As soon as the Heavenly Twins were safely settled at Morne, Mr. Hamilton-Wells played them a huge trick. He made Lady Adeline pack up and set off with him for a voyage round the world without them. When their parents were well on the way, and the news was broken to the children, the people at Morne expected storm and trouble; but the Heavenly Twins saw the joke at once, and chuckled immoderately.

"I wonder how long it took him to think it out?" said Diavolo.

"It must have been a brilliant impromptu," Angelica supposed—"because, you know, our coming here was all arranged in a moment. If you remember, we came because they looked so sure that we shouldn't. I expect as soon as we had gone, it was such a relief, that papa said: 'Adeline, my dear, we must prolong this period of peace.' And he's just about hit on the only way to do so."

"I should like to have seen him, though, popping in and out of the train whenever it stopped. He must have been in a perfect fever until they were safe on board and out at sea, fearing we might have heard that they were off, and found some means of following them."

"We might do so still," said Angelica thoughtfully.

"No. Too much bother," said Diavolo. "And, besides, there is good deal going on here, you know," he added significantly. "But, I say," he demanded, becoming parent-sick suddenly, "do you understand how they could go off like that without saying good-bye to us? I call it beastly unnatural."

"Oh, give them their due!" said Angelica. "They did say good-bye to us. Don't you remember how particularly affectionate they were the last time they came? And all the good advice they gave us? 'Do attend to Mr. Ellis'; 'Don't worry your grandfather,' and that sort of thing. They must have relieved their own feelings thoroughly."

"Well, then, they didn't consider ours much," Diavolo grumbled; "and they might have allowed us, poor grass-orphans, the comfort of bidding them farewell,"

"We'll write them a letter," said Angelica.

Diavolo grinned.

And this was how it happened that the Heavenly Twins, who had only gone to Morne for a month, remained a year there, and one of the most important years of their lives, as was afterward evident. It was during this time that they managed to identify themselves completely with their grandfather in the estimation of the people of Morningquest. Charming manners were a family trait, and the Heavenly Twins had always been popular in the city on their own account; their spontaneity and extreme affability having usually been held to balance their monkey tricks. Hamilton House, however, was ten miles distant from Morningquest, and they had hitherto been thought of as Hamilton-Wells; but after that year at the Castle, they became identified with the old stock, the alien Hamilton-Wells being dropped out of sight altogether.

The duke himself had always been popular. He had, like his ancestors, lived much in his castle on the hill overlooking the city, and had dominated the latter by his personality as well as by his place, so that the people, predisposed by the pressure of hereditary habit to recognize the pre-eminence of one of his family, and being no longer subject to the authority of their duke as in the old days when he was a ruler who must be obeyed, looked up to him involuntarily as an example to be followed.

Which was how it came to pass that, for the last half century, there had been two influences at work in Morningquest: that of the chime, full fraught with spiritual suggestion; and that of the duke, which was just the opposite. They were the influences of good and evil, and, needless to say, the effect of the latter was much the more certain of the two.

A great change, however, came over the duke toward the end of his life. In his youth he had filled the place with riot and debauchery; in middle age he had concealed his doings under respectable cloaks of excuse, such as the County Club and business; but now he was old and superstitious, and sought to sway the people in another direction altogether. For when his youngest daughter, the beautiful Lady Fulda, became a Roman Catholic, she wrought upon him by her earnestness so as to make him fear the flames, and drove him in that way to seek solace and salvation in the Church as well; and when he had done so himself, he rather expected, and quite intended, that everybody else should do likewise. But the people of Morningquest who had adopted his vices did not fear the flames themselves, and would have nothing to do with his piety. They were like the children in "Punch," who, when threatened with the policeman at the corner, exclaimed in derision: "Why, that's father!" And, besides, the times were changing rapidly, and the influence which remained to the aristocracy was already only dominant so long as it went the way of popular feeling and was human; directly it retrograded to past privileges, ideas, superstitions, and tastes, the people laughed at it. They knew that the threatened rule of the priest was a far-fetched anachronism which they need not fear for themselves in the aggregate, and they therefore gave themselves up with interest to the observation of such evidences of its effect on the individual as the duke should betray to them from time to time. Their theory was that, having grown too old for worldly dissipation, he had entered the Church in search of new forms of excitement, and to vary the monotony generally, as so many elderly coquettes do when they can no longer attract attention in any other way. This, the people maintained, was the nature of such religious consolation as he enjoyed; and upon that supposition certain lapses of his were accounted for uncharitably.

But, in truth, the duke was perfectly sincere. He had turned so late in life, however, that he was apt, by force of habit, to get muddled. His difficulty was to disconnect the past from the present, the two having a tendency to mix themselves up in his mind. The great interest of his old age was the building of a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Morningquest, but occasionally—and always at the most inconvenient times—he would forget it was a cathedral, and imagine it was an opera house he was supporting; and when he went to distribute the prizes in the schools, he would compliment the pretty girls on their good looks, instead of lecturing them on the sin of vanity; and promise that they should sing in the chorus, or dance in the ballet if their legs were good, when he should have been discoursing about the dangers of the vain world, and pointing the moral of happy humble obscurity. On these occasions, Lady Fulda, who was always beside him, suffered a good deal. She would pull him up in a whisper which he sometimes made her repeat, until everyone in the place had heard it but himself, and then, at last, when he did understand, he would hasten to correct himself. But, of course, it was the mistake and not the correction which made the most lasting impression.

Lady Fulda was not at all clever. In the schoolroom she was always far behind her sisters, Lady Adeline and Lady Claudia, and before his conversion, her father used to say that she had the appearance of a Juno, and the cow-like capacity one would naturally expect from the portraits of that matron now extant. But this was not fair to her intelligence, for she had a certain range which included sympathetic insight, and the knack of saying the right thing both for her own purpose and for the occasion.

She had a full exterior of uncrumpled, lineless, delicately tinted flesh; a voice that made "Good-morning" impressive when she said it; a sincerity which paused upon every expression of opinion to weigh its worth. She would hardly say; "It is a fine day," without first glancing at the weather, just to be sure that it had not changed since she decided to make the remark. And she had a great loving heart. If she did not sigh for husband and children, it was because she was never In the presence of any creature for many minutes without feeling a flood of tenderness for them suffuse her whole being, so that her affections were always satisfied. Because of her grand presence people expected great things of her, and none of them ever went disappointed away. She filled their hearts, and nobody ever complains of the head when the heart is full. Love was the secret both of her beauty and her power.

The twins arrived late one day at Morne, and immediately afterward the whole castle was pervaded by their presence, and signs of them appeared in the most unlikely places. A mysterious packet, rolled up in a sheet of the Times, considerably soiled, and known as "Angelica's work," which nobody had ever seen opened, was found in the oriel room on the seat of the chair sacred to the duke himself; and a cricket cap of Diavolo's was discovered on one of the tall candles which stood on the altar in the private chapel of the castle, as if it had been used as an extinguisher, A peculiar intentness was also observed in the expression of the children's countenances which was thought to betoken mischief, because always hitherto it had been noticed that when the gravity of their demeanour was most exemplary, the wickedness of the design upon which they were engaged was sure to be extreme. But all the old symptoms were misleading at this time, for the twins settled down at once, with lively intelligent interest, to the innocent occupation of studying the ways of the household, their own conduct being distinguished for the most part by a masterly inactivity. For the truth was they were thinking. They had lately taken to reading the books and papers and magazines of the day, which they found in the library at Hamilton House; and at Morne they followed the same occupation, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the questions which interested them treated from different points of view. At home all had been Liberal, Protestant, and progressive; but at Morne the tendency of everything was Roman Catholic, Conservative, and retrograde; and they were doing their best, as their conversations with different people at this time showed, to discover the why and wherefore, and right and wrong of the difference. Angelica was naturally the first to draw definite conclusions for herself, and having made up her own mind she began to instruct Diavolo. She was teaching him to respect women, for one thing; when he didn't respect them she beat him; and this made him thoughtful.

"You wouldn't strike me if you didn't know that I can't strike you back, because you're a girl," he remonstrated.

"And you wouldn't say that if you didn't know that the cruellest thing you can do to a woman is to hurt her feelings," she retorted.

"Oh, feelings!" exclaimed Diavolo. "You've got castanets that clack where you should have feelings."

Angelica raised her hand, and then dropped it by her side again, and looked at him.

"What do you mean by this nonsense?" she demanded. "We always have fought everything out ever since we were born."

"Yes," he said regretfully, "and you used to be as hard as nails. When I got a good hit at you it made my knuckles tingle. But now you're getting all boggy everywhere. Just look at your arms!"

Angelica ripped her tight sleeve open to the shoulder with one of her sudden jerks, and looked at her arm. "Now, see mine," said Diavolo, taking off his coat, and turning his shirt sleeve up in his more deliberate way.

Angelica held out her arm beside his to compare them. Hers was round and white and firm, with every little blue vein visible beneath the fine transparent skin; his was all hard muscle and bone, burnt brown with the sun, and coarse of texture compared with hers.

"You see, now!" he said.

Angelica slowly drew down the tattered remains of her sleeve, and then she looked at Diavolo thoughtfully, and from him to a full-length reflection of herself in a long mirror on the wall.

"We're growing up!" she said, in a surprised sort of tone.

"You are," he said, "I seem to be just about as young as ever I was."

"All the more reason that I should teach you, then," said Angelica. "Education matures the mind, and the principal instrument of education for your sex has always been a stick. Women are open to reason from their cradles, but men have to be whopped. They are thrashed at school, that being, as they have always maintained themselves, the best way to deal with them. 'He that spareth the rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.' And 'Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die.' It is only the boys, you see, that have their minds enlarged in that way, because, if you tell a girl a thing, she understands it at once. And when men grow up and things go wrong, they still think they ought to thrash each other. That is also their primitive way of settling the disputes of nations; they just hack each other down in hundreds, sacrificing the lives which are precious to the women they should be loving, for the sake of ideas that are always changing. You certainly are the stupid part of humanity!" she concluded. "And how you ever discovered the way to manage each other, I can't imagine. But it was the right one. 'A whip for the horse, a bridle for the ass, and a rod for the fool's back.'"—and so saying, she flounced out of the room, without, however, administering the parting slap of another kind which he expected.

But the episode made a lasting impression on Diavolo, as was apparent in much that he said, and particularly in some remarks which he made during a conversation he had with his grandfather toward the end of the year.

A capital understanding had always existed, between Diavolo and his grandfather, a fact which caused Lady Adeline's heart to sink every time she observed it, but had an opposite effect on the duke himself—a quite exhilarating effect, indeed, which was the cause of certain of those lapses which Lady Fulda had so often to deplore—as when, for instance, he aided and abetted Diavolo in some of his worst tricks, and then had to sit sheepishly by, saying nothing, when the boy was found out and corrected. Lady Fulda was puzzled by the intelligent glances that passed between the two at such times, but Diavolo was perfectly loyal, and never once got his grandfather into trouble.

One of the dreams of the old duke's life was to make a good Catholic of Diavolo, and to that end his conversation was often directed— intermittently it is true, because Diavolo was skilled in the art of beguiling him into other subjects when it suited himself.

The duke was turning his attention at this time, under Lady Fulda's direction, to the spiritual welfare of that class of women which in former times he had been accustomed to countenance in quite another way. Lady Fulda had established a refuge for these in Morningquest, and her father was deeply interested in the success of the undertaking. The Heavenly Twins were also much interested. At first they could not make out why their Aunt Fulda so often breakfasted in her outdoor dress, and whether she had just come in or was just going out.

If there were no visitors staying at the castle, the party at breakfast was small, there being only the old duke, Father Ricardo, Mr. Ellis, and the Heavenly Twins, as a rule. When Lady Fulda did appear the meal was usually half over.

The duke sat at the end of the long table, with the twins on either side of him, but he was generally limp and querulous in the morning, and more kindly disposed toward Father Ricardo than to his own flesh and blood, as Angelica pointed out on one occasion.

When Lady Fulda came in she always went up to her father and kissed him. He did not rise to receive the salute, but he invariably held her hand some seconds, and asked: "Any news?" anxiously; to which she always answered "Yes" or "No"; and then he would say: "You must tell me afterward. Go to your seat now. Take plenty of rest and refreshment Both are necessary; both are necessary!"

The Heavenly Twins were inclined to regard this scene with the scorn and contempt of ignorance at first; but when Lord Dawne came to the castle for a few days, with their widowed aunt Lady Claudia and Ideala, and all these paid the same reverent attention to Lady Fulda's report as the duke and Father Ricardo did, they reserved judgment until they should know more about the matter.

They asked Mr. Ellis for an explanation, but he told them bluntly to mind their own business, and further puzzled them by a remark which they chanced to hear him make about Lady Fulda to Dr. Galbraith. They did not overhear what Dr. Galbraith had said to lead up to it, but Mr. Ellis answered: "Grasp her character? She is not a character at all! She's a beautiful abstraction. Now Ideala is human."

Although the twins were Protestants by education—and also by nature, one may say—it had pleased them to go regularly to certain services in the chapel from the day of their arrival at the castle.

"We enjoy them very much," Angelica said, to the great delight of her aunt and grandfather.

"I am sure the atmosphere of devotion in which we live will have its effect upon the children," the latter said several times.

And so it had. It was never the low mass, however, at which they appeared, but the more sensuous, sumptuous functions, when there was music, of which they both were exceedingly fond, both of them being excellent musicians.

Soon after her arrival at the castle Angelica bought a big drum. She said she couldn't express her feelings on any other instrument on Sunday, her spiritual fervour was so excessive. Her behaviour in chapel, however, was for the most part exemplary. Her aunt noticed that she often knelt all through the service with a book before her, thoroughly absorbed. Lady Fulda was anxious to know what the book was, and on one occasion, when Angelica remained on her knees after the congregation had dispersed, with her handkerchief pressed to her face, apparently deeply moved, her aunt stole up behind her softly, and peeped over her shoulder, expecting to see a holy "Imitation," or something of that kind; but, to her horror, she found that the book was Burnand's "Happy Thoughts," and that Angelica's gurglings were not tears of repentance, but suppressed explosions of hearty laughter.

This happened during what proved to be rather a trying time for Lady Fulda, It was while Lord Dawne, Lady Claudia, and Ideala were at the castle, and the old duke was, as Lady Fulda delicately phrased it to her sister Claudia in private, "inclined to be tiresome." It was at this time that he had several relapses. One of these happened in chapel during benediction.

The choir had been singing O Salutaris, Hostia! at the conclusion of which everybody was startled by a senile cheer from the stalls. The duke had dosed off into a dream of the opera, and had awakened suddenly, under the impression that a wooden image of the Blessed Virgin opposite had just completed a lovely solo, and was unexpectedly following it up by an audacious pas seul.

"Aren't our ancestors like us?" Diavolo whispered to Angelica enthusiastically. But Angelica dampened his ardent admiration of the coup by refusing to believe that the diminutive duke had "done it on purpose."