The Easter recess was over. Society had returned from its brief holiday—its glimpse of budding hedges and primrose-dotted banks, blue skies and blue violets, the snowy bloom of orchards, the tender green of young cornfields. Society had come back again, and was hard at the London treadmill—yawning at old operas, and damning new plays—sniggering at crowded soirÉes—laying down the law, each man his particular branch thereof, at carefully planned dinner parties—quarrelling and making friends again—eating and drinking—spending and wasting, and pretending to care very little about anything; for society is as salt that has lost its savour if it is not cynical and affected.

But there was one dÉbutante at least that season for whom town pleasures had lost none of their freshness, for whom the old operas were all melody, and the new plays all wit—who admired everything with frankest wonder and enthusiasm, and without a thought of Horace, or Pope, or Creech, or anybody, except the lover who was always at her side, and who shed the rose-coloured light of happiness upon the commonest things. To sit in the Green Park on a mild April morning, to see the guard turn out by St. James's Palace after breakfast, to loiter away an hour or two at a picture gallery—was to be infinitely happy. Neither opera nor play, dinner nor dance, race-course nor flower-show, was needed to complete the sum of Christabel's bliss when Angus Hamleigh was with her.

He had returned from HyÈres, quietest among the southern towns, wonderfully improved in health and strength. Even Mrs. Tregonell and Miss Bridgeman perceived the change in him.

"I think you must have been very ill when you came to Mount Royal, Mr. Hamleigh," said Jessie, one day. "You look so much better now."

"My life was empty then—it is full now," he answered. "It is hope that keeps a man alive, and I had very little to hope for when I went westward. How strange the road of life is, and how little a man knows what is waiting for him round the corner."

The house in Bolton Row was charming; just large enough to be convenient, just small enough to be snug. At the back, the windows looked into Lord Somebody's garden—not quite a tropical paradise—nay, even somewhat flavoured with bricks and mortar—but still a garden, where, by sedulous art, the gardeners kept alive ferns and flowers, and where trees, warranted to resist smoke, put forth young leaves in the springtime, and only languished and sickened in untimely decay when the London season was over, and their function as fashionable trees had been fulfilled.

The house was furnished in a Georgian style, pleasant to modern taste. The drawing-room was of the spindle-legged order—satin-wood card tables; groups of miniatures in oval frames; Japanese folding screen, behind which Belinda might have played Bo-peep; china jars, at whose fall Narcissa might have inly suffered, while outwardly serene. The dining-room was sombre and substantial. The bedrooms had been improved by modern upholstery; for the sleeping apartments of our ancestors leave a good deal to be desired. All the windows were full of flowers—inside and out there was the perfume and colour of many blossoms. The three drawing-rooms, growing smaller to a diminishing point, like a practical lesson in perspective, were altogether charming.

Major Bree had escorted the ladies to London, and was their constant guest, camping out in a bachelor lodging in Jermyn Street, and coming across Piccadilly every day to eat his luncheon in Bolton Row, and to discuss the evening's engagements.

Long as he had been away from London, he acclimatized himself very quickly—found out everything about everybody—what singers were best worth hearing—what plays best worth seeing—what actors should be praised—which pictures should be looked at and talked about—what horses were likely to win the notable races. He was a walking guide, a living hand-book to fashionable London.

All Mrs. Tregonell's old friends—all the Cornish people who came to London—called in Bolton Row; and at every house where the lady and her niece visited there were new introductions, whereby the widow's visiting list widened like a circle in the water—and cards for dances and evening parties, afternoons and dinners were super-abundant. Christabel wanted to see everything. She had quite a country girl's taste, and cared much more for the theatre and the opera than to be dressed in a new gown, and to be crushed in a crowd of other young women in new gowns—or to sit still and be admired at a stately dinner. Nor was she particularly interested in the leaders of fashion, their ways and manners—the newest professed or professional beauty—the last social scandal. She wanted to see the great city of which she had read in history—the Tower, the Savoy, Westminster Hall, the Abbey, St. Paul's, the Temple—the London of Elizabeth, the still older London of the Edwards and Henries, the house in which Milton was born, the organ on which he played, the place where Shakespeare's Theatre once stood, the old Inn whence Chaucer's Pilgrims started on their journey. Even Dickens's London—the London of Pickwick and Winkle—the Saracen's Head at which Mr. Squeers put up—had charms for her.

"Is everything gone?" she asked, piteously, after being told how improvement had effaced the brick and mortar background of English History.

Yet there still remained enough to fill her mind with solemn thoughts of the past. She spent long hours in the Abbey, with Angus and Jessie, looking at the monuments, and recalling the lives and deeds of long vanished heroes and statesmen. The Tower, and the old Inns of Court, were full of interest. Her curiosity about old houses and streets was insatiable.

"No one less than Macaulay could satisfy you," said Angus, one day, when his memory was at fault. "A man of infinite reading, and infallible memory."

"But you have read so much, and you remember a great deal."

They had been prowling about the Whitehall end of the town in the bright early morning, before Fashion had begun to stir herself faintly among her down pillows. Christabel loved the parks and streets while the freshness of sunrise was still upon them—and these early walks were an institution.

"Where is the Decoy?" she asked Angus, one day, in St. James's Park; and on being interrogated, it appeared that she meant a certain piece of water, described in "Peveril of the Peak." All this part of London was peopled with Scott's heroes and heroines, or with suggestions of Goldsmith. Here Fenella danced before good-natured, loose-living Rowley. Here Nigel stood aside, amidst the crowd, to see Charles, Prince of Wales, and his ill-fated favourite, Buckingham, go by. Here the Citizen of the World met Beau Tibbs and the gentleman in black. For Christabel, the Park was like a scene in a stage play.

Then, after breakfast, there were long drives into fair suburban haunts, where they escaped in some degree from London smoke and London restraints of all kinds, where they could charter a boat, and row up the river to a still fairer scene, and picnic in some rushy creek, out of ken of society, and be almost as recklessly gay as if they had been at Tintagel.

These were the days Angus loved best. The days upon which he and his betrothed turned their backs upon London society, and seemed as far away from the outside world as ever they had been upon the wild western coast. Like most men educated at Eton and Oxford, and brought up in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, Angus loved the Thames with a love that was almost a passion.

"It is my native country," he said; "I have no other. All the pleasantest associations of my boyhood and youth are interwoven with the river. When I die, my spirit ought to haunt these shores, like that ghost of the 'Scholar Gipsy,' which you have read about in Arnold's poem."

He knew every bend and reach of the river—every tributary, creek, and eyot—almost every row of pollard willows, standing stunted and grim along the bank, like a line of rugged old men. He knew where the lilies grew, and where there were chances of trout. The haunts of monster pike were familiar to him—indeed, he declared that he knew many of these gentlemen personally—that they were as old as the Fontainebleau carp, and bore a charmed life.

"When I was at Eton I knew them all by sight," he said. "There was one which I set my heart upon landing, but he was ever so much stronger and cleverer than I. If I had caught him I should have worn his skin ever after, in the pride of my heart—like Hercules with his lion. But he still inhabits the same creek, still sulks among the same rushes, and devours the gentler members of the finny race by shoals. We christened him Dr. Parr, for we knew he was preternaturally old, and we thought he must, from mere force of association, be a profound scholar."

Mr. Hamleigh was always finding reasons for these country excursions, which he declared were the one sovereign antidote for the poisoned atmosphere of crowded rooms, and the evil effects of late hours.

"You wouldn't like to see Christabel fade and languish like the flowers in your drawing-room," he urged, when Mrs. Tregonell wanted her niece to make a round of London visits, instead of going down to Maidenhead on the coach, to lunch somewhere up the river. Not at Skindle's—or at any other hotel—but in the lazy sultry quiet of some sequestered nook below the hanging woods of Clieveden. "I'm sure you can spare her just for to-day—such a perfect spring day. It would be a crime to waste such sunlight and such balmy air in town drawing-rooms. Could not you strain a point, dear Mrs. Tregonell, and come with us?"

Aunt Diana shook her head. No, the fatigue would be too much—she had lived such a quiet life at Mount Royal, that a very little exertion tired her. Besides she had some calls to make; and then there was a dinner at Lady Bulteel's, to which she must take Christabel, and an evening party afterwards.

Christabel shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

"I am beginning to hate parties," she said. "They are amusing enough when one is in them—but they are all alike—and it would be so much nicer for us to live our own lives, and go wherever Angus likes. Don't you think you might defer the calls, and come with us to-day, Auntie dear?"

Auntie dear shook her head.

"Even if I were equal to the fatigue, Belle, I couldn't defer my visits. Thursday is Lady Onslow's day—and Mrs. Trevannion's day—and Mrs. Vansittart's day—and when people have been so wonderfully kind to us, it would be uncivil not to call."

"And you will sit in stifling drawing-rooms, with the curtains lowered to shut out the sunlight—and you will drink ever so much more tea than is good for you—and hear a lot of people prosing about the same things over and over again—Epsom and the Opera—and Mrs. This and Miss That—and Mrs. Somebody's new book, which everybody reads and talks about, just as if there were not another book in the world, or as if the old book counted for nothing," concluded Christabel, contemptuously, having by this time discovered the conventional quality of kettle-drum conversations, wherein people discourse authoritatively about books they have not read, plays they have not seen, and people they do not know.

Mr. Hamleigh had his own way, and carried off Christabel and Miss Bridgeman to the White Horse Cellar, with the faithful Major in attendance.

"You will bring Belle home in time to dress for Lady Bulteel's dinner," said Mrs. Tregonell, impressively, as they were departing. "Mind, Major, I hold you responsible for her return. You are the only sober person in the party. I believe Jessie Bridgeman is as wild as a hawk, when she gets out of my sight."

Jessie's shrewd grey eyes twinkled at the reproof.

"I am not very sorry to get away from Bolton Row, and the fine ladies who come to see you—and who always look at me as much as to say, 'Who is she?—what is she?—how did she come here?'—and who are obviously surprised if I say anything intelligent—first, at my audacity in speaking before company, and next that such a thing as I should have any brains."

"Nonsense, Jessie, how thin-skinned you are; everybody praises you," said Mrs. Tregonell, while they all waited on the threshold for Christabel to fasten her eight-button gloves—a delicate operation, in which she was assisted by Mr. Hamleigh.

"How clever you are at buttoning gloves," exclaimed Christabel; "one would think you had served an apprenticeship."

"That's not the first pair he has buttoned, I'll wager," cried the Major, in his loud, hearty voice; and then, seeing Angus redden ever so slightly, and remembering certain rumours which he had heard at his club, the kindly bachelor regretted his speech.

Happily, Christabel was engaged at this moment in kissing her aunt, and did not observe Mr. Hamleigh's heightened colour. Ten minutes later they were all seated outside the coach, bowling down Piccadilly Hill on their way westward.

"In the good old days this is how you would have started for Cornwall," said Angus.

"I wish we were going to Cornwall now."

"So do I, if your aunt would let us be married at that dear little church in the glen. Christabel, when I die, if you have the ordering of my funeral, be sure that I am buried in Minster Churchyard."

"Angus, don't," murmured Christabel, piteously.

"Dearest, 'we must all die—'tis an inevitable chance—the first Statute in Magna Charta—it is an everlasting Act of Parliament'—that's what he says of death, dear, who jested at all things, and laid his cap and bells down one day in a lodging in Bond Street—the end of which we passed just now—sad and lonely, and perhaps longing for the kindred whom he had forsaken."

"You mean Sterne," said Christabel. "Jessie and I hunted for that house, yesterday. I think we all feel sorrier for him than for many a better man."

In the early afternoon they had reached their destination—a lovely creek shaded by chestnut and alder—a spot known to few, and rarely visited. Here, under green leaves, they moored their boat, and lunched on the contents of a basket which had been got ready for them at Skindle's—dawdling over the meal—taking their ease—full of talk and laughter. Never had Angus looked better, or talked more gaily. Jessie, too, was at her brightest, and had a great deal to say.

"It is wonderful how well you two get on," said Christabel, smiling at her friend's prompt capping of some bitter little speech from Angus. "You always seem to understand each other so quickly—indeed, Jessie seems to know what Angus is going to say before the words are spoken. I can see it in her face."

"Perhaps, that is because we are both cynics," said Mr. Hamleigh.

"Yes, that is no doubt the reason," said Jessie, reddening a little; "the bond of sympathy between us is founded on our very poor opinion of our fellow-creatures."

But after this Miss Bridgeman became more silent, and gave way much less than usual to those sudden impulses of sharp speech which Christabel had noticed.

They landed presently, and went wandering away into the inland—a strange world to Christabel, albeit very familiar to her lover.

"Not far from here there is a dell which is the most wonderful place in the world for bluebells," said Angus, looking at his watch. "I wonder whether we should have time to walk there."

"Let us try, if it is not very, very far," urged Christabel. "I adore bluebells, and skylarks, and the cuckoo, and all the dear country flowers and birds. I have been surfeited with hot-house flowers and caged canaries since I came to London."

A skylark was singing in the deep blue, far aloft, over the little wood in which they were wandering. It was the loneliest, loveliest spot; and Christabel felt as if it would be agony to leave it. She and her lover seemed ever so much nearer, dearer, more entirely united here than in London drawing-rooms, where she hardly dared to be civil to him lest society should be amused or contemptuous. Here she could cling to his arm—it seemed a strong and helpful arm now—and look up at his face with love irradiating her own countenance, and feel no more ashamed than Eve in the Garden. Here they could talk without fear of being heard; for Jessie and the Major followed at a most respectful distance—just keeping the lovers in view, and no more.

Christabel ran back presently to say they were going to look for bluebells.

"You'll come, won't you?" she pleaded; "Angus says the dell is not far off."

"I don't believe a bit in his topography," said the Major; "do you happen to know that it is three o'clock, and that you are due at a State dinner?"

"At eight," cried Christabel, "ages away. Angus says the train goes at six. We are to have some tea at Skindle's, at five. We have two hours in which to do what we like."

"There is the row back to Skindle's."

"Say half an hour for that, which gives us ninety minutes for the bluebells."

"Do you count life by minutes, child?" asked the Major.

"Yes, Uncle Oliver, when I am utterly happy; for then every minute is precious."

And then she and her lover went rambling on, talking, laughing, poetising under the flickering shadows and glancing lights; while the other two followed at a leisurely pace, like the dull foot of reality following the winged heel of romance. Jessie Bridgeman was only twenty-seven, yet in her own mind it seemed as if she were the Major's contemporary—nay, indeed, his senior; for he had never known that grinding poverty which ages the eldest daughter in a large shabby genteel family. Jessie Bridgeman had been old in care before she left off pinafores. Her childish pleasure in the shabbiest of dolls had been poisoned by a precocious familiarity with poor-rates, and water-rates—a sickening dread of the shabby man in pepper-and-salt tweed, with the end of an oblong account-book protruding from his breast-pocket, who came to collect money that was never ready for him, and departed, leaving a printed notice, like the trail of the serpent, behind him. The first twenty years of Jessie Bridgeman's life had been steeped in poverty, every day, every hour flavoured with the bitter taste of deprivation and the world's contempt, the want of common comforts, the natural longing for fairer surroundings, the ever-present dread of a still lower deep in which pinching should become starvation, and even the shabby home should be no longer tenable. With a father whose mission upon this earth was to docket and file a certain class of accounts in Somerset House, for a salary of a hundred-and-eighty pounds a year, and a bi-annual rise of five, a harmless man, whose only crime was to have married young and made himself responsible for an unanticipated family—"How could a young fellow of two-and-twenty know that God was going to afflict him with ten children?" Mr. Bridgeman used to observe plaintively—with a mother whose life was one long domestic drudgery, who spent more of her days in a back kitchen than is consistent with the maintenance of personal dignity, and whose only chance of an airing was that stern necessity which impelled her to go and interview the tax-gatherer, in the hope of obtaining "time"—Jessie's opportunities of tasting the pleasures of youth had been of the rarest. Once in six months or so, perhaps, a shabby-genteel friend gave her father an order for some theatre, which was in that palpable stage of ruin when orders are freely given to the tavern loafer and the stage-door hanger-on—and then, oh, what rapture to trudge from Shepherd's Bush to the West End, and to spend a long hot evening in the gassy paradise of the Upper Boxes! Once in a year or so Mr. Bridgeman gave his wife and eldest girl a dinner at an Italian Restaurant near Leicester Square—a cheap little pinchy dinner, in which the meagre modicum of meat and poultry was eked out by much sauce, redolent of garlic, by delicious foreign bread, and too-odorous foreign cheese. It was a tradition in the family that Mr. Bridgeman had been a great dinner-giver in his bachelor days, and knew every restaurant in London.

"They don't forget me here, you see," he said, when the sleek Italian waiter brought him extra knives and forks for the dual portion which was to serve for three.

Such had been the utmost limit of Jessie's pleasures before she answered an advertisement in the Times, which stated that a lady, living in a retired part of Cornwall, required the services of a young lady who could write a good hand, keep accounts, and had some knowledge of housekeeping—who was willing, active, cheerful, and good-tempered. Salary, thirty pounds per annum.

It was not the first advertisement by many that Jessie had answered. Indeed, she seemed, to her own mind, to have been doing nothing but answering advertisements, and hoping against hope for a favourable reply, since her eighteenth birthday, when it had been borne in upon her, as the Evangelicals say, that she ought to go out into the world, and do something for her living, making one mouth less to be filled from the family bread-pan.

"There's no use talking, mother," she said, when Mrs. Bridgeman tried to prove that the bright useful eldest daughter cost nothing; "I eat, and food costs money. I have a dreadfully healthy appetite, and if I could get a decent situation I should cost you nothing, and should be able to send you half my salary. And now that Milly is getting a big girl——"

"She hasn't an idea of making herself useful," sighed the mother; "only yesterday she let the milkman ring three times and then march away without leaving us a drop of milk, because she was too proud or too lazy to open the door, while Sarah and I were up to our eyes in the wash."

"Perhaps she didn't hear him," suggested Jessie, charitably.

"She must have heard his pails if she didn't hear him," said Mrs. Bridgeman; "besides he 'yooped,' for I heard him, and relied upon that idle child for taking in the milk. But put not your trust in princes," concluded the overworked matron, rather vaguely.

"Salary, thirty pounds per annum," repeated Jessie, reading the Cornish lady's advertisement over and over again, as if it had been a charm; "why that would be a perfect fortune; think what you could do with an extra fifteen pounds a year!"

"My dear, it would make my life heaven. But you would want all the money for your dress: you would have to be always nice. There would be dinner parties, no doubt, and you would be asked to come into the drawing-room of an evening," said Mrs. Bridgeman, whose ideas of the governess's social status were derived solely from "Jane Eyre."

Jessie's reply to the advertisement was straight-forward and succinct, and she wrote a fine bold hand. These two facts favourably impressed Mrs. Tregonell, and of the three or four dozen answers which her advertisement brought forth, Jessie's pleased her the most. The young lady's references to her father's landlord and the incumbent of the nearest church, were satisfactory. So one bleak wintry morning Miss Bridgeman left Paddington in one of the Great Western's almost luxurious third-class carriages, and travelled straight to Launceston, whence a carriage—the very first private carriage she had ever sat in, and every detail of which was a wonder and a delight to her—conveyed her to Mount Royal.

That fine old Tudor manor-house, after the shabby ten-roomed villa at Shepherd's Bush—badly built, badly drained, badly situated, badly furnished, always smelling of yesterday's dinner, always damp and oozy with yesterday's rain—was almost too beautiful to be real. For days after her arrival Jessie felt as if she must be walking about in a dream. The elegancies and luxuries of life were all new to her. The perfect quiet and order of this country home; the beauty in every detail—from the old silver urn and Worcester china which greeted her eyes on the breakfast-table, to the quaint little Queen Anne candlestick which she carried up to her bedroom at night—seemed like a revelation of a hitherto unknown world. The face of Nature—the hills and the moors—the sea and the cliffs—was as new to her as all that indoor luxury. An occasional week at Ramsgate or South-end had been all her previous experience of this world's loveliness. Happily, she was not a shy or awkward young person. She accommodated herself with wonderful ease to her altered surroundings—was not tempted to drink out of a finger-glass, and did not waver for a moment as to the proper use of her fish-knife and fork—took no wine—and ate moderately of that luxurious and plentiful fare which was as new and wonderful to her as if she had been transported from the barren larder of Shepherd's Bush to that fabulous land where the roasted piglings ran about with knives and forks in their backs, squeaking, in pig language, "Come, eat me; come, eat me."

Often in this paradise of pasties and clotted cream, mountain mutton and barn-door fowls, she thought with a bitter pang of the hungry circle at home, with whom dinner was the exception rather than the rule, and who made believe to think tea and bloaters an ever so much cosier meal than a formal repast of roast and boiled.

On the very day she drew her first quarter's salary—not for worlds would she have anticipated it by an hour—Jessie ran off to a farm she knew of, and ordered a monster hamper to be sent to Rosslyn Villa, Shepherd's Bush—a hamper full of chickens, and goose, and cream, and butter, with a big saffron-flavoured cake for its crowning glory—such a cake as would delight the younger members of the household!

Nor did she forget her promise to send the over-tasked house-mother half her earnings. "You needn't mind taking the money, dearest," she wrote in the letter which enclosed the Post-Office order. "Mrs. Tregonell has given me a lovely grey silk gown; and I have bought a brown merino at Launceston, and a new hat and jacket. You would stare to see how splendidly your homely little Jessie is dressed! Christabel found out the date of my birthday, and gave me a dozen of the loveliest gloves, my favourite grey, with four buttons. A whole dozen! Did you ever see a dozen of gloves all at once, mother? You have no idea how lovely they look. I quite shrink from breaking into the packet; but I must wear a pair at church next Sunday, in compliment to the dear little giver. If it were not for thoughts of you and the brood, dearest, I should be intensely happy here! The house is an ideal house—the people are ideal people; and they treat me ever so much better than I deserve. I think I have the knack of being useful to them, which is a great comfort; and I am able to get on with the servants—old servants who had a great deal too much of their own way before I came—which is also a comfort. It is not easy to introduce reform without making oneself detested. Christabel, who has been steeping herself in French history lately, calls me Turgot in petticoats—by which you will see she has a high opinion of my ministerial talents—if you can remember Turgot, poor dear! amidst all your worries," added Jessie, bethinking herself that her mother's book-learning had gone to seed in an atmosphere of petty domestic cares—mending—washing—pinching—contriving.

This and much more had Jessie Bridgeman written seven years ago, while Mount Royal was still new to her. The place and the people—at least those two whom she first knew there—had grown dearer as time went on. When Leonard came home from the University, he and his mother's factotum did not get on quite so well as Mrs. Tregonell had hoped. Jessie was ready to be kind and obliging to the heir of the house; but Leonard did not like her—in the language of the servant's hall, he "put his back up at her." He looked upon her as an interloper and a spy, especially suspecting her in the latter capacity, perhaps from a lurking consciousness that some of his actions would not bear the fierce light of unfriendly observation. In vain did his mother plead for her favourite.

"You have no idea how good she is!" said Mrs. Tregonell.

"You're perfectly right there, mother; I have not," retorted Leonard.

"And so useful to me! I should be lost without her!"

"Of course; that's exactly what she wants: creeping and crawling—and pinching and saving—docking your tradesmen's accounts—grinding your servants—fingering your income—till, by-and-by, she will contrive to finger a good deal of it into her own pocket! That's the way they all begin—that's the way the man in the play, Sir Giles Overreach's man, began, you may be sure—till by-and-by he got Sir Giles under his thumb. And that's the way Miss Bridgeman will serve you. I wonder you are so shortsighted!"

Weak as Mrs. Tregonell was in her love for her son, she was too staunch to be set against a person she liked by any such assertions as these. She was quite able to form her own opinion about Miss Bridgeman's character, and she found the girl straight as an arrow—candid almost to insolence, yet pleasant withal; industrious, clever—sharp as a needle in all domestic details—able to manage pounds as carefully as she had managed pence and sixpences.

"Mother used to give me the housekeeping purse," she said, "and I did what I liked. I was always Chancellor of the Exchequer. It was a very small exchequer; but I learnt the habit of spending and managing, and keeping accounts."

While active and busy about domestic affairs, verifying accounts, settling supplies and expenditures with the cook-housekeeper, making herself a veritable clerk of the kitchen, and overlooking the housemaids in the finer details of their work, Miss Bridgeman still found ample leisure for the improvement of her mind. In a quiet country-house, where family prayers are read at eight o'clock every morning, the days are long enough for all things. Jessie had no active share in Christabel's education, which was Mrs. Tregonell's delight and care; but she contrived to learn what Christabel learnt—to study with her and read with her, and often to outrun her in the pursuit of a favourite subject. They learnt German together, they read good French books together, and were companions in the best sense of the word. It was a happy life—monotonous, uneventful, but a placid, busy, all-satisfying life, which Jessie Bridgeman led during those six years and a half which went before the advent of Angus Hamleigh at Mount Royal. The companion's salary had long ago been doubled, and Jessie, who had no caprices, and whose wants were modest, was able to send forty pounds a year to Shepherd's Bush, and found a rich reward in the increased cheerfulness of the letters from home.

Just so much for Jessie Bridgeman's history as she walks by Major Bree's side in the sunlight, with a sharply cut face, impressed with a gravity beyond her years, and marked with precocious lines that were drawn there by the iron hand of poverty before she had emerged from girlhood. Of late, even amidst the elegant luxuries of May Fair, in a life given over to amusement, among flowers and bright scenery, and music and pictures, those lines had been growing deeper—lines that hinted at a secret care.

"Isn't it delightful to see them together!" said the Major, looking after those happy lovers with a benevolent smile.

"Yes; I suppose it is very beautiful to see such perfect happiness, like Juan and HaidÉe before Lambro swooped down upon them," returned Miss Bridgeman, who was too outspoken to be ashamed of having read Byron's epic.

Major Bree had old-fashioned notions about the books women should and should not read, and Byron, except for elegant extracts, was in his Index expurgatorius. If a woman was allowed to read the "Giaour," she would inevitably read "Don Juan," he argued; there would be no restraining her, after she had tasted blood—no use in offering her another poet, and saying, Now you can read "Thalaba," or "Peter Bell."

"They were so happy!" said Jessie dreamily, "so young, and one so innocent; and then came fear, severance, despair, and death for the innocent sinner. It is a terrible story!"

"Fortunately, there is no tyrannical father in this case," replied the cheerful Major. "Everybody is pleased with the engagement—everything smiles upon the lovers."

"No, it is all sunshine," said Jessie; "there is no shadow, if—if Mr. Hamleigh is as worthy of his betrothed as we have all agreed to think him. Yet there was a time when you spoke rather disparagingly of him."

"My gossiping old tongue should be cut out for repeating club scandals! Hamleigh is a generous-hearted, noble-natured fellow, and I am not afraid to trust him with the fate of a girl whom I love almost as well as if she were my own daughter. I don't know whether all men love their daughters, by-the-by. There are daughters and daughters—I have seen some that it would be tough work to love. But for Christabel my affection is really parental. I have seen her bud and blossom, a beautiful living flower, a rose in the garden of life."

"And you think Mr. Hamleigh is worthy of her?" said Miss Bridgeman, looking at him searchingly with her shrewd grey eyes, "in spite of what you heard at the clubs?"

"A fico for what I heard at the clubs!" exclaimed the Major, blowing the slander away from the tips of his fingers as if it had been thistledown. "Every man has a past, and every man outlives it. The present and the future are what we have to consider. It is not a man's history, but the man himself, that concerns us; and I say that Angus Hamleigh is a good man, a right-meaning man, a brave and generous man. If a man is to be judged by his history, where would David be, I should like to know? and yet David was the chosen of the Lord!" added the Major, conclusively.

"I hope," said Jessie, earnestly, with vague visions of intrigue and murder conjured up in her mind, "that Mr. Hamleigh was never as bad as David."

"No, no," murmured the Major, "the circumstances of modern times are so different, don't you see?—an advanced civilization—a greater respect for human life. Napoleon the First did a good many queer things; but you would not get a monarch and a commander-in-chief to act as David and Joab acted now-a-days. Public opinion would be too strong for them. They would be afraid of the newspapers."

"Was it anything very dreadful that you heard at the clubs three years ago?" asked Jessie, still hovering about a forbidden theme, with a morbid curiosity strange in one whose acts and thoughts were for the most part ruled by common sense.

The Major, who would not allow a woman to read "Don Juan," had his own ideas of what ought and ought not to be told to a woman.

"My dear Miss Bridgeman," he said, "I would not for worlds pollute your ears with the ribald trash men talk in a club smoking-room. Let it suffice for you to know that I believe in Angus Hamleigh, although I have taken the trouble to make myself acquainted with the follies of his youth."

They walked on in silence for a little while after this, and then the Major said, in a voice full of kindness:

"I think you went to see your own people yesterday, did you not?"

"Yes; Mrs. Tregonell was kind enough to give me a morning, and I spent it with my mother and sisters."

The Major had questioned her more than once about her home, in a way which indicated so kindly an interest that it could not possibly be mistaken for idle curiosity. And she had told him, with perfect frankness, what manner of people her family were—in no wise hesitating to admit their narrow means, and the necessity that she should earn her own living.

"I hope you found them well and happy."

"I thought my mother looked thin and weary. The girls were wonderfully well—great hearty, overgrown creatures! I felt myself a wretched little shrimp among them. As for happiness—well, they are as happy as people can expect to be who are very poor!"

"Do you really think poverty is incompatible with happiness?" asked the Major, with a philosophical air; "I have had a particularly happy life, and I have never been rich."

"Ah, that makes all the difference!" exclaimed Jessie. "You have never been rich, but they have always been poor. You can't conceive what a gulf lies between those two positions. You have been obliged to deny yourself a great many of the mere idle luxuries of life, I dare say—hunters, the latest improvements in guns, valuable dogs, continental travelling; but you have had enough for all the needful things—for neatness, cleanliness, an orderly household; a well-kept flower-garden, everything spotless and bright about you; no slipshod maid-of-all-work printing her greasy thumb upon your dishes—nothing out at elbows. Your house is small, but of its kind it is perfection; and your garden—well, if I had such a garden in such a situation I would not envy Eve the Eden she lost."

"Is that really your opinion?" cried the enraptured soldier; "or are you saying this just to please me—to reconcile me to my jog-trot life, my modest surroundings?"

"I mean every word I say."

"Then it is in your power to make me richer in happiness than Rothschild or Baring. Dearest Miss Bridgeman, dearest Jessie, I think you must know how devotedly I love you! Till to-day I have not dared to speak, for my limited means would not have allowed me to maintain a wife as the woman I love ought to be maintained; but this morning's post brought me the news of the death of an old Admiral of the Blue, who was my father's first cousin. He was a bachelor like myself—left the Navy soon after the signing of Sir Henry Pottinger's treaty at Nankin in '42—never considered himself well enough off to marry, but lived in a lodging at Devonport, and hoarded and hoarded and hoarded for the mere abstract pleasure of accumulating his surplus income; and the result of his hoarding—combined with a little dodging of his investments in stocks and shares—is, that he leaves me a solid four hundred a year in Great Westerns. It is not much from some people's point of view, but, added to my existing income, it makes me very comfortable. I could afford to indulge all your simple wishes, my dearest! I could afford to help your family!"

He took her hand. She did not draw it away, but pressed his gently, with the grasp of friendship.

"Don't say one word more—you are too good—you are the best and kindest man I have ever known!" she said, "and I shall love and honour you all my life; but I shall never marry! I made up my mind about that, oh! ever so long ago. Indeed, I never expected to be asked, if the truth must be told."

"I understand," said the Major, terribly dashed. "I am too old. Don't suppose that I have not thought about that. I have. But I fancied the difficulty might be got over. You are so different from the common run of girls—so staid, so sensible, of such a contented disposition. But I was a fool to suppose that any girl of——"

"Seven-and-twenty," interrupted Jessie; "it is a long way up the hill of girlhood. I shall soon be going down on the other side."

"At any rate, you are more than twenty years my junior. I was a fool to forget that."

"Dear Major Bree," said Jessie, very earnestly, "believe me, it is not for that reason, I say No. If you were as young—as young as Mr. Hamleigh—the answer would be just the same. I shall never marry. There is no one, prince or peasant, whom I care to marry. You are much too good a man to be married for the sake of a happy home, for status in the world, kindly companionship—all of which you could give me. If I loved you as you ought to be loved I would answer proudly, Yes; but I honour you too much to give you half love."

"Perhaps you do not know with how little I could be satisfied," urged the Major, opposing what he imagined to be a romantic scruple with the shrewd common-sense of his fifty years' experience. "I want a friend, a companion, a helpmate, and I am sure you could be all those to me. If I could only make you happy!"

"You could not!" interrupted Jessie, with cruel decisiveness. "Pray, never speak of this again, dear Major Bree. Your friendship has been very pleasant to me; it has been one of the many charms of my life at Mount Royal. I would not lose it for the world. And we can always be friends, if you will only remember that I have made up my mind—irrevocably—never to marry."

"I must needs obey you," said the Major, deeply disappointed, but too unselfish to be angry. "I will not be importunate. Yet one word I must say. Your future—if you do not marry—what is that to be? Of course, so long as Mrs. Tregonell lives, your home will be at Mount Royal—but I fear that does not settle the question for long. My dear friend does not appear to me a long-lived woman. I have seen traces of premature decay. When Christabel is married, and Mrs. Tregonell is dead, where is your home to be?"

"Providence will find me one," answered Jessie, cheerfully. "Providence is wonderfully kind to plain little spinsters with a knack of making themselves useful. I have been doing my best to educate myself ever since I have been at Mount Royal. It is so easy to improve one's mind when there are no daily worries about the tax-gatherer and the milkman—and when I am called upon to seek a new home, I can go out as a governess—and drink the cup of life as it is mixed for governesses—as Charlotte BrontË says. Perhaps I shall write a novel, as she did, although I have not her genius."

"I would not be sure of that," said the Major. "I believe there is some kind of internal fire burning you up, although you are outwardly so quiet. I think it would have been your salvation to accept the jog-trot life and peaceful home I have offered you."

"Very likely," replied Jessie, with a shrug and a sigh. "But how many people reject salvation. They would rather be miserable in their own way than happy in anybody else's way."

The Major answered never a word. For him all the glory of the day had faded. He walked slowly on by Jessie's side, meditating upon her words—wondering why she had so resolutely refused him. There had been not the least wavering—she had not even seemed to be taken by surprise—her mind had been made up long ago—not him, nor any other man, would she wed.

"Some early disappointment, perhaps," mused the Major—"a curate at Shepherd's Bush—those young men have a great deal to answer for."

They came to the hyacinth dell—an earthly paradise to the two happy lovers, who were sitting on a mossy bank, in a sheet of azure bloom, which, seen from the distance, athwart young trees, looked like blue, bright water.

To the Major the hazel copse and the bluebells—the young oak plantation—and all the lovely details of mosses and flowering grasses, and starry anemones—were odious. He felt in a hurry to get back to his club, and steep himself in London pleasures. All the benevolence seemed to have been crushed out of him.

Christabel saw that her old friend was out of spirits, and contrived to be by his side on their way back to the boat, trying to cheer him with sweetest words and loveliest smiles.

"Have we tired you?" she asked. "The afternoon is very warm."

"Tired me! You forget how I ramble over the hills at home. No; I am just a trifle put out—but it is nothing. I had news of a death this morning—a death that makes me richer by four hundred a year. If it were not for respect for my dead cousin who so kindly made me his heir, I think I should go to-night to the most rowdy theatre in London, just to put myself in spirits."

"Which are the rowdy theatres, Uncle Oliver?"

"Well, perhaps I ought not to use such a word. The theatres are all good in their way—but there are theatres and theatres. I should choose one of those to which the young men go night after night to see the same piece—a burlesque, or an opera bouffe—plenty of smart jokes and pretty girls."

"Why have you not taken me to those theatres?"

"We have not come to them yet. You have seen Shakespeare and modern comedy—which is rather a weak material as compared with Sheridan—or even with Colman and Morton, whose plays were our staple entertainment when I was a boy. You have heard all the opera singers?"

"Yes, you have been very good. But I want to see 'Cupid and Psyche'—two of my partners last night talked to me of 'Cupid and Psyche,' and were astounded that I had not seen it. I felt quite ashamed of my ignorance. I asked one of my partners, who was particularly enthusiastic, to tell me all about the play—and he did—to the best of his ability, which was not great—and he said that a Miss Mayne—Stella Mayne—who plays Psyche, is simply adorable. She is the loveliest woman in London, he says—and was greatly surprised that she had not been pointed out to me in the Park. Now really, Uncle Oliver, this is very remiss in you—you who are so clever in showing me famous people when we are driving in the Park."

"My dear, we have not happened to see her—that is all," replied the Major, without any responsive smile at the bright young face smiling up at him.

"You have seen her, I suppose?"

"Yes, I saw her when I was last in London."

"Not this time?"

"Not this time."

"You most unenthusiastic person. But, I understand your motive. You have been waiting an opportunity to take Jessie and me to see this divine Psyche. Is she absolutely lovely?"

"Loveliness is a matter of opinion. She is generally accepted as a particularly pretty woman."

"When will you take me to see her?"

"I have no idea. You have so many engagements—your aunt is always making new ones. I can do nothing without her permission. Surely you like dancing better than sitting in a theatre?"

"No, I do not. Dancing is delightful enough—but to be in a theatre is to be in fairy-land. It is like going into a new world. I leave myself, and my own life, at the doors—and go to live and love and suffer and be glad with the people in the play. To see a powerful play—really well acted—such acting as we have seen—is to live a new life from end to end in a few hours. It is like getting the essence of a lifetime without any of the actual pain—for when the situation is too terrible, one can pinch oneself and say—it is only a dream—an acted dream."

"If you like powerful plays—plays that make you tremble and cry—you would not care twopence for 'Cupid and Psyche,'" said Major Bree. "It is something between a burlesque and a fairy comedy—a most frivolous kind of entertainment, I believe."

"I don't care how frivolous it is. I have set my heart upon seeing it. I don't want to be out of the fashion. If you won't get me a box at the—where is it?"

"The Kaleidoscope Theatre."

"At the Kaleidoscope! I shall ask Angus."

"Please don't. I—I shall be seriously offended if you do. Let me arrange the business with your aunt. If you really want to see the piece, I suppose you must see it—but not unless your aunt likes."

"Dear, dearest, kindest uncle Oliver!" cried Christabel, squeezing his arm. "From my childhood upwards you have always fostered my self-will by the blindest indulgence. I was afraid that, all at once, you were going to be unkind and thwart me."

Major Bree was thoughtful and silent for the rest of the afternoon, and although Jessie tried to be as sharp-spoken and vivacious as usual, the effort would have been obvious to any two people properly qualified to observe the actions and expressions of others. But Angus and Christabel, being completely absorbed in each other, saw nothing amiss in their companions.

The river and the landscape were divine—a river for gods—a wood for nymphs—altogether too lovely for mortals. Tea, served on a little round table in the hotel garden, was perfect.

"How much nicer than the dinner to-night," exclaimed Christabel. "I wish we were not going. And yet, it will be very pleasant, I daresay—a table decorated with the loveliest flowers—well-dressed women, clever men, all talking as if there was not a care in life—and perhaps we shall be next each other," added the happy girl, looking at Angus.

"What a comfort for me that I am out of it," said Jessie. "How nice to be an insignificant young woman whom nobody ever dreams of asking to dinner. A powdered old dowager did actually hint at my going to her musical evening the other day when she called in Bolton Row. 'Be sure you come early,' she said, gushingly, to Mrs. Tregonell and Christabel; and then, in quite another key, glancing at me, she added, and 'if Miss—er—er would like to hear my singers I should be—er—delighted,' no doubt mentally adding, 'I hope she won't have the impertinence to take me at my word.'"

"Jessie, you are the most evil-thinking person I ever knew," cried Christabel. "I'm sure Lady Millamont meant to be civil."

"Yes, but she did not mean me to go to her party," retorted Jessie.

The happy days—the society evenings—slipped by—dining—music—dancing. And now came the brief bright season of rustic entertainments—more dancing—more music—lawn-tennis—archery—water parties—every device by which the summer hours may chime in tune with pleasure. It was July—Christabel's birthday had come and gone, bringing a necklace of single diamonds and a basket of June roses from Angus, and the most perfect thing in Park hacks from Mrs. Tregonell—but Christabel's wedding-day—more fateful than any birthday except the first—had not yet been fixed—albeit Mr. Hamleigh pressed for a decision upon this vital point.

"It was to have been at Midsummer," he said, one day, when he had been discussing the question tÊte-À-tÊte with Mrs. Tregonell.

"Indeed, Angus, I never said that. I told you that Christabel would be twenty at Midsummer, and that I would not consent to the marriage until after then."

"Precisely, but surely that meant soon after? I thought we should be married early in July—in time to start for the Tyrol in golden weather."

"I never had any fixed date in my mind," answered Mrs. Tregonell, with a pained look. Struggle with herself as she might, this engagement of Christabel's was a disappointment and a grief to her. "I thought my son would have returned before now. I should not like the wedding to take place in his absence."

"And I should like him to be at the wedding," said Angus; "but I think it will be rather hard if we have to wait for the caprice of a traveller who, from what Belle tells me of his letters——"

"Has Belle shown you any of his letters?" asked Mrs. Tregonell, with a vexed look.

"No, I don't think he has written to her, has he?"

"No, of course not; his letters are always addressed to me. He is a wretched correspondent."

"I was going to say, that, from what Belle tells me, your son's movements appear most uncertain, and it really does not seem worth while to wait."

"When the wedding-day is fixed, I will send him a message by the Atlantic cable. We must have him at the wedding."

Mr. Hamleigh did not see the necessity; but he was too kind to say so. He pressed for a settlement as to the day—or week—or at least the month in which his marriage was to take place—and at last Mrs. Tregonell consented to the beginning of September. They were all agreed now that the fittest marriage temple for this particular bride and bridegroom was the little old church in the heart of the hills—the church in which Christabel had worshipped every Sunday, morning or afternoon, ever since she could remember. It was Christabel's own desire to kneel before that familiar altar on her wedding-day—in the solemn peacefulness of that loved hill-side, with friendly honest country faces round her—rather than in the midst of a fashionable crowd, attended by bridesmaids after Gainsborough, and page-boys after Vandyke, in an atmosphere heavy with the scent of Ess Bouquet.

Mr. Hamleigh had no near relations—and albeit a whole bevy of cousins and a herd of men from the clubs would have gladly attended to witness his excision from the ranks of gilded youth, and to bid him God-speed on his voyage to the domestic haven—their presence at the sacrifice would have given him no pleasure—while, on the other hand, there was one person resident in London whose presence would have caused him acute pain. Thus, each of the lovers pleading for the same favour, Mrs. Tregonell had foregone her idea of a London wedding, and had come to see that it would be very hard upon all the kindly inhabitants of Forrabury and Minster—Boscastle—Trevalga—Bossiney and Trevena—to deprive them of the pleasurable excitement to be derived from Christabel's wedding.

Early in September, in the golden light of that lovely time, they were to be quietly married in the dear old church, and then away to Tyrolean woods and hills—scenes which, for Christabel, seemed to be the chosen background of poetry, legend, and romance, rather than an actual country, provided with hotels, and accessible by tourists. Once having consented to the naming of an exact time, Mrs. Tregonell felt there could be no withdrawal of her word. She telegraphed to Leonard, who was somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, with a chosen friend, a couple of English servants and three or four Canadians,—and who, were he so minded, could be home in a month—and having despatched this message she felt the last wrench had been endured. Nothing that could ever come afterwards—save death itself—could give her sharper pain.

"Poor Leonard," she replied; "it will break his heart."

In the years that were gone she had so identified herself with her son's hopes and schemes, had so projected her thoughts into his future—seeing him in her waking dreams as he would be in the days to come, a model squire, possessed of all his father's old-fashioned virtues, with a great deal of modern cleverness superadded, a proud and happy husband, the father of a noble race—she had kept this vision of the future in her mind so long, had dwelt upon it so fondly, had coloured it so brightly, that to forego it now, to say to herself "This thing was but a dream which I dreamed, and it can never be realized," was like relinquishing a part of her own life. She was a deeply religious woman, and if called upon to bear physical pain—to suffer the agonies of a slow, incurable illness—she would have suffered with the patience of a Christian martyr, saying to herself, as brave Dr. Arnold said in the agony of his sudden fatal malady, "Whom He loveth He chasteneth,"—but she could not surrender the day-dream of her life without bitterest repining. In all her love of Christabel, in all her careful education and moral training of the niece to whom she had been as a mother, there had been this leaven of selfishness. She had been rearing a wife for her son—such a wife as would be a man's better angel—a guiding, restraining, elevating principle, so interwoven with his life that he should never know himself in leading-strings—an influence so gently exercised that he should never suspect that he was influenced.

"Leonard has a noble heart and a fine manly character," the mother had often told herself; "but he wants the association of a milder nature than his own. He is just the kind of man to be guided and governed by a good wife—a wife who would obey his lightest wish, and yet rule him always for good."

She had seen how, when Leonard had been disposed to act unkindly or illiberally by a tenant, Christabel had been able to persuade him to kindness or generosity—how, when he had set his face against going to church, being minded to devote Sunday morning to the agreeable duty of cleaning a favourite gun, or physicking a favourite spaniel, or greasing a cherished pair of fishing-boots, Christabel had taken him there—how she had softened and toned down his small social discourtesies, checked his tendency to strong language—and, as it were, expurgated, edited, and amended him.

And having seen and rejoiced in this state of things, it was very hard to be told that another had won the wife she had moulded, after her own fashion, to be the gladness and glory of her son's life; all the harder because it was her own shortsighted folly which had brought Angus Hamleigh to Mount Royal.

All through that gay London season—for Christabel a time of unclouded sadness—carking care had been at Mrs. Tregonell's heart. She tried to be just to the niece whom she dearly loved, and who had so tenderly and fully repaid her affection. Yet she could not help feeling as if Christabel's choice was a personal injury—nay, almost treachery and ingratitude. "She must have known that I meant her to be my son's wife," she said to herself; "yet she takes advantage of my poor boy's absence, and gives herself to the first comer."

"Surely September is soon enough," she said, pettishly, when Angus pleaded for an earlier date. "You will not have known Christabel for a year, even then. Some men love a girl for half a lifetime before they win her."

"But it was not my privilege to know Christabel at the beginning of my life," replied Angus. "I made the most of my opportunities by loving her the moment I saw her."

"It is impossible to be angry with you," sighed Mrs. Tregonell. "You are so like your father."

That was one of the worst hardships of the case. Mrs. Tregonell could not help liking the man who had thwarted the dearest desire of her heart. She could not help admiring him, and making comparisons between him and Leonard—not to the advantage of her son. Had not her first love been given to his father—the girl's romantic love, ever so much more fervid and intense than any later passion—the love that sees ideal perfection in a lover?