Nothing reconciles one to a place so much as finding one's self not wholly left out in the cold as regards acquaintances.

Beautiful scenery, except to some exceptional souls, does not take the place of all human companionship. The interchange of thought with one's own species is an especial necessity when the small home duties that usually fill up time at home, are taken from one.

Mrs. Dorriman, who paid great attention to all the details of household matters, and had a pleasant sense of ably fulfilling those duties, would have felt stranded had she been left at Lornbay without any one of her own age and standing to talk to and nothing to do. Even in the matter of caps it was a pleasure to find an appreciative listener, and Lady Lyons, a woman whose range of interest was limited to the fluctuations of her own health and the welfare of her son, could listen and give intelligent attention.

Mrs. Dorriman was fulfilling her brother's wish in remaining at the hotel. She was filled with great doubts as to the goodness of the food, and resisted all attempts to inveigle her into preferring disguised dishes. She had a horror of anything made up except when she knew who had the task in hand; and her occupation was gone now she had to accept the dinners as they were, and had nothing to do with the ordering of them. She would have infinitely preferred lodgings (which she had never had), and had visions of wholly ideal landladies, and great powers of interference.

Once her spirits became accustomed to the scenes around her, she would have felt dull missing her Inchbrae occupations, had it not been for Lady Lyons. Lady Lyons had seen a great deal more of the world than Mrs. Dorriman; but seeing the world does not always imply fuller understanding. It is quite possible to see a great deal and take in nothing. Lady Lyons was a woman who had arranged her ideas before she left the paternal nest, and, partly from ill-health, partly from a limited understanding, she was narrow-minded and prejudiced, and everything was measured by her own standard, and that was as small as it could be.

Her character acted fatally upon her son. She had been left a widow young (with a moderate fortune and this only son). People went into ecstacies over the way in which she gave up her life to her son, which meant that he never went to school. He was educated upon her lines—under her own eye. She was desperately afraid of the wickedness of the world, schools were full of iniquity, therefore he never went to school. Companions he had none. She was afraid of his knowing boys with school experiences. Paul Lyons was content, knowing nothing better. He grew up narrow, selfish, and consequential, his world bounded by his mother and himself, with no developed intelligence, no nobility of thought, no aims, no aspirations, thinking himself in all ways superior to other men, and interested in nothing outside his little molehill.

Then came one brief terrible experience.

Lady Lyons, worse than usual in health, was ordered to a watering-place in the South of France, and to winter in Nice.

She knew nothing of the world; and of course Paul, who had never stood upon his own feet anywhere, was equally ignorant. Before he had been many days in the little place he had been taken in hand by the worst possible class of men; and at Nice he got into every conceivable scrape, lost money all round at Monaco, was fleeced and put into all sorts of disgraceful positions by those who told him they would make a man of him; and found himself terribly in debt, ill, and threatened with all sorts of penalties before he had been six weeks in the place.

Lady Lyons, gently obtaining the air in a Bath-chair, which, with a strong misgiving about the means of locomotion, she encumbered herself with, dreamed on in blissful ignorance.

She had given her son "principles," she thought, and she imagined that to be enough.

Paul was forced to get money from her, but he told her very little; indeed, the poor lady always talked of Paul as having been robbed, and in talking of his adventures spoke as though he had been an unblemished knight who had been robbed because his principles were too good to allow him to win, and on these occasions, though the young man would colour, so much grace was left in him, he would make a grimace when she was not looking, expressive of her foolish innocence and belief in him.

This beginning once made, he went down-hill rapidly. Once a young man reared in ignorance of the world conceives sin to be a sign of manliness, his fate is sealed.

Before he was utterly ruined, however, he was pulled up short by a long and terrible fever he was very long of recovering from. Lady Lyons, who, though a feeble, narrow-minded mother, was an affectionate one—the strain of anxiety was too much for her, and his recovery was followed by her having a paralytic stroke.

When poor Lady Lyons recovered she was feebler than before, and her son learnt, almost for the first time, that her income was almost entirely derived from a pension (her husband, a K.C.B., and an Indian General, this was secured to her); and that when she died the little place in Cumberland, and a few thousand pounds, upon which he had already given heavy bonds, was all he had to look to.

It was too late to begin a profession; he knew too little to be able to pick up anything. There was but one course open to him, and this was to marry some one with money. He had a tall figure, and was good-looking, though he had a weak face, and he was convinced himself that when he saw some one that "fetched" him, and that he was inclined to throw the handkerchief to, it would be picked up with enthusiasm. There are some men who think in this way.

When Lady Lyons came to Lornbay, hoping to derive benefit from its balmy air, Paul Lyons of course came with her. His best trait was his affection for his mother, though he despised her ignorance of the world, and was openly indignant with her having kept him in leading-strings all his life, and not having given him "a chance with other fellows."

Lady Lyons used to argue feebly with him about this. "See, my dear Paul, how much nicer and better you are than other young men," she would say, with a sigh. "Schools teach boys so much wickedness," and Paul would shrug his shoulders, and say something ambiguous which puzzled her.

This was the young man whom fate and Mrs. Dorriman introduced to Grace and Margaret Rivers. Every day now there was some walk undertaken, or some little expedition made in which Paul Lyons joined.

Lady Lyons had that motherly feeling that Paul, being her son, was such a safe and pleasant companion for every one. She was quite amused that Mrs. Dorriman considered it necessary to act as chaperon. "It is only Paul," she would say, with a little laugh.

"But he is not 'only Paul' to us; he is a young man and no relation. I do not want to be ridiculous, but I have the responsibility, and I want to do what is right."

This little speech about the responsibility forged another link in the chain of events, though Mrs. Dorriman spoke in innocence of making any chain. It is not given to us always to know when we are making history.

"My dear Paul," said Lady Lyons, when the mother and son were yawning through the remains of an evening shortly afterwards, "I think I have made a discovery; those two girls, the Rivers girls, are either rich or going to be very rich. That is why poor dear Mrs. Dorriman makes such a fuss about them, and herds them about so."

"I made that discovery long ago, mother," and Paul laughed. "The difficulty in my mind is, are they going to be even, or is one going to be heiress, and the other have a poor competency."

"My dear Paul, you will have to be careful; how clever you are! I never thought of that." And this new idea made Lady Lyons hold her knitting so carelessly that she dropped some stitches, a fact (as usual) she never discovered till she had done a good bit, when she was intensely surprised to see a very large hole, and could not imagine how it got there.

"I don't know about being clever, mother, the girls make no secret of it to me."

"My dear Paul! is it as far on as that?" and Lady Lyons looked up at him from her sofa with a truly admiring maternal look.

"I don't know what you mean by as far as that," said Paul, inserting his first finger with immense difficulty between his tight masher collar and his much harassed throat; "but they talk in a way I cannot help understanding. Old Sandford is coining money and saving money, that means something like wealth to his heirs or heiresses."

"It does indeed," said Lady Lyons, with sparkling eyes. "Paul, it is so strange, but when you were quite a tiny baby your poor old nurse used always to say you were born to marry a rich lady. How often I laughed at her—and now it will come true. My dear boy!"

"I think you are going too far now, mother; I feel a long way behind you. I cannot find out anything about any definite promise. We do not know anything about Mr. Sandford."

"I know a great deal about him," said Lady Lyons, eagerly. "Mrs. Dorriman talks so much about him; not that perhaps she has really told me much," she added, with a sense of having held out false hopes; Mrs. Dorriman's confidences about her brother being, she now remembered, entirely about frivolous matters, his fondness of old-fashioned dishes, and so on, and his dislike to others.

"Of course, mother, I shall be careful not to lead either of the young ladies to fancy I am in earnest till I know something definite."

"Of course not, my dear," said Lady Lyons, absently. Then suddenly a look of intelligence came into her face. "Oh! my dear Paul, how stupid I am. I remember quite distinctly now, Mrs. Dorriman answered some remark I made about Margaret's looks, and said, 'I admire her very much, and I am sure my brother does, he never takes his eyes off her. He says she is the image of his wife, and like her in disposition; that is why he is so devoted to her.' I remember her words so well now; but I can easily talk about it again and get her to tell me something more."

"I think she told you enough," laughed her son, and he walked up to the window humming a tune, and his mother, after trying in vain to get him to talk to her, soon grew sleepy and went to bed.

Long after she left he paced the room; then he lit his candle and prepared to go to bed also. There was a smile upon his face, which lingered till he was fairly in bed. Then he murmured something to himself, "I am glad it is Margaret," he said, and turned round and went to sleep.

In the meantime the girls were happy, though Grace was a little restless. To go out walking, to meet two or three people, to eat and drink and sleep, was not enough for her; she wanted something more, she had a perfect craving for excitement. This was not the life she had dreamed of. But for Paul Lyons it would be worse, but between her and Paul had arisen a kind of perpetual give-and-take in words which satisfied her since it occupied all his time. Margaret was nowhere as regarded this, and Grace was happy in having the one cavalier within reach entirely at her service.

Indeed, Margaret, with the unnecessary frankness of a girl, piqued him by her open and undisguised sentiments of not only indifference, but dislike.

There is an instinct in unspoiled girlhood which is often an unerring guide. Margaret disliked Paul Lyons from the first; the ready change of tone, the slighting observations at every moment about Mrs. Dorriman's tastes, which Grace thought so natural and so witty, displeased her. She thought him worse than he was. His manner to his mother was so careless, and he so openly scoffed at her views, that she did not give him credit for the hours he spent beside her when she was ill, or for the affection he had for her. She thought him hateful. She had a high idea of what a man should be, and her limited experience had not been happy. One great relief was the fact that, save and except that one meeting on the steps of the hotel, Mr. Drayton remained invisible. Indeed when they met in this spasmodic and unpremeditated way he was waiting for a steamer to take him many miles in another direction, and had gone, determined, however, to return at the earliest possible opportunity.

After the conversation with his mother, Paul began to take much greater pains to recommend himself to Margaret. He was like most of us—attracted towards her by seeing her what he would wish to be. She had so much of what he lacked. She was quiet, reserved, singularly fearless on those rare occasions of asserting herself, and so openly disapproved when he said or did anything giving the lie to his professions, that he caught himself feeling ashamed of himself. Under the gaze of her pure and unclouded eyes he felt unworthy, and she awoke in him the desire for something better. He began to look back with disgust and weariness on the portions of his life when he had fancied he had seen life and lived; a better and truer manliness became visible to him.

She was much younger, but so much wiser, he thought; he, by degrees, fell from profound admiration into despair, and then rebounded from despair to hope as she was kind to him, and found himself hopelessly in love, before he well knew what he was about.

The sincerity of his love was proved by its real humility. What had he to offer this young brave who had talked so glibly about throwing his handkerchief? When his mother prattled to him of his perfections he felt bitterly humiliated. The serene grace of Margaret's manner, the limitless indifference as to his presence or his coming or going, was a terrible mortification to him, and he could go nowhere for consolation. His mother's sole idea of consolation he knew would be flattery, and he had learned to hate it.

Margaret's intense devotion to her sister was to him something beautiful and wonderful, though he could not at times resist enlightening her about her own superiority, only to regret it since his doing so made Margaret cold to him and angry with him.

"You make an idol of your sister," he said to her, one day; "you think her so beautiful. You are much more fair, and far, far more lovely."

"You should not say these things even to me," said Margaret, seriously, "though I know you cannot help trying to flatter me—it is your way of making conversation, I think."

"I wish you only knew how thoroughly in earnest I am," he said, passionately. "You cannot realize how much better I feel when with you; what a good influence you have over me. This is not flattery."

"It sounds very much like it," said Margaret, turning her grave young face towards him, and allowing a little smile to light up her eyes.

"Now you are laughing at me," he said, in a hurt tone. "How can I make you believe me?"

"Here comes your mother," said Margaret, much too unconscious of his meaning to be in the least embarrassed. "You have done your best to amuse me, and if you have failed it must be my own fault—not yours."

She turned lightly from him and he watched her with wrathful looks. Why did she always turn his speeches aside, and treat him as of no consequence? What was it that caused him so completely to fail with her? Why was it she was so different from other girls?

Grace, for instance, accepted his speeches (in which he was conscious of no meaning) as her due, with evident satisfaction. She believed everything he said to her, implicitly; and when, as sometimes happened, he showed something of his real strong devotion for Margaret to appear, she accepted it as if it were an indirect compliment to herself. Her vanity was of the open and undisguised order, and so completely enveloped her, that no sarcasm could wound, no snub hurt her; and he was often sarcastic, and often unintentionally snubbed her, and repented, till he saw that both were equally lost upon her.

What a delightful thing it must be to live encased in an armour of this kind; to be impervious to those friendly and unfriendly hits the world at large thinks good for poor humanity.

Grace had not much acquaintance with the world, but the few people she knew never could touch her, and Mr. Paul Lyons was sometimes astonished and sometimes amused to see how she sailed through her life, delighting in the idea that every one round shared her own supreme belief in her superiority.

How hard he tried to get Margaret to believe in him a little—forced to confess, time after time, that he had failed. She was always the same, sweet, cold, and utterly indifferent.

Lady Lyons' efforts to obtain information from Mrs. Dorriman were equally failures in another direction. What could she tell, being herself in utter ignorance of her brother's position?

A woman who had had any experience of the world must have seen through the mother's transparent efforts to know something tangible. Mrs. Dorriman did not, in the least, take it in. She talked placidly enough upon the various topics brought forward by her friend; but she was a perfectly truthful person; she could not invent, she had no imagination, and, therefore, she could neither suppose anything or suggest anything.

"It must be such a comfort, my dear Anne, to have a very rich brother to fall back upon," said Lady Lyons to her one day, watching her face a little eagerly as she spoke.

"I suppose so," said Mrs. Dorriman, dubiously, reflecting that, when she was in need of anything, it was always very hard to ask him for it.

"What an immense thing for those girls, unless, indeed, he were to marry."

Mrs. Dorriman looked up, much puzzled by her friend's tone.

"I suppose it is a good thing for them," she said, slowly. "I never think my brother will marry again; he did so love his wife—poor thing!"

"Very nice, very proper," said Lady Lyons, "and, for the girls' sake, let us hope this frame of mind may continue. I am sure, my dear Anne, for their sakes, you would throw your influence against such a step. At his time of life——"

"He is not an old man," said Mrs. Dorriman, very hastily, "and, as for influence—my dear, if my brother wished to marry any one I should probably hear nothing about it till he introduced his wife to me. When he makes up his mind he acts," said Mrs. Dorriman, thinking with a little shiver of her own marriage and other things.

"I am not sure that I think that quite nice in a man," and Lady Lyons unclasped a narrow bracelet that she wore, and clasped it with great care; anxious not to look too much interested, and longing to know more, all the same.

"My brother is not dependent upon women's society; he never has been. His own mother died young, and then he went away—I never was much to him."

"Poor man! But now, my dear Anne, you should humanize him a little. If once he grows accustomed to having you and the girls, he will miss you all, and he will miss the girls whenever they marry."

Mrs. Dorriman did not answer. Yes, he would miss Margaret—he was anxious to keep her.

Like all people with a motive, Lady Lyons was very much afraid of her motive being discovered; and she hesitated now, impelled by her great desire to be able to guide her son, and to find out, before it was too late, something definite about "those Rivers girls."

"The girls are I suppose so well off that his marrying or remaining unmarried can hardly affect them," she said, taking up her knitting again, and narrowly watching Mrs. Dorriman's placid face.

"Oh dear no!" said that poor little lady, taken by surprise, "my brother has helped them very much—they really owe him a great deal."

"Ah! then he is sure to provide for them," said Lady Lyons, "comfortably, especially for Margaret."

Mrs. Dorriman looked up at her a little startled. Had she said anything?

"We know nothing. He is fond of Margaret. He was fond——" She stopped short, she could not say that this move, originated by Grace and followed up by Margaret, had hurt and offended him. She knew he was offended, but all that passed belonged to the sanctity of home. She felt guilty in some way. Reticent and reserved generally, how came she to have allowed Lady Lyons to touch upon these matters? With a little movement of her head and shoulders, expressive of resolution, she faced Lady Lyons and said calmly:

"I would prefer not discussing my brother's intentions, which I do not know. I know really nothing, and conjecture is useless."

"We will not discuss his intentions," said Lady Lyons, with a cheerfulness she did not feel; "a man who has shown himself so good and so kind is not likely to throw these poor girls penniless upon the world—I can safely prophesy that Margaret will be his heiress." She smiled at Mrs. Dorriman, who had no answering smile to give back. She was startled and vexed with herself. She had no right to speak about her brother. She was confident that his actions would be governed entirely by the feeling of the moment. He liked Margaret; if Margaret offended him, his liking would not save her from the effects of his displeasure. She was beginning to understand him, to see that everything had to be subservient to his will, that the greatest and strongest trait in his character was his love of power.

After this conversation, Lady Lyons lost no time in giving her son warning.

"Nothing is settled," she said. "It may be Margaret, but he is a younger man than I thought, and he may marry; my dear boy, you must do nothing rashly."

He turned the subject with a laugh, in which to speak the truth there was not much merriment. His passion for Margaret was at any rate sincere, and with his frequent opportunities of meeting it became utterly impossible for him to conceal his feelings from her.

Before she could stop him, he was hurriedly telling her his story, looking in her face, which showed vexation and regret, but no passion, no love, no response to his devotion.

He read his answer there, and his despair moved her. She was grieved and dismayed; to her he had always seemed so inconsequent, such a trifler, how could she ever have believed that he was capable of so strong a love?

But her great comfort through it all was the very foundation he put himself upon; he would be guided in all things by her, she would be his good genius, his conscience. He would always do as she wished. She would be his guardian angel! This made refusal easier.

She shrank from his outstretched hands.

"I cannot," she said. "I cannot! It is impossible. I can never never give you the love you ask."

"You think so now, Margaret—I may call you Margaret—you are so young you do not know; will you not try, can you not let me hope?"

"Do you not see," she said, with the soft rebuke in her eyes that an angel might have had, "that love must come? And there is something else."

"Will you not tell me?" he spoke in a lower voice.

"I shall offend you."

"You cannot offend me."

"When I love—if I love—it must be a man," she said, and her face glowed, "a man who does not require the guidance of a weak girl, but who does what he has to do from a high sense of right, who has high aims, who is above me in all things."

"This is folly!" he exclaimed angrily; "you would ruin all my happiness from some vague and ideal sense of right. You will never meet with this ideal. All men will look up to you, beautiful Margaret. You will never find one above you."

"Perhaps not," she said, "but then I will never love."

They parted, she grieved but firm, and he miserable and dispirited. He felt the truth of much that she said, and was sufficiently in love to think her just while he deemed her cruel.

"Had my mother acted differently," he thought, with bitterness, "had she made me play a man's part!" and then a blush of shame rose to his face. "Why blame her? Was this worthy?" He strode off and sought in rapid motion to still his disappointment. No one must ever know, and Margaret was so young. At some future time, perhaps.

Thus it happened that when poor Lady Lyons gave him her well-meant caution his laugh was full of bitterness.

She noticed, however, and took great credit to herself for having so influenced him that her son avoided Margaret; and not in the least understanding, simply thinking that he was following her advice, she thought that his avoidance was perhaps too marked. Mother-like she must interfere a little, he should draw back but not so pointedly as to make going forward impossible; supposing....

"You are a dear, good boy," she said fondly to him in the evening, when, with a book before him and his gloomy eyes fixed on the fire, he was sitting, dreading her observation of his countenance; "you are always so good in following your poor old mother's advice. I see you leave the Rivers girls alone. You must not overdo it, dear. If there is money—if it would not be an imprudence it would not be a bad thing, and then, you know, they might resent your having given them quite up. Could you not keep friends without——"

"Without what, mother?" he asked, in a hoarse voice which startled her a little.

"I am hunting for a word, my dear," she answered candidly; "I want a word to express my meaning and that would not sound too strong."

Paul laughed ironically.

"Hunt on, mother, and when you have found the word you can tell me again."

"It is so tiresome of you to laugh, but what I want to say is, that there would be no harm in your paying a certain amount of attention, always providing you did not quite commit yourself."

"And if the girl got fond of me," asked Paul, looking at her with glowing eyes, "what then, if I had not committed myself?"

"My dear Paul! No well-brought-up girl would think of getting fond of you, would be in love with you, till you had said something. At least," said Lady Lyons, drawing herself up and looking very virtuous, "in my younger days girls would have thought it very wrong."

"Now it strikes me, mother, that this idea of yours is very cold-blooded and cruel; does your love for me so blind you that you cannot see this?"

"I am cold-blooded and cruel! Oh, Paul, what have I done," said the poor woman helplessly, "that you should call me bad names like this?"

"I called your idea cruel and it is cruel," said Paul hotly, "you do not think of what you advise me to do. Heaven knows there is nothing in me to win a good girl's love, but you advise me to try and do so, and yet, while in act I am saying I love you and begging her to love me in return, I may feel free and be free because in word I have said nothing. I call it shameful, mother!" He rose and walked hurriedly up and down the room, then, softening at the sight of her distress, he bent down and kissed her. "Forgive me if I seem harsh and unkind, but I am very unhappy, most miserable," and, sitting down again, he laid his face upon his arms.

Poor Lady Lyons, living in her monotonous round of small duties, never excited or allowing any interest not touching her son to disturb her, was singularly perplexed. Something seemed, all at once, different. She and her son had frequently had differences of opinion, but he had, at those times, offended, and she had complained, and she had always been so glad to forgive him. Now suddenly he blamed her! She could not at once put herself into the new position. Her feeble mind, bounded entirely by her affection for her son, saw nothing outside this horizon.

The reconciliation, when it came, was not so entirely satisfactory to her feelings, for Paul did not say he was sorry: on the contrary, he argued with her and left her to feel the burden of a defeat. She went to her room, and, as she sipped the thin gruel which solaced her evening hours, two or three tears trickled down her face, and she was conscious of a new and a very painful experience having suddenly confronted her.

At the same hour Margaret and Grace were standing watching the moonlit sea—a scene which never palled upon Margaret, and which from idleness Grace shared.

Paul Lyons's love and his appeal to Margaret was not spoken of even to her sister. Poor boy! his affection must be sacred from careless eyes.

As they watched the sea—suddenly into the most vivid light came gliding a stately yacht.

Her white sails were stretched to catch every whisper of the light wind, and she looked like some great lovely sea-bird, fluttering to her nest.

The sisters had grown familiar with the various ships and yachts that made shorter or longer journeys and returned to their moorings here, but this was something new.

They watched it take up its place with a certain curiosity, watched the lights move, heard the short sharp words of command ring across the water, all unconscious of the new interest that, in all ignorance, she was bringing into their lives.