Introduces to the reader two new characters of considerable importance, and describes a scene between them to which a very peculiar interest is attached.

AMONGST all those who were most materially concerned in the circumstances detailed in the preceding chapters, I must now name one person who has hitherto only been once passingly alluded to in the most brief manner, but whose happiness was (if not more) at least as deeply involved in the events which had taken place as was that of any other individual whatever, not excepting even our hero's mother herself. That person—for Mr. Longstaff has already hinted that his master was married—was Squire Lupton's wife.

Should the acute reader's moral or religious sensibilities be shocked at the discovery of so much human depravity, as this avowal must necessarily uncurtain to him, it is to be hoped he will lay the blame thereof upon the right shoulders, and not rashly attack the compiler of this history, who does only as Josephus, Tacitus, and other great historians have done before him,—make use of the materials which other men's actions prepare ready to his hands, and with the good or evil of which he himself is no more chargeable, than is the obedient workman who mouldeth a vessel with clay of the quality which his master may please to put before him.

During a period of some weeks prior to the time at which our story commences, Mrs. Lupton had been upon a visit to the family of Mr. Shirley, a resident in York, with whom she was intimately acquainted previously to her marriage with the heir of Kiddal House. Owing, however, to circumstances of a family nature, with which she had early become acquainted after her destiny had been for ever united with that of Mr. Lupton, she had hitherto found it impossible to introduce to her own house, with any degree of pleasure to herself, even the dearest companions of her youth; and no one was more so, for they had known each other from girlhood, than Miss Mary Shirley, the only daughter of her esteemed friend. Like many others in similar circumstances, she long strove to hide her own unhappiness from the world; but, in doing so, had been too often compelled to violate the most cherished feelings of her bosom; and—when at home—had chosen to remain like a recluse in her own house, when otherwise she would gladly have had some one with whom to commune when grief pressed heavily upon her; and he who had sworn to be all in all to her was in reality the cause, instead of the allayer, of her sorrows.

On the afternoon when those events took place which have been chronicled in the last chapter, Mrs. Lupton returned to Kiddal, accompanied, for the first time, by Miss Mary Shirley.

“Here we are at last,” remarked the lady of the house, as they drove up to the gate, and the highly ornamented oaken gable-ends of the old hall became visible above the garden-walls. “I have not a very merry home to bring you to, my dear Mary, and I dare not promise how long you may like to stay with us; but I hope you will enjoy yourself as well as you can; and when that is over,—though I could wish to keep you with me till I die,—when the time comes that you can be happy here no longer, then, my dear, you must not consider me;—leave me again alone, for I shall not dare to ask you to sacrifice another hour on my poor account, in a place so infinitely below the happy little home we have left in yonder city.”

“Nay,” replied the young lady, endeavouring to hide some slight feelings of emotion, “you cannot forbode unhappiness here. In such a place as this, these antique rooms, these gardens, and with such a glorious landscape of farms and hamlets, as lies below this hill, farther almost than the eye can reach,—it is impossible to be otherwise than happy.”

“Ay, and so I said,” replied Mrs. Lupton, “when Walter first brought me here; and so he told me too, as we passed under this very gateway. But I have learned since then that such things have no pleasure in them, when those we love and with whom we live are not that to us which they ought to be.” Miss Shirley remained silent, for she feared to prolong a conversation which, at its very commencement, seemed to recall to the mind of her friend such painful reminiscences.

On their introduction to the hall, Miss Shirley could not fail to remark the cold, unimpassioned, and formal manner in which Mr. Lupton received his lady; while towards herself he evinced so much affability and kindness, that the degradation of the wife was for the moment rendered still more striking and painful by the contrast. But, out of respect for the feelings of her friend, she affected not to notice it; although it was not without difficulty that she avoided betraying herself, when she observed Mrs. Lupton suddenly retire to another part of the room, because she was unable any longer to restrain the tears which now burst, in the bitterness of uncomplaining silence, from her eyes.

Perhaps no feelings of mortification could readily be imagined more acute than were those which arose from this slight incident in the bosom of a sensible, a sensitive, and, I may add, a beautiful woman, too,—for such Mrs. Lupton undoubtedly was. To be thus slighted when alone, she had already learned to bear; but to be so slighted, for the first time, and, as if by a studied refinement of contempt, before another individual, and that individual a woman, to whom extraordinary attentions were at the same moment paid, was indeed more than she could well endure; though pride, and the more worthy feeling of self-respect, would not allow her openly to confess it. But while the throb-bings of her bosom could scarcely be repressed from becoming audible, and the tears welled up in her large blue eyes until she could not see distinctly for the space of half a minute together, she yet stood at one of the high-pointed windows of the antique room, and affected to be beckoning to one of the gallant peacocks on the grass before her, as he stretched his brilliant neck towards the window, in anticipation of that food which from the same fair hand was seldom expected in vain.

In the mean time, seated at the farther end of the room, Mr. Lupton was endeavouring, though, after what had occurred it may be supposed, with but ill success, to engage the whole attention of the young lady who sat beside him. They had met some twelve months before at the house of her father, in York, during the time that he was paying his addresses to her friend, Miss Bernard, now his wife, and some short period before their ill-fated marriage.

After inquiring with great particularity after the health of her family and relatives, and expressing the very high pleasure he felt in having the daughter of one of his most esteemed friends an inmate of his house, the squire proceeded to descant in very agreeable language upon the particular beauties of the situation and neighbourhood of his house, and to enlarge upon the many pleasures which Miss Shirley might enjoy there during the ensuing summer,—a period over which, he fully trusted, she would do himself and Mrs. Lupton the honour and pleasure of her company.

“But shall we not ask Mrs. Lupton to join us?” remarked Miss Shirley. “It is unfair that we should have all this conversation to ourselves. I see she is at the window still;—though I remember the time, sir,” she added, dropping her voice to a more sedate tone, and looking archly in his face, “when there would have been no occasion, while you were in the room, for any other person to have made such a request.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Lupton, “she is happy enough with those birds about her. She and they are old friends, and it is now some time since they saw each other. Shall I have the pleasure of conducting you over the gardens, Miss Shirley?”

“I thank you,” replied she—“if Mrs. Lupton will accompany us.”

“She cannot be better employed,” rejoined the squire, “nor, very probably, more to her own satisfaction, than she is.”

“But shall we not know that best on inquiry?” rejoined the young lady, as she rose from her seat, and, without farther parley, bounded across the room towards the object of their discourse.

A brief conversation, carried on in a subdued tone of voice, ensued, during which Miss Shirley took a seat by the window, and appeared to sink into a more pensive mood, as though the contagion of unhappiness had communicated itself to her from the unfortunate lady with whom she had been speaking. The proposed walk in the gardens was eventually declined; and shortly afterwards Mrs. Lupton and her friend retired to their private apartment.

“In yonder chapel,” remarked the lady of the house, as they passed along towards the great oaken staircase, “lie buried all the family of the Luptons during the last three or four hundred years. When we walk out, you will see upon that projecting part of the great hall where the stained windows are, a long inscription, carved in stone, just under the parapet, with the date of 1503 upon it, asking the passer-by to pray for the souls of Roger Lupton and of Sibylla his wife, whom God preserve! I hope,” continued Mrs. Lupton, “they will never think of burying me in that chapel. Not that I dislike the place itself so much; but then, to think that I should lie there, and that my spirit might see the trailing silks that would pass above my face, and unhallowed dames stepping lightly in the place where an honest wife had been a burthen,—and to hear in the distance their revelry and their hollow laughter of a night! O Mary! I should get out of my coffin and knock against those stones till I frightened the very hearts out of them. I should haunt this house day and night, till not a woman dare inhabit it.”

“Nay,” ejaculated Miss Shirley, “you will frighten me, before all this happens, till I shall not sleep a wink. Let us go up stairs.”

“But wherefore frighten you?” asked Mrs. Lupton,—“why, Mary, should you fear? You would not flaunt over me if I did lie there,—you would not sit in my chair, and simper at my husband:—I say it touches not you. I should not have your heels upon my face, whoever else might be there. Leave those to fear who have need;—but for you—no one can approach those pure lips till he has sealed his faith before the altar, and had Heaven's approval.”

Mrs. Lupton's manner, as well as language, so alarmed the young lady, that she trembled violently, and burst into tears. Her friend, however, did not appear to observe it; for it was just at that time of the evening when, in such a place, the turn of darkness obliterates the individual features of things, and leaves only a shadowy phantom of their general appearance. She then resumed:

“And, not that alone. There is another reason why I would not be buried there.” The sound of her foot upon the pavement made the gallery ring again. “Though I have been wed, it has not made me one of this family; and you have seen and known to-day that, though I am the poor lady of this house, I am still a stranger. In two months more that man will have quite forgotten me; and, if I remember myself to the end, why, I shall thank him, dear heart, I shall. But you are beautiful, Mary; and to paint such as you the memory is an excellent artist. I saw—oh! take care, my girl. There is bad in the best of men; the worst of them may make a woman's life not worth the keeping, within the ticking of five minutes. When we go out we will walk in the gardens together. Now we will go up stairs.”

So saying, she clasped Miss Shirley by the wrist, much more forcibly than the occasion rendered needful, and hurried her, notwithstanding her fears, to her own dressing-room. When both had entered she closed the door, and locked it,—an action which, under present circumstances, threw her visitor into a state of agitation which she could scarcely conceal; though, while she strove to maintain an appearance of confident indifference, she took the precaution of placing herself so as to command the bell-rope in case—(for the horrible possibility did cross her mind)—it might be needful for her, though at the instant she knew not why, to summon assistance.

As I have before hinted, the first shadows of night had fallen on the surrounding lower grounds and valleys, and had already hidden the ill-lighted corridors and rooms on the eastern side of the hall in a kind of visible darkness, although a dull reflection of red light from the western sky still partially illumined the upper portion of the room in which the two ladies now were; sufficiently so, indeed, to enable them perfectly to distinguish each other; a circumstance which, however slight in itself, enabled Miss Shirley to keep up her courage much better than otherwise she would have been able to do.

Having, as before observed, turned the key in the lock, Mrs. Lupton walked on tip toe, as though afraid of being overheard, towards her visitor, and began to whisper to her, very cautiously, as follows:—

“I have brought you here, Mary, to tell you something that I have heard since we came back to-day. But, my dear, it has confused my mind till I forget what I am saying. You will forgive me, won't you?” Her companion begged her to defer it until another time, and not to trouble herself by trying to remember it; but Mrs. Lupton interrupted her with a hysterical laugh.

“The pain is not because I forget it, but because I can do nothing but remember it. I cannot get rid of it. It haunts me wherever I go; for, do you know, Mary, Walter Lupton grows worse and worse. I can never live under it; I know I cannot! And, as for beds, you and I will sleep in this next chamber, so that if there be women's feet in the night, we shall overhear it all. Now, keep awake, Mary, for sleep is of no use at all to me: and, besides that, she told me the baby was as like her master as snow to the clouds; so that what is to become of me I do not know.—I cannot tell, indeed!”

Here Mrs. Lupton wrung her hands, and wept bitterly.

Miss Shirley grew terrified at this incoherent discourse, and with an unconscious degree of earnestness begged her to go down stairs.

“Never heed,—never heed,” said she, turning towards the table, and apparently forgetting her grief: “there will come an end. Days do not last for ever, nor nights either.”

“Do not sigh so deeply,” observed her companion. “I have heard say it wears the heart out, though that is idle.”

“Nay,—nay,” replied Mrs. Lupton, “the woman that first said that spoke fairly, for surely she had a bad husband. It wears mine out, truly; though not too soon for him. You know now that he cares nothing for me.”

“But, let us hope it is not so,” replied Miss Shirley, somewhat re-assured from the more sane discourse of her entertainer.

“And yet,” continued Mrs. Lupton, as though unconscious of the last remark, “I have striven to commend myself to him as my best abilities would enable me. Mary, turn the glass to me. It is almost dark. How is this bodice? Is the unlaced shape of a country girl more handsome than the turn of this?”

“Oh, no—no—no!” answered the young lady, “nothing could be more handsome.”

“Nay,” protested Mrs. Lupton, “it is not what you think, or what I think; but with what eyes do the men see? Does it sit ungracefully on me?”

“Indeed, my dear, I heard my father say that one like you he never saw—”

“Do not tell me—do not tell me!” she exclaimed emphatically; “it is nothing to me, so that he who ought to say everything says not one word that I please him.”

And again she burst into a flood of hysterical tears.

“Come,” at length observed Miss Shirley, “it is too dark to see any longer here. Look, the little lights are beginning to shine in the cottage-windows yonder; let us go below. I dare say those poor labourers are making themselves as happy by their firesides as little kings; and why should not we, who have a thousand times more to be happy with, endeavour to do at least as much?”

“Why not?” repeated Mrs. Lupton, “you ask why not?—Ay, why not, indeed? Let me see. Well, I do not know just now. This trouble keeps me from considering; or else I could answer you any questions in the world; for my education was excellent; and, ever since I was married, I have sat in the library, day and night, because Mr. Lupton did not speak to me. Now, Mary, you go down stairs, and take supper; but I shall stay here to watch; and, if that child comes here, if he should come to make me more ashamed, I will stamp my foot upon him, and crush him out: and then I will put him for the carrion-crows on the turret top!”

“But, you said before,” observed Miss Shirley, “that you and I should always go together.”

“Oh!—yes,—-so I did; truly. I had forgotten that, too! My memory is good for nothing: an hour's lease of it is not worth a loose feather. To be sure, Mary, I will go down with you. There is danger in waiting for all of us; and if you should be harmed under my care, your father would never—never forgive me!”

So saying, she rose, and took her visitor by the hand; unlocked the door, and, resisting every proposal to call for a lamp, groped her way down stairs in utter darkness.

Although, as might naturally be expected, the alarm experienced by Miss Shirley under the circumstances above related was very great, far deeper was her grief on being thus unexpectedly made aware for the first time that some additional unanticipated cause of sorrow (communicated most probably to her friend in a very incautious manner by some forward ignorant menial of the house,) had had the appalling effect,—if for no long period, at least for the moment,—of impairing her senses to a very painful degree. What the real cause of that sorrow might be,—evident as it is to the reader who has accompanied me thus far,—Miss Shirley could not fully comprehend, from the broken exclamations and the incoherent discourse of Mrs. Lupton; though enough had been conveyed, even in that manner, to give her the right end of a thread, the substance of which, however, she was left to spin out from conjecture and imagination. She felt extremely irresolute, too, as to the course most proper to be adopted by herself; for, though she had left her home with the intention of staying at Kiddal during a period of at least some weeks, the impropriety of remaining under the circumstances that had taken place, impressed itself strongly upon her mind. It might be that Mr. Lupton would secretly regard her as a kind of familiar spy upon his conduct and actions; and as one who might possibly report to the world those passages of his life which he wished to be concealed from it. Or, in case these conjectures were utterly groundless, it yet remained to be decided how far her conduct might be considered prudent and becoming, if she continued to tarry at the residence of Mr. Lupton, while his wife,—for thus, very possibly, it might happen,—was confined to her chamber in consequence of either bodily or mental afflictions. These and similar considerations doubtfully occupied her mind during the whole evening; but at length the ties of friendship and of feminine pity prevailed over all objections. She felt it to be impossible to leave the once happy companion of her girlish days in such a fearful condition as this; and inwardly resolved, in case of Mrs. Lupton's increased indisposition, to request permission of the squire that she might be allowed to send for her mother from York to keep her company.

With these thoughts revolving in her mind much more rapidly than the time it has occupied the reader to become acquainted with them, Miss Shirley, followed by Mrs. Lupton, entered a side-room adjoining the great banquetting-hall, wainscotted from roof to ceiling with oak, now almost black with age, and amply filled throughout with ponderous antique furniture in corresponding taste. An old carved arm-chair, backed and cushioned with crimson velvet, stood on the farther side of the fire-place; and as it fitfully caught the glimmering of occasional momentary flames, stood out with peculiar distinctness, from the deep background of oaken panels, ample curtains, and dimly visible mirrors, beyond. On this seat—her favourite place—Mrs. Lupton threw herself; while Mary Shirley—as though anxious to evince still more attention to her in proportion as she failed to receive it from others,—seated herself, with her left arm laid upon the lap of her friend, on a low ottoman by her side.

As the lady of the mansion persisted in refusing that lamps should be brought, the apartment remained shrouded in that peculiarly illuminated gloom, which to some temperaments is the very beau idÉal of all imaginable degrees of light; and which gives to even the most ordinary scenes all the fulness and rich beauty of a masterpiece from the hand of Rembrandt. The ladies had been seated, as I have described, scarcely longer than some few minutes, and had not yet exchanged a word with each other, when the door of the apartment slowly opened, and the squire himself entered. Fearful of the consequences of an interview, at this particular time, between that gentleman and his unhappy wife, Miss Shirley hastily rose as he entered, and, advancing towards him before he could open his lips to address them, requested in a whisper that he would not heed anything Mrs. Lupton might say, lest his replies should still farther excite her, as she certainly had not the proper command of her senses some short time ago; and the least irritation might, she dreaded, render her still worse. The squire expressed a great deal of astonishment and concern, though not, it is to be supposed, very deeply felt, as he took a seat somewhat in the darkness beyond the table.

“Who is that man?” asked Mrs. Lupton, in a voice just audible, as she bent down to Miss Shirley, in order to prevent her question being overheard.

“My dear, you know him well enough, though you cannot see him in this light—it is your husband, Mr. Lupton.”

“No, no!” she exclaimed in a loud voice, and with a penetrating look at the indistinct figure beyond the table; “he cannot be come back again! I always feared what judgment he would come to, in spite of all my prayers for him; and to-night I saw a foul fiend carry his ghost away. You are not he, are you?”

“Be assured I am, indeed, dear wife,” said the squire, rising from his chair, and advancing towards her; “you know me now. Give me your hand.”

“If you be a gentleman, sir, leave me. The manners of this house have been corrupted so, that even strangers come here to insult me. Send him out, Mary; call William. I won't have men coming here, as though we were all disciples in the same school.”

Mr. Lupton began to act upon the hint previously given by his fair visitor, by leaving his seat, and retreating towards the door:—

“Yes, sir,” continued his wife, “begone! for, as the sun shines in the daytime, and the moon by night, Mary, so I shall be to the end; and never wed again—never again,—never! Hark! I heard the rustling of a gown below that window. They are coming!” and she held up her hand in an attitude bidding silence, and listened. The dull roaring of the wind in the chimney-top, and the creak of the door-latch as Mr. Lupton closed it after him, were alone audible to the young lady whom she addressed.

“Stay!” continued Mrs. Lupton, “perhaps his mother is bringing him home.”

Her voice was at that instant interrupted by the unequivocal and distinct cry of a babe, uttered apparently within very few yards of them.

“It is he!” shrieked the lady, as she strove by one energetic and convulsive spring to reach the window; but nature, overstrained so long, now failed her, and she fell like a stone, insensible, on the ground. Miss Shirley had started to her feet with terror, on hearing the first sound of that little living thing, which seemed to be close upon them in the room, or hidden behind the oaken panels of the wainscot: but before she could recover breath to raise an alarm, several of the domestics of the house rushed into the room; and seeing the situation of their mistress, raised her up, and by the direction of the squire, conveyed her up-stairs to her own apartment. While this was going on, others, at the bidding of Miss Shirley, examined both the room itself, and the outside of the premises; but as nothing could be seen, or even heard again, it was concluded either that the ladies had been deceived, or that the ghost of some buried ancestor had adopted this strange method of terrifying the present master of Kiddal into better morals. The logic, however, of this argument did not agree with Miss Shirley's conceptions; since, in that case, the squire, and not his lady, would have been the proper person for the ghost of his grandmother to appeal to.

The messenger who, meanwhile, had been despatched into the village of Bramleigh to summon Doctor Rowel to the assistance of his mistress, returned with another conjectural interpretation of the affair. He had passed on the road a pedlar woman, with a little girl by her side, and a child wrapped up in her arms: was it not possible that she had been lurking about the house for reasons best known to herself, until the crying of her child obliged her to decamp, through fear of being detected? The doctor declared it must have been so, as a matter of course; but the maids, who had other thoughts in their heads, resolved, for that night at least, to huddle themselves for reciprocal security all in one room together.