leave me. Go in.’

With one final kiss, he dismissed her from his arms. She went. The shrubs soon hid her. The opening and closing of the front door announced that she had gained the house.

Mr Wellesley was left by himself on the terrace-walk. He took a cigar out of his pocket, lighted it by the aid of a Lucifer-match, popped it into his mouth and, having reared himself up against the trunk of a large beech, looked as comfortable and settled as possible. At this juncture, he was surprised by hearing a voice at his elbow gently inquiring whether his mother knew he was out?¹⁰⁴ He had barely to turn his head to get a view of the speaker, who stood close to his side, a tall man with a pale aspect and a particular expression in his eyes, which shewed a good deal of their whites and were turned laterally on to Mr Wellesley.