Lady William had gone across the lawn, not to the usual door which admitted into what may be called the private part of the Rectory, but to the little parish door where people came who wanted the Rector on parish business. This was always open, always accessible, though I don’t know that the parishioners used it very much. It was at least an excellent thing for them to have their clergyman always within reach, and suited the Rector’s theory of his duty, which was a great matter, even if it were not of very much practical use. Miss Grey trotted in by it with her parish books, and the curate came, when something occurred about which it was necessary to consult his chief. He did not, Mr. Plowden thought, consult his chief nearly as much as would have been appropriate and desirable—being a young man who liked his own way, and considered that the elder generation did not always understand.

The Rector, however, was much surprised when the door sounded with the familiar little click which he knew so well, and his sister presently appeared in his study. He had expected one or other of the two functionaries above named, or perhaps the churchwarden, or the treasurer of the schools, who was a troublesome person with nothing to do, and consequently an endless number of things to suggest. When he saw Lady William his heart—which you may say ought to have been sufficiently experienced to take things quietly—gave a jump. Experience does not make us indifferent in certain cases, and the Rector was as easily disturbed on one subject as if he had no experience at all. It flashed into his mind that his sister, who was not much in the habit of consulting him, must have something to say about Jim.

‘Emily!’ he said, with great surprise: and then, with a little attempt at a lighter tone, which was not very successful, ‘What, have you fallen into parish business, too?’

‘No,’ she replied, with a quickly drawn breath, which the Rector, as a man accustomed to have to do with people in trouble, knew must mean excitement, or anxiety, or distress. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I want to consult you, James: but it is entirely about my own private business.’

The Rector drew a long breath. He was not glad—oh no!—to think that his sister was in trouble: but nothing that affected her could be so serious, he felt, as if it had been something about Jim. He drew forward a chair near himself for her. He had always been both fond and proud of Emily. Perhaps the fact that she was Lady William (though he knew the marriage had not been a success) added a little to the feeling that she was a being by herself, not to be compared with any one else. But still, a great deal of it was very genuine, and meant a conviction that he knew nobody comparable to Emily. He was pleased that she should consult him on her own affairs, of which, generally, she said very little. She had thrown away almost all her own money upon Reginald—provided only that she did not mean to tell him that scapegrace was coming back to trouble his respectable connections again! Thus the same idea that had disturbed his wife occurred to the Rector, both terrors, no doubt, arising from the fact that neither could imagine what Lady William could wish to consult the Rector about.

‘My affairs,’ she said, with a faint smile, as she got her breath, ‘haven’t for a long time been very troublesome to my family, James. I hope they are not entering now into a new stage.’

‘A new stage?’ he said, and the Rector’s middle-aged heart actually took a jump again. What could it all mean? Good heavens!—Emily’s affairs in a new stage! What could she be going to do? It could not be about any change in her life that she was going to consult him. Change in her life! That was what people said when somebody was going to marry. He looked at his sister with sudden alarm. Emily marry! Vague things he had heard said of Leo Swinford and jests about Lady William’s attractions, started up in his mind. It rarely happens, I think, that a man likes his sister (if she is not dependent upon him) to compromise her dignity by a second marriage. He did not like to think that Emily might intend to come down from her pedestal and show herself a mere common person, like the rest.

‘What do you mean by a new stage?’ he said, with a pucker in his brow. ‘You are very well as you are, and occupy a very good position, and all that. I don’t see what need there is for a new stage.’

‘Nor I,’ she said; ‘and I hope you will continue of the same opinion when I tell you. I knew,’ she continued, with a little hot colour flushing across her face, ‘that the coming of the Swinfords would upset all our tranquillity. I was sure of it. She is a woman of evil omen wherever she appears.’

‘Yet you were once very fond of her, if I remember right.’

‘When I was a girl, and she petted me, and made much of me—I was going to say for her own ends; but I hope it was not for her own ends from the beginning—that would be too diabolical.’

‘What ends could she have had that were to be promoted by you?’ said the Rector, with a smile. He was sufficiently used to these preposterous notions women so often have of their own importance, prompting them to think the attention of other people, who probably never thought of them, is fixed upon them, and that intentions of various kinds are formed respecting them, without the least foundation in fact. Thus his own wife was in the habit of thinking that her girls were watched and followed; that their movements and their dresses were the subject of constant remark, when in all probability nobody even knew that they were there. He was surprised, however, that his sister Emily should share this view.

‘We need not discuss that,’ she said. ‘James, I want to ask you—do you think it is my duty by Mab to seek further acquaintance with her father’s family? We are exceedingly well as we are. The allowance they make is not large, but it is enough, and there is something settled on Mab when I die. They have done their duty, if not very liberally, yet they have done it. And I don’t want any more from them. Mab is quite contented, she likes her home better than anything; and though she is a very dear girl, and my hope and comfort, I don’t know if she is fitted to shine in—what people call the great world. I might get them, of course, to bring her out in a way more fitting, perhaps—to take her to Court, and all that——’

‘I don’t see,’ said the Rector, ‘that that would do her much good.’ Men ought not, to be sure, to be touched by any of those motives, which are entirely feminine; but it did certainly flash across the Rector’s mind that his own girls had none of these advantages, had never gone to Court or anything of the kind, and yet could not be said to be any the worse.

‘No, that is just what I think. She is quite satisfied as she is: to go out with her Pakenham cousins, probably to their annoyance and against their will, and to be taken to places where she knew nobody, would be no pleasure to my little girl. She is such a thoroughly reasonable, sensible, understanding child. I am so glad that you agree with me on that point, James.’

While she was speaking the Rector began to think that perhaps all was not said in that hasty opinion of his, and that a man consulted by his nearest relation should not be moved by any little trifling feeling—like that which might be legitimate enough in a mother, about his own girls. And he said, ‘Stop a little, Emily. You’re still quite a young woman, but life is uncertain. Perhaps, you know, if anything were to happen to you:—as long as you are there, that is all right, of course—but she would be very forlorn, poor little thing, if she were left——’

‘There would be you and Jane, James. You would both be very kind to her.’ But Lady William was a little startled by what he said. It is startling to all, however little objection we may have to that catastrophe, even however desirable it may be, to be spoken to abruptly of our own death.

‘Both my wife and I are older than you are, and we could introduce her to nobody in—well, in her father’s rank of life. If she married it would probably be a curate—the Marquis of Portcullis’s niece!’

‘Oh, if it were no worse than a curate!’ said Lady William, with a laugh. The laugh was a little strained, and under her eyes there was a hot, red colour which did not consort with laughter. She grew suddenly very grave, and added hurriedly, ‘That was not exactly all. James, in case of the—risk of which you were speaking, do you think as Mrs. Swinford does——’

‘What, Emily?’ He was frightened when he saw the excitement that seemed to come over her.

‘Well! That the family would have a right to—examine into—and have all the papers about—my marriage, and her birth, and all that.’

It was of Lady William’s marriage alone that Mrs. Swinford had spoken, but it made it a little easier to state it so.

‘Oh!’ said the Rector, startled. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I suppose it’s a very good thing to have your papers all in order, and saves trouble afterwards. It is so seldom that people take the trouble to do it. I am sure I don’t know anything about my own marriage certificate, though I furnish them to other people. Have you got them all?’

Lady William’s face blanched out of its momentarily high colour. ‘I have got none of them,’ she said, in a faint voice.

‘Well, there is no particular harm in that. I don’t know who has—not me, I am sure. What does your friend want you to do—send these things to the Marquis? What does the Marquis want with Mab’s baptismal certificate? My dear Emily, I suppose that woman, being partly French, thinks that you should always have your papiers in order? There could not be greater nonsense.’

‘Do you really think so? I did myself. Why should there ever be any question? Nobody asks you, as you say, for your marriage certificate, James.’

‘No,’ said the Rector; but he added, looking at the question from a purely professional point of view, ‘of course, you can get that sort of thing, when it’s wanted, at a moment’s, at least, at a day’s notice. Where were you married, Emily?’

She was evidently not prepared for this question, and came to herself with a little start. The colour forsook her cheeks. She clasped her hands together nervously. ‘Oh James, that is what gives it its sting. I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘Is that dreadful? Is it dangerous? Might it throw a doubt? My father went with me, that is the only thing—to London somewhere.’

‘I knew you were not married at home,’ said Mr. Plowden, rising up and placing himself in front of the fireplace. ‘I knew there was something queer about it. In the name of wonder, Emily, why, if my father went with you, didn’t he have you married at home? He can’t, in that case, have disapproved.’

‘I don’t think he disapproved.’

‘Then why, why weren’t you married at home? My father went with you, and you don’t know? What a very queer business! And who went with you beside my father?’

‘Old Meredith, do you remember, who used to be my nurse—and a lady. But Meredith is dead, and papa is dead—and the other——’

‘This grows rather funny,’ said the Rector. ‘I mean it isn’t funny at all. So there is nobody living who was there, and you don’t know where it was? Does your friend, Mrs. Swinford, know these circumstances, Emily, and does she want to frighten you? It would be like her amiable temper.’

‘James, tell me, is there any real reason to fear?’

‘Oh, dear, no. Of course not; the only thing is to find the place. Of course, it must be on the register. What a queer thing not to know the church you were married in! I thought a woman always remembered that, whatever she forgot.’

‘I was a frightened girl,’ said Lady William. ‘I didn’t know what they were going to do with me. I was sent down from the Hall at midnight, as I thought in disgrace—though I could not tell for what. There was a great tumult in the house. Mr. Swinford, who was so quiet, in the midst of it all; and then my husband came down here with me, and my father was called up to speak to him and then it was all like a flash of lightning. I was taken up to London two days after, and there I was married. It was a little old church, in a district which I didn’t know.’

‘How is it I never heard anything of this before?’

‘How can I tell?’ she said. ‘I was taken away, frightened, not knowing what had happened. Oh, I suppose that I was not unwilling: I did not understand it: but my father was there—and he liked it, James. He said it was a great match for me, and, though it was so hurried, I was not to mind. After, I understood better—but at the time not at all.’

‘It must have been by special license,’ said the Rector; ‘but why in the name of wonder didn’t my father have it here?—Why—— But I suppose it’s no use saying why and why. There must have been reasons——’ He looked at his sister fixedly, yet avoiding her eye.

But Lady William neither met nor avoided his look. She sat before him, pale, with an air of deep and melancholy recollection. ‘Oh, there were reasons,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘It was years before I found them out. I would rather not enter into them even now—reasons which for a time made life odious to me. It had not been very happy before. Don’t let us speak of that.’

‘They were reasons—which Mrs. Swinford knew!’

‘Don’t speak of her to me,’ said Lady William. ‘I was a fool to go near her, to see her again. Knew! ah, indeed she knew—indeed she knew! She was my patroness, my kind friend. My father thought it such a fine thing for me to be at the Hall. Oh, James, why should a girl be allowed to live when she has no mother? She ought to be put away in her mother’s coffin, and not enter helpless into the world.’

‘In my opinion fathers are some good,’ said the Rector, with severity.

And then a few hot tears fell from his sister’s eyes. ‘Poor papa!’ she said. Mr. Plowden added nothing to this phrase. They remained silent, both thinking of the parent who had not indeed been very wise, but always kind. After a while Lady William resumed: ‘He approved: if he had not approved—I should never—— But what could I do against my father? And Miss Mansfield told me I should be ungrateful to the friend who had made such a match for me.’

‘Who was Miss Mansfield, Emily?’

‘The lady I told you of—a cousin of Mrs. Swinford’s, who was with me that day.’

‘And is she dead, too?’

‘I think not. No; Leo Swinford said something of her the other day—that she had been here.’

‘Then she must be found, Emily.’

Lady William gave him a startled look. ‘Do you think, then, James, after all, it is necessary to go into all that again—to rake up everything? Oh! when I think of it—the hurry, the strangers, the unknown place, which looked as if there was shame in it——’

‘My dear Emily, it is only the hurry and the unknown place that make it important. As soon as you know where to write to find the marriage in the register it does not matter, you can let it rest. But now that I know—even if Mrs. Swinford had never said a word—I shall not rest till I find it out.’

‘Then I wish,’ she said, with returning spirit, ‘that I had said nothing to you on the subject, James.’

‘Don’t say that. To whom should you go but to your brother? And be sure I’ll find it out, Emily. I don’t like to say a word that will hurt you. I am afraid you have been the victim of some plot or other, my poor girl.’

She did not answer for a moment, then she said: ‘I cannot have been without blame myself. I was pleased with the promotion, I suppose, and with the romance, and all that. Romance! it seemed so strange to be carried away, to be married almost in spite of myself; and I suppose the name—— It is all very vague and dreadful, though at the time I was dazzled, and it sounded like something in a story. I wonder, rather, that you do not despise your sister, James.’

‘Poor Emily!’ he said, patting her shoulder with his hand.