Atherstone was a rambling, old-fashioned, black-and-white house, half covered with ivy, standing in a rambling, old-fashioned garden—a charming garden, with clipped yews, and grass paths, and straggling flowers and herbs growing up in unexpected places. In front of the house, facing the drawing-room windows, was a bowling-green, across which, at this time of the afternoon, the house had laid a cool green shadow.

Two ladies were sitting under its shelter, each with her work.

It was hot still, but the shadows were deepening and lengthening. Away in the sun hay was being made and carried, with crackings of whips and distant voices. Beyond the hay-fields lay the silver band of the river, and beyond again the spire of Slumberleigh Church, and a glimpse among the trees of Slumberleigh Hall.

"Ralph has started in the dog-cart to meet Charles. They ought to be here in half an hour, if the train is punctual," said Mrs. Ralph.

She was a graceful woman, with a placid, gentle face. She might be thirty, but she looked younger. With her pleasant home and her pleasant husband, and her child to be mildly anxious about, she might well look young. She looked particularly so now as she sat in her fresh cotton draperies, winding wool with cool, white hands.

The handiwork of some women has a hard, masculine look. If they sew, it is with thick cotton in some coarse material; if they knit, it is with cricket-balls of wool, which they manipulate into wiry stockings and comforters. Evelyn's wools, on the contrary, were always soft, fleecy, liable to weak-minded tangles, and so turning, after long periods of time, into little feminine futilities for which it was difficult to divine any possible use.

Lady Mary Cunningham, her husband's aunt, made no immediate reply to her small remark. Evelyn Danvers was not a little afraid of that lady, and, in truth, Lady Mary, with her thin face and commanding manner, was a very imposing person. Though past seventy, she sat erect in her chair, her stick by her side, some elaborate embroidery in her delicate old ringed hands. Her pale, colorless eyes were as keen as ever. Her white hair was covered by a wonderful lace cap, which no one had ever succeeded in imitating, that fell in soft lappets and graceful folds round the severe, dignified face. Molly, Evelyn's little daughter, stood in great awe of Lady Mary, who had such a splendid stick with a silver crook of her very own, and who made remarks in French in Molly's presence which that young lady could not understand, and felt that it was not intended she should. She even regarded with a certain veneration the cap itself, which she had once met in equivocal circumstances, journeying with a plait of white hair towards Lady Mary's rooms.

It was the first time since their marriage, of which she had not approved, that Lady Mary had paid a visit to Ralph and Evelyn at Atherstone. Lady Mary had tried to marry Ralph, in days gone by, to a woman who—but it was an old story and better forgotten. Ralph had married his first cousin when he had married Evelyn, and Lady Mary had strenuously objected to the match, and had even gone so far as to threaten to alter certain clauses in her will, which she had made in favor of Ralph, her younger nephew, at a time when she was at daggers drawn with her eldest nephew, Charles, now Sir Charles Danvers. But that was an old story, too, and better forgotten.

When Charles succeeded his father some three years ago, and when, after eight years, Molly had still remained an only child, and one of the wrong kind, of no intrinsic value to the family, Lady Mary decided that by-gones should be by-gones, and became formally reconciled to Charles, with whom she had already found it exceedingly inconvenient, and consequently unchristian, not to be on speaking terms. As long as he was the scapegrace son of Sir George Danvers her Christian principles remained in abeyance; but when he suddenly succeeded to the baronetcy and Stoke Moreton, the air of which suited her so well, and, moreover, to that convenient pied À terre, the house in Belgrave Square, she allowed feelings, which she said she had hitherto repressed with difficulty, their full scope, expressed a Christian hope that, now that he had come to this estate, Charles would put away Bohemian things, and instantly set to work to find a suitable wife for him.

At first Lady Mary felt that the task which she had imposed upon herself would (D.V.) be light indeed. Charles received her overtures with the same courteous demeanor which had been the chief sting of their former warfare. He paid his creditors, no one knew how, for his father had left nothing to him unentailed; and once out of money difficulties, he seemed in no hurry to plunge into them again. If he had not as yet thoroughly taken up the life of an English country gentleman, for want of that necessary adjunct which Lady Mary was so anxious to supply, at least he lived in England and in good society. In short, Lady Mary was fond of telling her friends Charles had entirely reformed, hinting, at the same time, that she had been the humble instrument, in the hands of an all-wise Providence, which had turned him back into the way in which the English aristocracy should walk, and from which he had deviated so long. But one thing remained—to marry him. Every one said Charles must marry. Lady Mary did not say it, but with her whole soul she meant it. What she intended to do, she, as a rule, performed—occasionally at the expense of those who were little able to afford it, but still the thing was (always, of course, by the co-operation of Providence) done. Ralph certainly had proved an exception to the rule. He had married Evelyn against Lady Mary's will, and consequently without the blessing of Providence. After that, of course, she had never expected there would be a son, and with each year her anxiety to see Charles safely married had increased. He had seemed so amenable that at first she could hardly believe that the steed which she had led to waters of such divers merit would refuse to drink from any of them. If rank had no charm for him, which apparently it had not, she would try beauty. When beauty failed, even beauty with money in its hand, Lady Mary hesitated, and then fell back on goodness. But either the goodness was not good enough, or, as Lady Mary feared, it was not sufficiently High Church to be really genuine: even goodness failed. For three years she had strained every nerve, and at the end of them she was no nearer the object in view than when she began.

An inconvenient death of a sister, with whom she had long since quarrelled about church matters (and who had now gone where her folly in differing from Lady Mary would be fully, if painfully, brought home to her), had prevented Lady Mary continuing her designs this year in London. But if thwarted in one direction, she knew how to throw her energies into another. The first words she uttered indicated what that direction was.

Evelyn's little remark about the dog-cart, which had gone to meet Charles, had so long remained without any response that she was about to coin another of the same stamp, when Lady Mary suddenly said, with a decision that was intended to carry conviction to the heart of her companion:

"It is an exceedingly suitable thing."

Evelyn evidently understood what it was that was so suitable, but she made no reply.

"A few years ago," continued Lady Mary, "I should have looked higher. I should have thought Charles might have done better, but—"

"He never could do better than—than—" said Evelyn, with a little mild flutter. "There is no one in the world more—"

"Yes, yes, my dear—of course we all know that," returned the elder lady. "She is much too good for him, and all the rest of it. A few years ago, I was saying, I might not have regarded it quite in the light I do now. Charles, with his distinguished appearance and his position, might have married anybody. But time passes, and I am becoming seriously anxious about him; I am, indeed. He is eight-and-thirty. In two years he will be forty; and at forty you never know what a man may not do. It is a critical age, even when they are married. Until he is forty, a man may be led under Providence into forming a connection with a woman of suitable age and family. After that age he will never look at any girl out of her teens, and either perpetrates a folly or does not marry at all. If the Danvers family is not to become extinct, or to be dragged down by a mÉsalliance, measures must be taken at once."

Evelyn winced at the allusion to the extinction of the Danvers family, of which Charles and Ralph were the only representatives. She felt keenly having failed to give Ralph a son, and the sudden smart of the old hurt added a touch of sharpness to her usually gentle voice as she said, "I cannot see what has been left undone."

"No, my dear," said Lady Mary, more suavely, "you have fallen in with my views most sensibly. I only hope Ralph—"

"Ralph knows nothing about it."

"Quite right. It is very much better he should not. Men never can be made to look at things in their proper light. They have no power of seeing an inch in front of them. Even Charles, who is less dense than most men, has never been allowed to form an idea of the plans which from time to time I have made for him. Nothing sets a man more against a marriage than the idea that it has been put in his way. They like to think it is all their own doing, and that the whole universe will be taken by surprise when the engagement is given out. Charles is no exception to the rule. Our duty is to provide a wife for him, and then allow him to think his own extraordinary cleverness found her for himself. How old is this cousin of yours, Miss Deyncourt?"

"About three-and-twenty."

"Exceedingly suitable. Young, and yet not too young. She is not beautiful, but she is decidedly handsome, and very high-bred-looking, which is better than beauty. I know all about her family; good blood on both sides; no worsted thread. I forget if there is any money."

This was a pious fraud on Lady Mary's part, as she was, of course, aware of the exact sum.

"Lady Deyncourt left her thirty thousand pounds," said Evelyn, unwillingly. She hated herself for the part she was taking in her aunt's plans, although she had been so unable to support her feeble opposition by any show of reason that it had long since melted away before the consuming fire of Lady Mary's determined authority.

"Twelve hundred a year," said that lady. "I fear Lady Deyncourt was far, very far, from the truth, but she seems to have made an equitable will. I am glad Miss Deyncourt is not entirely without means; and she has probably something of her own as well. The more I see of that girl the more convinced I am that she is the very wife for Charles. There is no objection to the match in any way, unless it lies in that disreputable brother, who seems to have entirely disappeared. Now, Evelyn, mark my words. You invited her here at my wish, after I saw her with that dreadful Alwynn woman at the flower-show. You will never regret it. I am seventy-five years of age, and I have seen something of men and women. Those two will suit."

"Here comes the dog-cart," said Evelyn, with evident relief.

"Where is Miss Deyncourt?"

"She went off to Slumberleigh some time ago. She said she was going to the rectory, I believe."

"It is just as well. Ah! here is Charles."

A tall, distinguished-looking man in a light overcoat came slowly round the corner of the house as she spoke, and joined them on the lawn. Evelyn went to meet him with, evident affection, which met with as evident a return, and he then exchanged a more formal greeting with his aunt.

"Come and sit down here," said Evelyn, pulling forward a garden-chair. "How hot and tired you look!"

"I am tired to death, Evelyn. I went to London in May a comparatively young man. Aunt Mary said I ought to go, and so, of course, I went. I have come back not only sadder and wiser—that I would try to bear—but visibly aged."

He took off his hat as he spoke, and wearily pushed back the hair from his forehead. Lady Mary looked at him over her spectacles with grave scrutiny. She had not seen her nephew for many months, and she was not pleased with what she saw. His face looked thin and worn, and she even feared she could detect a gray hair or two in the light hair and mustache. His tired, sarcastic eyes met hers.

"I was afraid you would think I had gone off," he said, half shutting his eyes in the manner habitual to him. "I fear I took your exhortations too much to heart, and overworked myself in the good cause."

"A season is always an exhausting thing," said Lady Mary; "and I dare say London is very hot now."

"Hot! It's more than hot. It is a solemn warning to evil-doers; a foretaste of a future state."

"I suppose everybody has left town by this time?" continued Lady Mary, who often found it necessary even now to ignore parts of her nephew's conversation.

"By everybody I know you mean one family. Yes, they are gone. Left London to-day. Consequently, I also conveyed my remains out of town, feeling that I had done my duty."

"Where is Ralph?" asked Evelyn, rising, dimly conscious that Charles and his aunt were conversing in an unknown tongue, and feeling herself de trop.

"I left him in the shrubbery. A stoat crossed the road before the horse's nose as we drove up, and Ralph, who seems to have been specially invented by Providence for the destruction of small vermin, was in attendance on it in a moment. I had seen something of the kind before, so I came on."

Evelyn laid down her work, and went across the lawn, and round the corner of the house, in the direction of the shrubbery, from which the voice of her lord and master "rose in snatches," as he plunged in and out among the laurels.

"And how is Lord Hope-Acton?" continued Lady Mary, with an air of elaborate unconcern. "I used to know him in old days as one of the best waltzers in London. I remember him very slim and elegant-looking; but I suppose he is quite elderly now, and has lost his figure? or so some one was saying."

"Not lost, but gone before, I should say, to judge by appearances," said Charles, meditatively, gazing up into the blue of the summer sky.

The mixed impiety and indelicacy of her nephew's remark caused a sudden twitch to the High Church embroidery in Lady Mary's hand; but she went on a moment later in her usual tone:

"And Lady Hope-Acton. Is she in stronger health?"

"I believe she was fairly well; not robust, you know, but, like other fond mothers with daughters out, 'faint yet pursuing.'"

Lady Mary bit her lip; but long experience had taught her that it was wiser to refrain from reproof, even when it was so urgently needed.

"And their daughter, Lady Grace. How beautiful she is! Was she looking as lovely as usual?"

"More so," replied Charles, with conviction. "Her nose is even straighter, her eyelashes even longer than they were last summer. I do not hesitate to say that her complexion is—all that her fancy paints it."

"You are so fond of joking, Charles, that I don't know when you are serious. And you saw a good deal of her?"

"Of course I did. I leaned on the railings in the Row, and watched her riding with Lord Hope-Acton, whose personal appearance you feel such an interest in. At the meeting of the four-in-hands, was not she on the box-seat beside me? At Henley, were we not in the same boat? At Hurlingham, did we not watch polo together, and together drink our tea? At Lord's, did not I tear her new muslin garment in helping her up one of those poultry-ladders on the Torringtons' drag? Have I not taken her in to dinner five several times? Have I not danced with her at balls innumerable? Have I not, in fact, seen as much of her as—of several others?"

"Oh, Charles!" said Lady Mary, "I wish you would talk seriously for one moment, and not in that light way. Have you spoken?"

"In a light way, I should say I had spoken a good deal; but seriously, no. I have never ventured to be serious."

"But you will be. After all this, you will ask her?"

"Aunt Mary," replied Charles, with gentle reproach, "a certain delicacy should be observed in probing the exact state of a man's young affections. At five-and-thirty (I know I am five-and-thirty, because you have told people so for the last three years) there exists a certain reticence in the youthful heart which declines to lay bare its inmost feelings even for an aunt to—we won't say peck at, but speculate upon. I have told you all I know. I have done what I was bidden to do, up to a certain point. I am now here to recruit, and restore my wasted energies, and possibly to heal (observe, I say possibly) my wounded affections in the intimacy of my family circle. That reminds me that that little ungrateful imp Molly has not yet made the slightest demonstration of joy at my arrival. Where is she?" and without waiting for an answer, which he was well aware would not be forthcoming, Charles rose and strolled towards the house with his hands behind his back.

"Molly!" he called, "Molly!" standing bareheaded in the sunshine, under a certain latticed window, the iron bars of which suggested a nursery within.

There was a sudden answering cackle of delight, and a little brown head was thrust out amid the ivy.

"Come down this very moment, you little hard-hearted person, and embrace your old uncle."

"I'm comin', Uncle Charles, I'm comin';" and the brown head disappeared, and a few seconds later a white frock and two slim black legs rushed round the corner, and Molly precipitated herself against the waistcoat of "Uncle Charles."

"What do you mean by not coming down and paying your respects sooner?" he said, when the first enthusiasm of his reception was over, looking down at Molly with a great kindness in the keen light eyes which had looked so apathetic and sarcastic a moment before.

As he spoke, Ralph Danvers, a square, ruddy man in gray knickerbockers, came triumphantly round from the shrubbery, holding by its tail a minute corpse with out-stretched arms and legs.

"Got him!" he said, smiling, and wiping his brow with honest pride. "See, Charles? See, Molly? Got him!"

"Don't bring it here, Ralph, please. We are going to have tea," came Evelyn's gentle voice from the lawn; and Ralph and the terrier Vic retired to hang the body of the slain upon a fir-tree on the back premises, the recognized long home of stoats and weasels at Atherstone.

Molly, in the presence of Lady Mary and the stick with the silver crook, was always more or less depressed and shy. She felt the pale cold eye of that lady was upon her, as indeed it generally was, if she moved or spoke. She did not therefore join in the conversation as freely as was her wont in the family circle, but sat on the grass by her uncle, watching him with adoring eyes, trying to work the signet ring off his big little finger, which in the memory of man—of Molly, I mean—had never been known to work off, while she gave him the benefit of small pieces of local and personal news in a half whisper from time to time as they occurred to her.

"Cousin Ruth is staying here, Uncle Charles."

"Indeed," said Charles, absently.

His eyes had wandered to Evelyn taking Ralph his cup of tea, and giving him a look with it which he returned—the quiet, grave look of mutual confidence which sometimes passes between married people, and which for the moment makes the single state seem very single indeed.

Molly saw that he had not heard, and that she must try some more exciting topic in order to rivet his attention.

"There was a mouse at prayers yesterday, Uncle Charles."

"There wasn't?"

Uncle Charles was attending again now.

Molly gave an exact account of the great event, and of how "Nanny" had gathered her skirts round her, and how James had laughed, only father did not see him, and how—There was a great deal more, and the story ended tragically for the mouse, whose final demise under a shovel, when prayers were over, Molly described in graphic detail.

"And how are the guinea-pigs?" asked Charles, putting down his cup.

"Come and see them," whispered Molly, insinuating her small hand delightedly into his big one; and they went off together, each happy in the society of the other. Charles was introduced to the guinea-pigs, which had multiplied exceedingly since he had presented them, the one named after him being even then engaged in rearing a large family.

Then, after Molly had copiously watered her garden, and Charles's unsuspecting boots at the same time, objects of interest still remained to be seen and admired; confidences had to be exchanged; inner pockets in Charles's waistcoat to be explored; and it was not till the dressing-bell and the shrill voice of "Nanny" from an upper window recalled them, that the friends returned towards the house.

As they turned to go in-doors Charles saw a tall white figure skimming across the stretches of low sunshine and long shadow in the field beyond the garden, and making swiftly for the garden gate.

"Oh, Molly! Molly!" he said, in a tone of sudden consternation, squeezing the little brown hand in his. "Who is that?"

Molly looked at him astonished. A moment ago Uncle Charles had been talking merrily, and now he looked quite sad.

"It's only Ruth," she said, reassuringly.

"Who is Ruth?"

"Cousin Ruth," replied Molly. "I told you she was here."

"She's not staying here?"

"Yes, she is. She is rather nice, only she says the guinea-pigs smell nasty, which isn't true. She will be late,"—with evident concern—"if she is going to be laced up; and I know she is, because I saw it on her bed. She doesn't see us yet. Let us go and meet her."

"Run along, then," said Charles, in a lone of deep dejection, loosing Molly's hand. "I think I'll go in-doors."