It was not very often the Rector found time to visit his sister. They saw each other constantly at the Rectory, at church, in the village street, in all sorts of places, almost every day; but his visits were few, especially such a visit as the present. He paused at the further end of the garden and called over the hedge to Mab, to know if her mother was alone. ‘I have got some business to talk over,’ Mr. Plowden said. ‘Take the trouble, will you, Mab, to see that no one comes in to disturb us.’

Mab thought it curious that, thus for two days within a week, her mother should have private business with Uncle James; but she said nothing except a ready assent to what he asked of her. ‘I’ll come towards the gate,’ she said; ‘I’ve got some things to put in on that border, and if any one comes that I can’t send away, you will hear me talking with them, Uncle James.’ She walked through the garden with him, so to speak, she on one side of the hedge, he on the other. ‘Fancy who turned up yesterday,’ she said; ‘a cousin whom, of course, I never saw before—a Lord William like my father; but fortunately they called him Lord Will.’

‘Lord William!’ cried the Rector, ‘a Pakenham—a son of the Marquis! Did he come to see you, or—for—for anything special?’

‘I don’t know what he wanted,’ said Mab. ‘To see us, I suppose. The funny thing is, he is like me. From this you may imagine he is not a beautiful young man, Uncle James.’

‘I don’t know why I should imagine that; I like your looks very well, my dear.’

‘Thank you, Uncle James,’ said Mab, with a laugh. ‘He is staying at the Hall, and I think he said that he would come back this morning, so, of course, if he comes I cannot send him away.’

‘I understand,’ said the Rector, with a countenance somewhat troubled. And he went into the little drawing-room, where Lady William rose up to meet him looking a little anxious. ‘You, James!’ she said. ‘I did not expect, especially at this hour, to see you.’

‘I can’t see why you should not have expected me, Emily; our last interview was serious enough,’ he said, shutting the door carefully behind him: and then he went across the room to the window, which was open. Being so nearly on a level with the garden it would, of course, have been easy enough for any one to hear from outside whatever conversation was going on within.

‘You frighten me with these precautions, James.’

‘There is nothing to be frightened about. You may imagine I have been thinking a great deal of what you told me the other day.’

‘Yes: and I heard Mab tell you the new incident.’

‘The appearance of the cousin? What is the signification of that, I wonder? But let us take the other, which is more important, first. Did you know my father kept a diary, Emily?’

‘I have seen him making little notes in various little books: but it is so long ago.’

‘And you were not here, of course, when we came into the Rectory. I found a quantity of these little books in the study, little calendars and almanacs, and so forth. I didn’t pay much attention to them—that is, I looked into one or two and they didn’t seem interesting. Queer, when people might really make such a record important, and they put in the merest trifles instead.’

‘“Chronicle small beer,”’ she said, with a faint smile; but she was pale with an interest much deeper than any record of public events could have commanded.

‘Eh?’ said the Rector, who was not literary; ‘but I thought it might be just possible—so I have been making a hunt through them, and I came upon something that might—that must help us.’

‘Thank God!’ she said, clasping her hands instinctively together.

‘We must not be too sanguine: and yet, of course, a dead man’s diary is evidence itself in a way.’

‘Tell me,’ she cried, with excitement, ‘tell me what papa said.’

‘Nearly twenty years ago,’ said the Rector, with a little emotion. ‘It’s like hearing the old man talk—with abrupt sentences, don’t you know—just as he spoke.’

‘What does he say? What does he say, James?’

‘This is the one, I think; no, it’s the next—no. I hope I haven’t brought the wrong ones after all.’

Lady William sat very quietly with her hands on her knee, only her fingers, which clasped and unclasped each other, showing a little the excitement of the suspense in which she was, as he drew forth one little book after another from the ample pockets of his coat. At last the right one was found, and then a minute or two elapsed before the Rector with his spectacles could find the entry of which he was in search. Lady William made no attempt to snatch it from his hand. She sat quite still with a self-enforced patience which was belied by the glitter in her eyes.

‘Here it is at last—October 23rd. Would that be the date?’

She bowed her head quickly, and her brother began to divine that she could not speak. He gave her a keen look, and then returned to the book.

‘“October 23rd.—Very agitating and extraordinary night. Em. came home after midnight accompanied by woman M., and Lord W. Extraordinary explanations. Marriage immediately or not at all. Leaving England. Gave consent.” Is that right?’

Lady William moved impatiently in her chair. ‘If you find it in the book, it must be right.’

‘Ah, well, that is true, no doubt. Then comes another—“25th.—Emily married. Old Gepps. Gave her away. They left train, Paris.”’

‘Is that all?’

‘It is all. I suppose old Gepps is the man who performed the ceremony. Did you ever hear my father speak of any one of that name? Do you remember the man?’

‘I recollect an old man with a white beard. I think I have a vague recollection even of the name.’

‘It is most extraordinary,’ cried the Rector, getting up from his chair, ‘that on an occasion of such importance you should not have remembered both place and name!’

‘Ah! it was just because it was an occasion of such importance, and everything so dreadful and so strange.’

‘Emily, I have hesitated to ask you: why in heaven’s name were you married like that? What was the cause?’

She pointed towards the book with a hand that trembled. ‘Papa has put it down there.’

‘He has put down the fact, but no explanation. The explanation apparently was given to him, but not recorded. But you—why should you not tell me? A sudden marriage like that, in such headlong haste—why was it? What did it mean?’

Lady William was silent for some time, clasping her fingers and unclasping them, gazing into the vacant air. At last she said: ‘James, you will think me too great a fool if I say that I did not know, at the time.’

‘Emily,’ he said, with a tone so sharp and keen that it went through her like a knife, ‘it is a long time since, and I have a right to know. Was it—was it through any fault of yours?’

She turned her eyes to him with a look of the utmost amazement. ‘Fault of mine!’ she said. ‘What could that have had to do with it—any fault of mine?’

She was a mature woman, and was supposed to know the world; but Mab herself could not have given him a more limpid look, could not have received his questions with more surprise. The Rector, quite confused, stepped back a pace, and said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ with a humility which was entirely out of his habits. He had grown quite pale, and glanced at her with a sort of fright, terrified lest perhaps it might dawn upon her what he meant.

‘I was bewildered,’ she said. ‘I was taken altogether by surprise. It was the romance that dazzled me—what seemed the romance—and all that they told me: that he had to leave England, must go, would be in danger of I know not what, yet would not go without me. And poor papa thought of—oh the folly, the pettiness of it!—the title, perhaps, and what he thought the connection. My poor father thought a great deal of connection.’ She smiled a little sadly, looking back with a sort of tenderness upon the weakness and folly of a time so long past. Then she drew herself up unconsciously, holding her head high. ‘I discovered the real meaning, but not till after. It was very bitter and terrible; but after all it is Mab’s father of whom we are speaking. James, let us return to the question of most importance. What is gained by this I don’t see. I don’t understand things of that kind.’

It was very conciliating and satisfactory to Mr. Plowden that she did not understand. ‘It gives a clue,’ he said. ‘We must look up Gepps. He must have been a friend of my father’s, and he must, of course, be in the “Clergy List.” I have been looking up what old ones I have, but I cannot find him. I have not got that year, but it can be got, it can be got. He was an old man, you say, and he must have died, I suppose, but he cannot have taken his church and his registers with him. We must ascertain what was his church.’

‘It was a little old-fashioned place, very dingy, with heavy pews; a small place with an old-fashioned pulpit and canopy. I remember the look of it—and the clergyman, an old man, with a white beard.’

‘In the City, most likely?’

Lady William shook her head. ‘I knew nothing of the City—nor anywhere except the parks and the streets round about that in which the Swinfords had a house. We went seldom, very seldom, to town in those days; I never, except with them.’

‘It must have been in the City,’ said Mr. Plowden. ‘What you describe settles the question. Well, then, I think now, Emily, there need be very little difficulty. Gepps must be in the “Clergy List.” If he is living, so much the better; he may have retired somewhere. But at all events the register must exist. I will go up to town to-morrow, and find the list for ‘sixty-five, and after that it will be plain sailing. All the same, how my father and you, but especially my father, could be such a fool!’

Lady William made no reply. To have her mind so thrown back upon that wonderful tragic moment of her life: to think of herself, the bewildered romantic girl, with all the wonderful tales poured into her ear by the flatterer by her side—that flatterer who was not the silent, disturbed bridegroom who himself said so little to explain the hot haste, the desperation of the strange wedding—was of itself painful enough and exciting. She had herself broached the subject to her brother when the question opened up by Mrs. Swinford had burst upon her, but she had not then entered into it so fully as now, and her mind was shaken by all those recollections. She seemed to see the shabby old church already, even so long ago, an anachronism among churches, with its heavy pulpit and pews and small round-headed windows, and the old clergyman with his white beard, and the complete absence of all those prettinesses with which a girl’s imagination surrounds her bridal—prettinesses, however, made up for by the thrilling romance which, when the moment came, had begun to yield a little to the natural pain of the position. She remembered with what a start of alarm she had found herself consigned to the husband of whom she knew so little, who was so little like the romantic hero of such a marriage, and who—as she only began to see when the step was irrevocable—showed so little of any sentiment for her which could justify the impetuous impatience of the proceedings. She remembered the awful sensation in her mind when she looked back from the window of the railway carriage upon her father’s smiling, complacent old face, enchanted by the consciousness that his daughter was now Lady William, sister-in-law to the Marquis of Portcullis, and on the mocking smile and exaggerated courtesies of ArtÉmise: and felt everything she loved sliding from her, and nothing left to her but the saturnine countenance opposite—the almost strange man, who if he loved her hotly had, as yet at least, shown no signs of it to herself. She did not hear her brother’s voice speaking to her in the heat and hurry of her thoughts. Oh, what recollections were these! So much more real than anything that occurred to her now, so much more potent in their terror and excitement than anything that could happen. She had known nothing in all her experience, read nothing, so tragical and terrible as the feelings of that poor little bride of nineteen, as she woke up from her romantic dream, and saw her father’s foolish old face so fresh and ruddy, so innocent and unconscious, just before it finally dropped out of sight to be seen no more. Perhaps it was her brother’s question, though she was scarcely aware that she heard it, how could my father be such a fool? that gave the impression of foolishness, of strange, cheerful imbecility to her last view of that rosy old face.

‘I repeat, Emily,’ said the Rector, with a little heat, ‘how could my father be such a fool? A girl of your age, of course, could not be expected to think of such things—but my father!—And I suppose he knew that the man you married was not—a model of every virtue.’

‘He was Mab’s father, James, and he was at least quite honourable, so far as I was concerned; he took no advantage—in respect to me.’

‘He could scarcely have been such a brute as that,’ the Rector said. ‘Well, I’ll go, Emily. To-morrow I’ll go to town and see if I can bring back all the papers square. Hush, what is that? Who is Mab talking to? We’ve done our talk, however, and it’s no matter being interrupted now.’

‘Good morning, Lord William,’ Mab’s voice was heard saying, perhaps a little louder than was necessary, to give her uncle the warning she had promised.

Lady William started violently at the sound of the name. She put her hand upon her breast where her heart had begun to beat loudly. ‘All those old recollections have upset my nerves,’ she said, with a little piteous smile. ‘Forgive me, James; it is the young man that Mab told you of, the cousin with the same name.’

‘Poor Emily!’ he said, taking her hand in both of his. ‘You have, I fear, no pleasant memories connected with it: but why, then, in the name of heaven, or the other place perhaps——’

‘The other place,’ she said, bursting into a faint hysterical laugh. ‘But wait a moment, the boy is coming in.’

‘I thought you were going away this morning,’ said Mab, evidently leading the way into the house. ‘You need not think of shaking hands, for I am always muddy when I am working in the garden. Yes, I do a great deal of work in the garden—indeed, I’m the gardener. Patty’s father gives me a hand for the heavier things, but do you imagine I would trust any one else with my flowers? Ah, it’s a little too early, but if you came here in June, then you should see! It’s not very big, to be sure. Mr. Leo has a great deal more space at the Hall, and I don’t know how many men, but——’ Mab said, ending abruptly with a little grimace (which, of course, could not be seen indoors) which said more than words.

‘I daresay it’s great fun working in the garden,’ said Lord Will, with a very serious face.

‘A garden is no fun at all when you don’t work in it,’ said Mab, ‘and, so far as I’ve seen, most other things are just the same. They become fun if you take an interest in them, and not in any other way.’

‘But then Miss Mab was always a philosopher,’ said Leo’s voice, with the faint sound in it that was not English.

‘Oh, Swinford’s there, too,’ said the Rector to his sister inside. ‘Don’t you think, Emily, you have him a little too often here?’

‘The other is staying with him,’ Lady William said, which was no doubt a subterfuge: but then it was very evident that she had no time to say any more.