There were a great variety of houses on the Green; some of them handsome and wealthy, some very old-fashioned, some even which might be called tumbledown. The two worst and smallest of these were at the lower end of the Green, not far from the ‘Barleymow.’ It must not be supposed however that they were unpleasantly affected by the neighbourhood of the ‘Barleymow.’ They were withdrawn from contact with it quite as much as we were, who lived at the other end; and though they were small and out of repair, and might even look mouldy and damp to a careless passer-by, they were still houses for gentlefolk, where nobody need have been ashamed to live. They were built partly of wood and partly of whitewashed brick, and each stood in the midst of a very luxuriant garden. At the time Mr. Reinhardt, of whom I am going to speak, came to East Cottage, as it was called, the place had been very much neglected; the trees and bushes grew wildly all over the garden; the flower-beds had gone to ruin; the kitchen-garden was a desert, with only a dreary cabbage or great long straggling onion-plant run to seed showing among the gooseberries and currants, which looked like the copsewood in a forest. It is miserable to see a place go to destruction like this, and I could not but reflect often how many poor people there were without a roof to shelter them, while this house was going to ruin for want of an inhabitant. ‘My dear lady, that is communism, rank communism,’ the Admiral said to me when I ventured to express my sentiments aloud; but I confess I never could see it.

The house belonged to Mr. Falkland, who was a distant relation of Lord Goodwin’s, and lived chiefly in London. He was a young man, and a barrister, living, I suppose, in chambers, as most of them do; but I wondered he did not furnish the place and keep it in order, if it had been only for the pleasure of coming down with his friends from Saturday to Monday, to spend Sunday in the country. When I suggested this, young Robert Lloyd, Mrs. Damerel’s brother, took it upon him to laugh.

‘There is nothing to do here,’ he said. ‘If it were near the river, for boating, it would be a different matter, or even if there was a stream to fish in; but a fellow has nothing to do here, and why should Falkland come to bore himself to death?’ Thus the young man ended with a sigh for himself, though he had begun with a laugh at me.

‘If he is so afraid to be bored himself,’ said I—for I was rather angry to hear our pretty village so lightly spoken of—‘I am sure he must know quantities of people who would not be bored. Young barristers marry sometimes, I suppose, imprudently, like other young people——’

‘Curates, for instance,’ said Robert, who was a saucy boy.

‘Curates, and young officers, and all sorts of foolish people,’ said I; ‘and think what a comfort that little house would be to a poor young couple with babies! Oh no, I do not like to see such a waste; a house going to rack and ruin for want of some one to live in it, and so many people famishing for want of fresh air, and the country. Don’t say any more, for it hurts me to see it. I wish it were mine to do what I liked with it only for a year.’

‘Communism, rank communism,’ said the Admiral. But if that is communism, then I am a communist, and I don’t deny it. I would not waste a Christian dwelling-place any more than I would throw away good honest wholesome bread.

However this state of things came to an end one spring, a good many years ago. Workmen came and began to put East Cottage in order. We all took the greatest interest in the work. It was quite a place to go to for our afternoon walks, and sometimes as many as three and four parties would meet there among the shavings and the pails of plaster and whitewash. It was being very thoroughly done up. We consulted each other and gave our opinions about all the papers, as if it mattered whether we liked them or not. The Green thought well of the new tenant’s taste on the whole, though some of us had doubts about the decoration of the drawing-room, which was rather a dark little room by nature. The paper for it was terribly artistic. It was one of those new designs which I always think are too mediÆval for a private house—groups of five or six daisies tied together, with long stalks detached and distinct, and all the hair on their heads standing on end, so to speak; but we who objected had a conviction that it was only our ignorance, and merely whispered to each other in corners, that we were not quite sure—that perhaps it was just a little—but the people who knew better thought it showed very fine taste indeed.

It was some time before we found out who the new tenant was. He did not come down until after everything had been arranged and ready for some weeks. Then we found out that he was a Mr. Reinhardt, a gentleman who was well-known, people said, in scientific circles. He was of German extraction, we supposed, by his name, and as for his connections, or where he came from, nobody knew anything about them. An old housekeeper was the first person who made her appearance, and then came an old man-servant; both of them looked the very models of respectability, but I do not think, for my own part, that the sight of them gave me a very pleasant feeling about their master. They chilled you only to look at them. The woman had a suspicious, watchful look, her eyes seemed to be always on the nearest corner looking for some one, and she had an air of resolution which I should not have liked to struggle against. The man was not quite so alarming, for he was older and rather feeble on his legs. One felt that there must be some weakness in his character to justify the little deviousness that would now and then appear in his steps. These two people attracted our notice in the interval of waiting for their master. The man’s name was White—an innocent, feeble sort of name, but highly respectable—and he called the woman something which sounded like Missis Sarah; but whether it was her Christian name or her surname we never could make out.

It was on a Monday evening, and I had gone to dine at the Lodge with Sir Thomas and Lady Denzil, when the first certain news of the new tenant of East Cottage reached us. The gentlemen, of course, had been the first to hear it. Somehow, though it is taken for granted that women are the great traffickers in gossip, it is the men who always start the subject. When they came into the drawing-room after dinner they gave us the information, which they had already been discussing among themselves over their wine.

‘Mr. Reinhardt has arrived,’ Sir Thomas said to Lady Denzil; and we all asked, ‘When?’

‘He came yesterday, I believe,’ said Sir Thomas.

‘Yesterday! Why, yesterday was Sunday,’ cried some one; and though we are, as a community, tolerably free from prejudice, we were all somewhat shocked; and there was a pause.

‘I believe Sunday is considered the most lucky day for everything abroad,’ said Lady Denzil, after that interval; ‘for beginning a journey, and no doubt for entering a house. And as he is of German extraction——’

‘He does not look like a German,’ said Robert Lloyd; ‘he is quite an old fellow—about fifty, I should say—and dark, not fair.’

At this speech the most of us laughed; for an old fellow of fifty seemed absurd to us, who were that age, or more; but Robert, at twenty, had no doubt on the subject.

‘Well,’ he said, half offended, ‘I could not have said a young fellow, could I? He stoops, he is awfully thin, like an old magician, and shabbily dressed, and——’

‘You must have examined him from head to foot, Robert.’

‘A fellow can’t help seeing,’ said Robert, ‘when he looks; and I thought you all wanted to know.’

Then we had a discussion as to what notice should be taken of the new comer. We did not know whether he was married or not, and, consequently, could not go fully into the question; but the aspect of the house and the looks of the servants were much against it. For my own part, I felt convinced he was not married; and, so far as we ladies were concerned, the question was thus made sufficiently easy. But the gentlemen felt the weight proportionably heavy on their shoulders.

‘I never knew any one of the name of Reinhardt,’ Sir Thomas said with a musing air.

‘Probably he will have brought letters from somebody,’ the Admiral suggested: and that was a wonderful comfort to all the men.

Of course he must have letters from somebody; he must know some one who knew Sir Thomas, or Mr. Damerel, or the Admiral, or General Perronet, or the Lloyds. Surely the world was not so large as to make it possible that the new comer did not know some one who knew one of the people on the Green. As for being a scientific notability, or even a literary character, I am afraid that would not have done much for him in Dinglefield. If he had been cousin to poor Lord Glyndon, who was next to an idiot, it would have been of a great deal more service to him. I do not say that we were right; I think there are other things which ought to be taken into consideration; but, without arguing about it, there is no doubt that so it was.

The Green generally kept a watchful eye for some time on the East Cottage. There were no other servants except those two whom we had already seen. Sometimes the gardener, who kept all the little gardens about in order—‘doing for’ ladies like myself, for instance, who could not afford to keep a gardener—was called in to assist at East Cottage; and I believe (of course I could not question him on the subject; I heard this through one of the maids) that he was very jocular about the man-servant, who was a real man-of-all-work, doing everything you could think of, from helping to cook, down to digging in the garden. Our gardener opened his mouth and uttered a great laugh when he spoke of him. He held the opinion common to a great many of his class, that to undertake too much was a positive injury to others. A servant who kept to his own work, and thought it was ‘not his place’ to interfere with anything beyond it, or lend a helping hand in matters beyond his own immediate calling, was Matthew’s model of what a servant ought to be, and a man who pretended to be a butler, and was a Jack-of-all-trades, was a contemptible object to our gardener: ‘taking the bread out o’ other folks’s mouths,’ he said. He thought the man at the East Cottage was a foreigner, and altogether had a very poor opinion of him. But however what was a great deal worse was the fact that neither the man-servant, nor the woman, nor the master, appeared to care for our notice, or in any way took the place they ought to have done in our little community. They had their things down from London; they either did their washing ‘within themselves’ or sent it also away to a distance; they made no friends, and sought none. Mr. Reinhardt brought no letters of introduction. Sometimes—but rarely—he might be seen of an evening walking towards the Dell, with an umbrella over his head to shield him from the setting sun, but he never looked at anybody whom he met, or showed the least inclination to cultivate acquaintance, even with a child or a dog. And the worst of all was that he certainly never went to church. We were very regular church-goers on the Green. Some of us preferred sometimes to go to a little church in the woods, which was intended for the scattered population of our forest district, and was very pretty and sweet in the midst of the great trees, instead of to the parish. But to one or other everybody went once every Sunday at least. It was quite a pretty sight on Sunday morning to see everybody turning out—families all together, and lonely folk like myself, who scarcely could feel lonely when there was such a feeling of harmony and friendliness about. The young people set off walking generally a little while before us; but most of the elder people drove, for it was a good long way. And though some rigid persons thought it was wrong on the Sunday, yet the nice carriages and horses looked pleasant, and the servants always had time to come to church; and an old lady like Lady Denzil, for instance, must have stayed at home altogether if she had not been allowed to drive. I think a distinction should be made in such cases. But when all the houses thus opened their doors and poured forth their inhabitants, it may be supposed how strange it looked that one house should never open and no figure ever come from it to join the Sunday stream. Even the housekeeper, so far as we could ascertain, never had a Sunday out. They lived within those walls, within the trees that were now so tidy and trim. One morning when I had a cold, and was reading the service by myself in my own room, I had a glimpse of the master of the house. It was a summer day, very soft and blue, and full of sunshine. You know what I mean when I say blue—the sky seemed to stoop nearer to the earth, the earth hushed itself and looked up all still and gentle to the sky. There were no clouds above, and nobody moving below; nothing but a little thrill and flicker of leaves, a faint rustle of the grass, and the birds singing with a softer note, as if they too knew it was Sunday. My room is in the front of the house, and overlooks all the Green. The window was open, and the click of a latch sounding in the stillness made me lift my head without thinking from the lesson I was reading. It was Mr. Reinhardt, who had come out of his cottage. He came to the garden gate and stood for a moment looking out. I was not near enough to see his face, but in every line of his spare, stooping figure there was suspicion and doubt. He looked to the right and to the left with a curious prying eagerness, as if he expected to see some one coming. And then he came out altogether, and began to walk up and down, up and down. The stillness was so great that, though he walked very softly, the sound of his steps on the gravel of the road reached me from time to time. I stopped in my reading to watch him, in spite of myself. Every time he turned he looked about him in the same suspicious, curious way. Was he waiting for some one? Was he looking out for a visitor? or was he (the thought sprang into my mind all at once) insane perhaps, and had escaped from his keepers in the cottage? This thought made my heart jump, but a little reflection calmed me, for he had not the least appearance of insanity. The little jar now and then of his foot when he turned kept me in excitement; I felt it impossible to keep from watching him. When I found how abstracted my mind was getting, I changed my place that I might not be tempted to look out any more, feeling that it was wrong to yield to this curiosity; and when I had finished my reading the first carriage—the Denzils’ carriage—was coming gleaming along the distant road in the sunshine, coming back from church, and the lonely figure was gone. I did not know whether he had gone in again or had extended his walk. But I felt somehow all that day, though you will say with very little reason, that I knew something more about our strange neighbour than most people did on the Green.

CHAPTER II

This seclusion and isolation of East Cottage did not however last very long. Before the summer was over Sir Thomas, who, though he stood on his dignity sometimes, was very kind at bottom, began to feel compunctious about his solitary neighbour: now and then he would say something which betrayed this. ‘It worries me to think there is some one there who has been taken no notice of by anybody,’ he would say. ‘Of course it is his own fault—entirely his own fault.’ The next time one met him he would return to the subject. ‘What a lovely day! Everybody seems to be out-of-doors—except at East Cottage, where they have the blinds drawn down.’ This would be said with a pucker of vexation and annoyance about his mouth. He was angry with the stranger, and sorry, and did not know what to do. And I for one knew what would follow. But we were all very curious when we heard that Sir Thomas had actually called. The Stokes came running in to tell me one afternoon. ‘Oh, fancy, Mrs. Mulgrave, Sir Thomas has called!’ cried Lucy. ‘And he has been admitted, which is still greater fun,’ said Robert Lloyd, who was with them. I may say in passing that this was before Robert had passed his examination, when he was an idle young man at home, trying hard to persuade Lucy Stoke that he and she were in love with each other. Their parents, of course, would never have permitted such a thing for a moment, and fortunately there turned out to be nothing in it; but at present this was the chief occupation of Robert’s life.

‘I am very glad,’ said I. ‘I knew Sir Thomas never would be happy till he had done it.’

‘And oh, you don’t know what funny stories there are about,’ said Lucy. ‘They say he killed his wife, and that he is always thinking he sees her ghost. I wonder if it is true? They say he can never be left alone or in the dark; he is so frightened. I met him yesterday, and it made me jump. I never saw a man who killed his wife before.’

‘But who says he killed his wife?’

‘Oh, everybody; we heard it from Matthew the gardener, and I think he heard it at the “Barleymow,” and it is all over the place. Fancy Sir Thomas calling on such a person! for I suppose,’ said Lucy, ‘though you are so very superior, you men, and may beat us, and all that, it is not made law yet that you may kill your wives.’

‘It might just as well be the law: for I am sure there are many other things quite as bad,’ said Lottie, while Robert, who had been appealed to, whispered some answer which made Lucy laugh. ‘Poor man, I wonder if she was a very bad woman, and if she haunts him. How disappointed he must have been to find he could not get rid of her even that way!’

‘Lottie, my dear, here is Sir Thomas coming; don’t talk so much nonsense,’ said I hurriedly.

I am afraid however that Sir Thomas rather liked the nonsense. He had not the feeling of responsibility in encouraging girls to run on, that most women have. He thought it was amusing, as men generally do, and never paused to think how bad it was for the girls. But to-day he was too full of his own story to care much for theirs. He came in with dusty boots, which was quite against his principles, and stretched his long spare limbs out on the beautiful rug which the Stokes had worked for me in a way that went to my heart. That showed how very much pre-occupied he was; for Sir Thomas was never inconsiderate about such matters.

‘Well,’ he said, pushing his thin white hair off his forehead, and stretching out his legs as if he were quite worn out, ‘there is one piece of work well over. I have had a good many tough jobs in my life, but I don’t know that I ever had a worse.’

‘Oh, tell us what happened. Is he mad? Has he shut himself in? Has he hurt you?’ cried the Stokes.

Sir Thomas smiled upon this nonsense as if it had been perfectly reasonable, and the best sense in the world.

‘Hurt me! well, not quite: he was not likely to try that. He is a little mite of a man, who could not hurt a fly. And besides,’ added Sir Thomas, correcting himself, ‘he is a gentleman. I have no reason to doubt he is a perfect gentleman. He conducts himself quite as—as all the rest of us do. No, it was the difficulty of getting in that bewildered me.’

‘Was there a difficulty in getting in?’

‘You shall hear. The servant looked as if he would faint when he saw me. “Mr. Reinhardt at home?” Oh! he could not quite say; if I would wait he would go and ask. So I waited in the hall,’ said Sir Thomas with a smile. ‘Well, yes, it was odd, of course; but such an experience now and then is not bad for one. It shows you, you know, of how little importance you are the moment you get beyond the circle of people who know you. I think really it is salutary, you know, if you come to that—and amusing,’ he added, this time with a little laugh.

‘Oh, but what a shame: how shocking! how horrid! You, Sir Thomas, whom everybody knows!’

‘That is just what makes it so instructive,’ he said. ‘I must have stood in the hall a quarter of an hour: allowing for the tediousness of waiting, I should say certainly a quarter of an hour; and then the man came back and asked me, what do you think? if I had come of my own accord, or if some one had sent me! It was ludicrous,’ said Sir Thomas with a half laugh; ‘but if you will think of it, it was rather irritating. I am afraid I lost my temper a little. I said, “I am Sir Thomas Denzil. I live at the Lodge, and I have come to call upon your master,” in a tone which made the old fool of a man shake, and then some one else appeared at the top of the stairs. It was Mr. Reinhardt, who had heard my voice.’

‘What did he say for himself?’ I asked.

‘It was not his fault,’ said Sir Thomas; ‘he knew nothing of it. He is a very well-informed man, Mrs. Mulgrave. He is quite able to enter into conversation on any subject. He was very glad to see me. He is a sort of recluse, it is easy to perceive, but quite a proper person; very well-informed, one whom it was a pleasure to converse with, I assure you. He made a thousand apologies. He said something about unfortunate circumstances, and a disagreeable visitor, as an excuse for his man; but whether the disagreeable visitor was some one who had been there or who was expected——’

‘Oh, I know,’ cried Lucy Stoke, with excitement. ‘It was his wife’s ghost.’

Sir Thomas stopped short aghast, and looked at me to ask if the child had gone mad.

‘How could they think Sir Thomas was the wife’s ghost?’ cried Lottie, ‘you little goose! and besides, most likely it is not true.’

‘What is not true?’ asked Sir Thomas in dismay.

‘Oh, they say he killed her,’ said Lucy, ‘and that she haunts him. They say his man sleeps in his room, and the housekeeper just outside. He cannot be left by himself for a moment: and I do not wonder he should be frightened if he has killed his wife.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said Sir Thomas, raising his voice. ‘Nonsense!’ he was quite angry. He had taken up the man and felt responsible for him, ‘My dear child, I think you are going out of your little wits,’ he cried. ‘Killed his wife! why, the man is a thorough gentleman. A most well-informed man, and knows my friend Sir Septimus Dash, who is the head of the British Association. Why, why, Lucy! you take away my breath.’

‘It was not I who said it,’ cried Lucy. ‘It is all over the Green—everybody knows. They say she disappeared all at once, and never was heard of more; and then there used to be sounds like somebody crying and moaning; and then he got so frightened, he never would go anywhere, nor look any one in the face. Oh! only suppose; how strange it would be to have a haunted house on the Green. If I had anybody to go with me I should like to walk down to East Cottage at midnight.’

‘Let me go with you,’ whispered Robert; but fortunately I heard him, and gave Lucy a look. She was a silly little girl certainly, but not so bad as that.

‘This is really very great nonsense,’ said Sir Thomas. ‘A haunted house at this time of day! Mrs. Mulgrave, I hope you will use all your influence to put down this story if it exists. I give you my word, Mr. Reinhardt is quite an addition to our society, and knows Sir Septimus Dash. A really well-bred, well-informed man. I am quite shocked, I assure you. Lucy, I hope you will not spread this ridiculous story. I shall ask your mother what she thinks. Poor man! no wonder he looked uncomfortable, if there is already such a rumour abroad.’

‘Then he did look uncomfortable?’ said Lottie.

‘No, I can’t say he did. No; I don’t mean uncomfortable,’ said Sir Thomas, seeing he had committed himself. ‘I mean—— it is absurd altogether. A charming man; one whom you will all like immensely. I think Lady Denzil must have returned from her drive. We are to see you all to-morrow, I believe, in the afternoon? Now, Lucy, no more gossip; leave that to the old women, my dear.’

‘Sir Thomas does not know what to make of it,’ said Lottie, as we watched him cross the Green. ‘He has gone to my lady to have his mind made up whether he ought to pay any attention to it or not.’

‘And my lady will say not,’ said I; ‘fortunately we are all sure of that. Lady Denzil will not let anybody be condemned without a hearing. And, Lucy, I think Sir Thomas gave you very good advice; when you are old it will be time enough to amuse yourself with spreading stories, especially such dreadful stories as this.’

Lucy took offence at what I said, and went away pouting—comforted by Robert Lloyd, and very indignant with me. Lottie stayed for a moment behind her to tell me that it was really quite true, and that the report had gone all over the Green, and everybody was talking of it. No one knew quite where it had come from, but it was already known to all the world at Dinglewood, and a very unpleasant report it was.

However time went on, and no more was heard of this. In a little place like Dinglewood, as soon as everybody has heard a story, a pause ensues. We cannot go on indefinitely propagating it, and renewing our own faith in it. When we all know it, and nothing new can be said on the subject, we are stopped short; and unless there are new facts to comment upon, or some new light thrown upon the affair, it is almost sure to die away, as a matter of course. This was the case in respect to the report about Mr. Reinhardt. We got no more information, and we could not go on talking about the old story for ever. We exhausted it, and grew tired of it, and let it drop; and thus, by degrees, we got used to him, and became acquainted with him, more or less.

The other gentlemen called, one by one, after Sir Thomas. Mr. Reinhardt was asked, timidly, to one or two dinner-parties, and declined, which we thought at first showed, on the whole, good taste on his part. But he became quite friendly when we met him on the road, and would stop to talk, and showed no moroseness, nor fear of any one. He had what was generally pronounced to be a refined face—the features high and clear, with a kind of ivory paleness, and keen eyes, which were very sharp to note everything. He was, as Sir Thomas said, very well-informed. There seemed to be nothing that you could talk about that he did not know; and in science, the gentlemen said he was a perfect mine of knowledge. I am not sure however that they were very good judges, for I don’t think either Sir Thomas or the Admiral knew much about science. One thing however which made some of us still doubtful about him was the fact that he never talked of people. When a name was mentioned in conversation he never said, ‘Oh, I know him very well—I knew his father—a cousin of his was a great friend of mine,’ as most people do. All the expression went out of his face as soon as we came to this kind of talk; and it may be supposed how very much at a loss most people were in consequence for subjects to talk about. But this, though it was strange, was not any sort of proof that he had done anything wicked. It might be—and the most of us thought it was—an evidence that he had not lived in society. ‘He knows my friend, Sir Septimus Dash,’ Sir Thomas always said in his favour; but then, of course, Sir Septimus was a public personage, and Mr. Reinhardt might have made his acquaintance at some public place. But still, a man may be of no family, and out of society, and yet not have murdered his wife. After a while we began to think, indeed, that whether he had killed her or not, it was just as well there was no wife in the question—‘Just as well,’ Mrs. Perronet said, who was great in matters of society. ‘A man whom nobody knows does not matter; but what should we have done with a woman?’

‘He must have killed her on purpose to save us the trouble,’ said Lottie. But the General’s wife was quite in earnest, and did not see the joke.

CHAPTER III

It is a good thing, on the whole, to have a house with a mystery about it in one’s immediate neighbourhood. Gradually we ceased to believe that Mr. Reinhardt had anything criminal about him. But it was quite certain that there was a mystery—that we knew nothing about him, neither where he came from, nor what his family was. For one thing, he had certainly no occupation: therefore, of course, he must be sufficiently well off to do without that: and he had no relations—no one who ever came to see him, nor of whom he talked; and though the men who called upon him had been admitted, they were never asked to go back, nor had one of us ladies ever crossed his threshold. It would seem indeed that he had made a rule against admitting ladies, for when Mrs. Damerel herself called to speak of the soup-kitchen, old White came and spoke to her at the gate, and trembled very much, and begged her a hundred pardons, but nevertheless would not let her in—a thing which made her very indignant. Thus the house became to us all a mysterious house, and, on the whole, I think we rather liked it. The mystery did no harm, and it certainly amused us, and kept our interest alive.

Thus the summer passed, and Dinglefield had got used to the Scientific Gentleman. That was the name he generally went by. When strangers came to the Green, and had it all described to them—Sir Thomas here, the Admiral there, the General at the other side, and so on, we always gave a little special description of Mr. Reinhardt.

‘He is a Fellow of the Royal Society,’ one would say, not knowing much what that meant. ‘He belongs to the British Association,’ said another. ‘He is a great scientific light.’ We began even to feel a little proud of him. Even I myself, on the nights when I did not sleep well, used to feel quite pleased, when I looked out, to see the Scientific Gentleman’s light still burning. He was sitting up there, no doubt, pondering things that were much beyond our comprehension—and it made us proud to think that, on the Green, there was some one who was going over the abstrusest questions in the dead of the night.

It was about six months after his arrival when, one evening, for some special reason, I forget what, I went to Mrs. Stoke’s to tea. She lives a little way down the lane, on the other side of the ‘Barleymow.’ It is not often that she asks any one even to tea. As a rule, people generally ask her and her daughters, for we are all very well aware of her circumstances; but on this particular night, I was there for some reason or other. It was October, and the nights had begun to be cold; but there was a full moon, and at ten o’clock it was as light as day. This was why I would not let them send any one home with me. I must say I have never understood how middle-aged women like myself can have a pretty young maid-servant sent for them, knowing very well that the girl must walk one way alone, and that, if there is any danger at all, a young woman of twenty is more in the way of it, than one who might be her mother. I remember going to the door to look out, and protesting that I was not the least nervous—nor was I. I knew all the roads as well as I knew my own garden, and everybody round about knew me. The way was not at all lonely. To be sure, there were not many people walking about; but then there were houses all along—and lastly, it was light as day. The moon was shining in that lavish sort of way which she only has when she is at the full. The houses amid their trees stood whitened over, held fast by the light as the wedding-guest was held by the eye of the Ancient Mariner. The shadows were as black as the light was white. There was a certain solemnity about it, so full of light, and yet so colourless. After I had left the house, and had come out—I and my shadow—into the full whiteness, it made an impression upon me which I could scarcely resist. My first idea when I glanced back was that my own shadow was some one stealing after me. That gave me a shake for a moment, though I laughed at myself. The lights of the ‘Barleymow’ neutralized this solemn feeling, and I went on, thinking to myself what a good story it would be for my neighbours—my own shadow! I did not cross the Green, as I generally did, partly from a vague feeling that, though it was so light and so safe, there was a certain company in being close to the houses—not that I was the least afraid, or that indeed there was any occasion to fear, but just for company’s sake. By this time, I think it must have been very nearly eleven o’clock, which is a late hour for Dinglefield. All the houses seemed shut up for the night. Looking up the Green, the effect of the sleeping place, with the moon shining on the pale gables and ends of houses, and all the trees in black, and the white stretch of space in the centre, looking as if it had been clean swept by the moonlight of every obstacle, had the strangest effect. I was not in the least afraid. What should I be afraid of, so close to my own door? But still I felt a little shiver run over me—a something involuntary, which I could not help, like that little thrill of the nerves, which makes people say that some one is walking over your grave.

And all at once in the great stillness and quiet I heard a sound quite near. It was very soft at first, not much louder than a sigh. I hurried on for a few steps frightened, I could not tell why, and then, disgusted with myself, I stopped to listen. Yes, now it came again, louder this time; and then I turned round to look where it came from. It was the sound of some one moaning either in sorrow or in pain; a soft, interrupted moan, now and then stopping short with a kind of sob. My heart began to beat, but I said to myself, it is some one in trouble, and I can’t run away. The sound came from the side of East Cottage, just where the little railing in front ended; and, after a long look, I began to see that there was some one there. What I made out was the outline of a figure seated on the ground with knees drawn up, and looking so thin that they almost came to a point. It was straight up against the railing, and so overshadowed by the lilac-bushes that the outline of the knees, black, but whitened over as it were with a sprinkling of snow or silver, was all that could be made out. It was like something dimly seen in a picture, not like flesh and blood. It gave me the strangest sensation to see this something, this shrouded semblance of a human figure, at Mr. Reinhardt’s door. All the stories that had been told of him came back to my mind. His wife! I would have kept the recollection out of my mind if I could, but it came without any will of mine. I turned and went on as fast as ever I could. I should have run like a frightened child had I followed my own instinctive feeling. My heart beat, my feet rang upon the gravel; and then I stopped short, hating myself. How silly and weak I was! It might be some poor creature, some tramp or wandering wretch, who had sunk down there in sickness or weariness, while I in my cowardice passed by on the other side frightened lest it should be a ghost. I do not know to this day how it was that I forced myself to turn and go back, but I did. Oh! what a moaning, wailing sound it was; not loud, but the very cry of desolation. I felt as I went, though my heart beat so, that such a moaning could only come from a living creature, one who had a body full of weariness and pain, as well as a suffering soul.

I turned back and went up to the thing with those sharp-pointed knees; then I saw the hands clasped round the knees, and the hopeless head bowed down upon them, all black and silvered over like something cut out of ebony. I even saw, or thought I saw, amid the flickering of the heavens above and the shadows below, a faint rocking in the miserable figure;—that mechanical, unconscious rocking which is one of the primitive ways of showing pain. I went up, all trembling as I was, and asked ‘What is the matter?’ with a voice as tremulous. There was no answer; only the moaning went on, and the movement became more perceptible. Fortunately, my terror died away when I saw this. The human sound and action, that were like what everybody does, brought me back at once out of all supernatural dread. It was a woman, and she was unhappy. I dismissed the other thought—or rather, it left me unawares.

This gave me a great deal of courage. I repeated my question; and then, as there was no answer, went up and touched her softly. The figure rose with a spring in a moment, before I could think what she was going to do. She put out one of her hands, and pushed me off.

‘Ah! have I brought you out at last?’ she cried wildly; and then stopped short and stared at me; while I stared, too, feeling, whoever it might be she had expected, that I was not the person. Her movement was so sudden, that I shrank back in terror, fearing once more I could not tell what. She was a very tall, slight woman, with a cloak tightly wrapped about her. In the confusion of the moment I could remark nothing more.

‘Are you ill?’ I said, faltering. ‘My good woman, I—I don’t want to harm you; I heard you moaning, and I—thought you were ill——’

She seized me by the arm, making my very teeth chatter. The grasp was bony and hard like the hand of a skeleton.

‘Are you from that house? Are you from him?’ she cried, pointing behind her with her other hand. ‘Bid him come out to me himself; bid him come out and go down on his knees before I’ll give in to enter his door. Oh! I’ve not come here for nought—I’ve not come here for nought! I’ve come with all my wrongs that he’s done me. Tell him to come out himself; it is his part.’

Her voice grew hoarse with the passion that was in it, and yet it was a voice that had been sweet.

I put up my hand, pleading with her, trying to get a hearing, but she held me fast by the arm.

‘I have not come from that house,’ I said. ‘You frighten me. I—I live close by. I was passing and heard you moan. Is there anything the matter? Can I be—of any use?’

I said this very doubtfully, for I was afraid of the strange figure, and the passionate speech.

Then she let go her hold all at once. She looked at me and then all round. There was not another creature visible except, behind me, I suppose, the open door and lights of the ‘Barleymow.’ She might have done almost what she would to me had she been disposed;—at least, at the moment that was how I felt.

‘You live close by?’ she said, putting her hand upon her heart, which was panting and heaving with her passion.

‘Yes. Are you—staying in the neighbourhood? Have you—lost your way?’

I said this in my bewilderment, not knowing what the words were which came from my lips. Then the poor creature leaned back upon the wall and gasped and sobbed. I could not make out at first whether it was emotion or want of breath.

‘Yes, I’ve lost my way,’ she said; ‘not here, but in life; I’ve lost my way in life, and I’ll never find it again. Oh! I’m ill—I’m very ill. If you are a good Christian, as you seem, take me in somewhere and let me lie down till the spasm’s past; I feel it coming on now.’

‘What is it?’ I asked.

She put her hand upon her heart and panted and gasped for breath. Poor wretch! At that moment I heard behind me the locking of the door at the ‘Barleymow.’ I know I ought to have called out to them to wait, but I had not my wits about me as one ought to have.

‘Have you no home?’ I asked; ‘nowhere to go to? You must live somewhere. I will go with you and take you home.’

‘Home!’ she cried. ‘It is here or in the churchyard, nowhere else—here or in the churchyard. Take me to one or the other, good woman, for Christ’s sake: I don’t care which—to my husband’s house or to the churchyard—for Christ’s sake.’

For Christ’s sake! You may blame me, but what could I do? Could any of you refuse if you were asked in that name? You may say any one can use such words—any vagabond, any wretch—and, of course, it is true; but could you resist the plea—you who are neither a wretch nor a vagabond?—I know you could not, any more than me.

‘Lean upon me,’ I said; ‘take my arm; try if you can walk. Oh! I don’t know who you are or what you are, but when you ask for Christ’s sake, you know, He sees into your heart. If you have any place that I can take you to, tell me; you must know it is difficult to take a stranger into one’s house like this. Tell me if you have not some room—some place where you can be taken care of; I will give you what you want all the same.’

We were going on all this time, walking slowly towards my house; she was gasping, holding one hand to her heart and with the other leaning heavily on me. When I made this appeal to her she stopped and turned half round, waving her hand towards the house we were leaving behind us.

‘If that is Mr. Reinhardt’s house,’ she said, ‘take me there if you will. I am—his wife. He’ll leave me to die—on the doorstep—most likely; and be glad. I haven’t strength—to—say any more.’

‘His wife!’ I cried in my dismay.

‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ cried the panting creature. ‘Ay! that’s the truth.’

What could I do? She was scarcely able to totter along, panting and breathless. It was her heart. Poor soul! how could any one tell what she might have had to suffer? I took her, though with trembling—what could I do else?—to my own house.

CHAPTER IV

I cannot attempt to describe what my feelings were when I went into my own house with that strange woman. Though it was a very short way, we took a long time to get there. She had disease of the heart evidently, and one of the paroxysms had come on.

‘I shall be better by and by,’ she said to me, gasping as she leaned on my arm.

My mind was in such a confusion that I did not know what I was doing. She might be only a tramp, a thief, a vagabond. As for what she had said of being Mr. Reinhardt’s wife—my head swam, I could neither understand nor explain to myself how this had come about. But, whether she was good or bad, I could not help myself; I was committed to it. Every house on the Green was closed and silent. The shutters were all put up at the ‘Barleymow,’ and silence reigned. No, thank Heaven! in the Admiral’s window there were still lights, so that if anything happened I could call him to my aid. He was my nearest neighbour, and the sight of his lighted window gave me confidence.

My maid gave a little shriek when she opened the door, and this too roused me. I said, ‘Mary, this—lady is ill; she will lie down on the sofa in the drawing-room while we get ready the west room. You will not mind the trouble, I am sure, when you see how ill she is.’

This I said to smooth matters, for it is not to be supposed that Mary, who was already yawning at my late return, should be quite pleased at being sent off to make up a bed and prepare a room unexpectedly as it were in the middle of the night. And I was glad also to send her away, for I saw her give a wondering look at the poor creature’s clothes, which were dusty and soiled. She had been sitting on the dusty earth by Mr. Reinhardt’s cottage, and it was not wonderful if her clothes showed marks of it. I made her lie down on the sofa, and got her some wine. Poor forlorn creature! The rest seemed to be life however to her. She sank back upon the soft cushions, and her heavy breathing softened almost immediately. I left her there (though, I confess, not without a slight sensation of fear), and went to the west room to help Mary. It was a room we seldom used, at the end of a long passage, and therefore the one best fitted to put a stranger, about whom I knew nothing, in. Mary did not say anything, but I could feel that she disapproved of me in every pat she gave to the fresh sheets and pillows. And I was conciliatory, as one so often is to one’s servants. I drew a little picture of how I had found the ‘poor lady’ panting for breath and unable to walk—of how weak and how thin she was—and what a terrible thing to have heart-disease, which came on with any exertion—and how anxious her friends must be.

All this Mary listened to in grim silence, patting now and then the bedclothes with her hand, as if making a protest against all I said. At length, when I had exhausted my eloquence, and began to grow a little angry, Mary cleared her throat and replied,

‘Please, ma’am, I know it ain’t my place to speak——’

‘Oh! you can say what you please, Mary, so long as it is not unkind to your neighbours,’ said I.

‘I never set eyes on the—lady—before, so she can’t be a neighbour of mine,’ said Mary; ‘but she’s been seen about the Green days and days. I’ve seen her myself a-haunting East Cottage, where that poor gentleman lives.’

‘You said this moment that you never set eyes on her before.’

‘Not to know her, ma’am,’ said Mary; ‘it’s different. I saw her to-day walking up and down like a ghost, and I wouldn’t have given sixpence for all she had on her. It ain’t my place to speak, but one as you don’t know, and as may have a gang ready to murder us all in our beds—— Mother was in service in London when she was young, and oh! to hear the tales she knows. Pretending to be ill is the commonest trick of all, mother says, and then they get took in, and then, when all’s still——’

‘It is very kind of you, I am sure, to instruct me by your mother’s experiences,’ said I, feeling very angry. ‘Now you can go to bed if you please, and lock your door, and then you will be safe. I shall not want you any more to-night.’

‘Oh! but please, ma’am. I don’t want to leave you by yourself—please, I don’t!’ cried Mary, with the ready tears coming to her eyes.

However I sent her away. I was angry, and perhaps unreasonable, as people generally are when they are angry; though, when Mary went to bed, I confess it was not altogether with an easy mind that I found myself alone with the stranger in the silent house. It is always a comfort to know that there is some one within reach. I went back softly to the drawing-room: she was still lying on the sofa, quite motionless and quiet, no longer panting as she had done. When I looked at her closely I saw that she had dropped asleep. The light of the lamp was full on her face, and yet she had dropped asleep, being, as I suppose, completely worn out. I saw her face then for the first time, and it startled me. It was not a face which you could describe by any of the lighter words of admiration as pretty or handsome. It was simply the most beautiful face I ever saw in my life. It was pale and worn, and looked almost like death lying back in that attitude of utter weakness on the velvet cushions; and, though the eyes were closed, and the effect of them lost, it was impossible to believe that the loveliest eyes in the world could have made her more beautiful. She had dark hair, wavy and slightly curling upon the forehead; her eyelashes were very long and dark, and curled upwards; her features, I think, must have been perfect; and the look of pain had gone from her face; she was as serene as if she had been dead.

I was very much startled by this: so much so that for the moment I sank down upon a chair, overcome by confusion and surprise, and did not even shade the lamp, as I had intended to do. You may wonder that I should be so much surprised, but then you must remember that great beauty is not common anywhere, and that to pick it out of the ditch as it were, and find it thus in the person of one who might be a mere vagabond and vagrant for aught you could tell, was very strange and startling. It took away my breath; and then, the figure which belonged to this face formed so strange a contrast with it. I know, as everybody else does, that beauty is but skin-deep; that it is no sign of excellence, or of mental or moral superiority in any way; that it is accidental and independent of the character of its possessor as money is, or anything else you are born to: I know all this perfectly well; and yet I feel, as I suppose everybody else does, that great beauty is out of place in squalid surroundings. When I saw the worn and dusty dress, the cloak tightly drawn across her breast, the worn shoes that peeped out from below her skirt, I felt ashamed. It was absurd, but such was my feeling; I felt ashamed of my good gown and lace, and fresh ribbons. To think that I, and hundreds like me, should deck ourselves, and leave this creature in her dusty gown! My suspicions went out of my mind in a moment. Instead of the uneasy doubt whether perhaps she might have accomplices (it made me blush to think I had dreamt of such a thing) waiting outside, I began to feel indignant with everybody that she could be in such a plight. Reinhardt’s wife! How did he dare, that mean, insignificant man, to marry such a creature, and to be cruel to her after he had married her! I started up and removed the lamp, shading her face, and I took my shawl, which was my best shawl, an Indian one, and really handsome, and covered her with it. I did it—I can’t tell why—with a feeling that I was making her a little compensation. Then I opened one of the windows to let in the air, for the night was sultry; and then I put myself into my favourite chair, and leant back my head, and made myself as comfortable as I could to watch her till she woke. I should have thought this a great hardship a little while before, but I did not think it a hardship now. I had become her partisan, her protector, her servant, in a moment, and all for no reason except the form of her features, the look of that sleeping face. I acknowledge that it was absurd, but still I know you would have done the same had you been in my place. I suspected her no more, had no doubts in my mind, and was not the least annoyed that Mary had gone to bed. It seemed to me as if her beauty established an immediate relationship between us, somehow, and made it natural that I, or any one else who might happen to be in the way, should give up our own convenience for her. It was her beauty that did it, nothing else, not her great want and solitude, not even the name by which she had adjured me;—her beauty, nothing more. I do not defend myself for having fallen prostrate before this primitive power; I could not help it, but I don’t attempt to excuse myself.

I must have dozed in my chair, for I woke suddenly, dreaming that some one was standing over me and staring at me—a kind of nightmare. I started with a little cry, and for the first moment I was bewildered, and could not think how I had got there. Then all at once I saw her, and the mystery was solved. She had woke too, and lay on her side on the sofa, looking intently at me with a gaze which renewed my first impression of terror. She had not moved, she lay in the same attitude of exhaustion and grateful repose, with her head thrown back upon the cushions. There was only this difference—that whereas she had then been unconscious in sleep, she was now awake, and so vividly, intensely conscious that her look seemed an active influence. I felt that she was doing something to me by gazing at me so. She had woke me no doubt by that look. She made me restless now, so that I could not keep still. I rose up, and made a step or two towards her.

‘Are you better? I hope you are better,’ I said.

Still she did not move, but said calmly, without any attempt at explanation: ‘Are you watching me from kindness or because you were afraid I should do some harm?’

She was not grateful: the sight of me woke no kindly feeling in her: and I was wounded in spite of myself.

‘Neither,’ said I; ‘you fell asleep, and I preferred staying here to waking you; but it is almost morning and the oil is nearly burnt out in the lamp. There is a room ready for you; will you come with me now?’

‘I am very comfortable,’ she said; ‘I have not been so comfortable for a very long time. I have not been well off. I have had to lie on hard beds and eat poor fare, whilst all the time those who had a right to take care of me——’

‘Don’t think of that now,’ I said. ‘You will feel better if you are undressed. Come now and go to bed.’

She kept her position, without taking any notice of what I said.

‘I have a long story to tell you—a long story,’ she went on. ‘When you hear it you will change your mind about some things. Oh, how pleasant it is to be in a nice handsome lady’s room again! How pleasant a carpet is, and pictures on the walls! I have not been used to them for a long time. I suppose he has every kind of thing, everything that is pleasant; and, if he could, he would have liked to see me die at his door. That is what he wants. It would be a pleasure to him to look out some morning and see me lying like a piece of rubbish under the wall. He would have me thrown upon the dust-heap, I believe, or taken off by the scavengers as rubbish. Yes, that is what he would like, if he could.’

‘Oh, don’t think so,’ I cried. ‘He cannot be so cruel. He has not a cruel face.’

Upon this she sat up, with the passion rising in her eyes.

‘How can you tell?—you were never married to him!’ she said. ‘He never cast you off, never abandoned you, never——’ Her excitement grew so great that she now rose up on her feet, and clenched her hand and shook it as if at some one in the distance. ‘Oh, no!’ she cried; ‘no one knows him but me!’

‘Oh, if you would go to bed!’ I said. ‘Indeed I must insist: you will tell me your story in the morning. Come, you must not talk any more to-night.’

I did not get her disposed of so easily as this, but after a while she did allow herself to be persuaded. My mind had changed about her again, but I was too tired now to be frightened. I put her into the west room. And oh! how glad I was to lie down in my bed, though I had a stranger in the house whom I knew nothing of, and though it only wanted about an hour of day!

CHAPTER V

When I got up, about two hours after, I was in a very uncomfortable state of mind, not knowing in the least what I ought to do. Daylight is a great matter to be sure, and consoles one in one’s perplexity; but yet daylight means the visits of one’s friends, and inquiries into all that one has done and means to do. I could not have such an inmate in my house without people knowing it. I was thrusting myself as it were into a family quarrel which I knew nothing of—I, one of the most peaceable people—!

When I went down-stairs the drawing-room was still as I had left it, and the sofa and its cushions were all marked with dust where my poor visitor had lain down. I believe, though Mary is a good girl on the whole, that there was a little spite in all this to show me my own enormity. A decanter of wine was left on the table too, with the glass which had been used last night. It gave the most miserable, squalid look to the room, or at least I thought so. Then Mary appeared with her broom and dustpan, severely disapproving, and I was swept away, like the dust, and took refuge in the garden, which was hazy and dewy, and rather cold on this October morning. The trees were all changing colour, the mignonette stalks were long and straggling, there was nothing in the beds but asters and dahlias and some other autumn flowers. And the monthly rose on the porch looked pale, as if it felt the coming frost. I went to the gate and looked out upon the Green with a pang of discomfort. What would everybody think? There were not many people about except the tradespeople going for orders and the servants at their work. East Cottage looked more human than usual in the hazy autumn morning sun. The windows were all open, and White was sweeping the fallen leaves carefully away from the door. I even saw Mr. Reinhardt in his dressing-gown come out to speak to him. My heart beat wildly and I drew back at the sight. As if Mr. Reinhardt was anything to me! But I was restless and uncomfortable and could not compose myself. When I went in I could not sit down and breakfast by myself as I usually did. I wanted to see how my lodger was, and yet I did not want to disturb her. At last I went to the door of the west room and listened. When I heard signs of movement inside I knocked and went in. She was still in bed; she was lying half-smothered up in the fine linen and downy pillows. On the bed there was an eiderdown coverlet covered with crimson silk, and she had stretched out her arm over it and was grasping it with her hand. She greeted me with a smile which lighted up her beautiful face like sunshine.

‘Oh, yes, I am better—I am quite well,’ she said. ‘I am so happy to be here.’

She did not put out her hand, or offer any thanks or salutations, and it seemed to me that this was good taste. I was pleased with her for not being too grateful or affectionate. I believe if she had been very grateful and affectionate I should have thought that was best. For again the charm came over me—a charm doubled by her smile. How beautiful she was! The warm nest she was lying in, and the pleasure and comfort she evidently felt in being there, had brought a little colour to her cheeks—just a very little—but that became her beauty best. She was younger than I thought. I had supposed her to be over thirty last night, now she looked five or six-and-twenty, in the very height and fulness of her bloom.

‘Shall I send you some breakfast?’ I said.

‘Oh, please! I suppose you don’t know how nice it is to lie in a soft bed like this, to feel the nice linen and the silk, and to be waited upon? You have always been just so, and never known the difference? Ah! what a difference it is.’

‘I have been very poor in my time,’ said I.

‘Have you? I should not have thought it. But never so poor as me. Let me have my breakfast please—tea with cream in it. May I have some cream? and—anything—whatever you please; for I am hungry; but tea with cream.’

‘Surely,’ I said; ‘it is being prepared for you now.’

And then I stood looking at her, wondering. I knew nothing of her, not even her name, and yet I stood in the most familiar relation to her, like a mother to a child. Her smile quite warmed and brightened me, as she lay there in such childish enjoyment. How strange it was. And it seemed to me that everything had gone out of her mind except the delightful novelty of her surroundings. She forgot that she was a stranger in a strange house, and all the suspicious, unpleasant circumstances. When Mary came in with the tray she positively laughed with pleasure, and jumped up in bed, raising herself as lightly as a child.

‘You must have a shawl to put round your shoulders,’ I said.

‘Oh, let me have the beautiful one you put over me last night. What a beauty it was! Let me have that,’ she cried.

Mary gave me a warning look. But I was indignant with Mary. I went and fetched it almost with tears in my eyes. Poor soul! poor child! like a baby admiring it because it was pretty. I put it round her, though it was my best; and with my cashmere about her shoulders, and her beautiful face all lighted up with pleasure, she was like a picture. I am sure the Sleeping Beauty could not have been more lovely when she started from her hundred years’ sleep.

I went back to the dining-room and took my own breakfast quite exhilarated. My perplexities floated away. I too felt like a child with a new toy. If I had but had a daughter like that, I said to myself—what a sweet companion, what a delight in one’s life! But then daughters will marry; and to think of such a one, bound to a cruel husband, who quarrelled with her, deserted her—Oh, what cruel stuff men are made of! What pretext could he have for conduct so monstrous? She was as sweet as a flower, and more beautiful than any woman I ever saw; and to leave her sitting in the dust at his closed door! I could scarcely keep still; my indignation was so great. The bloodless wretch! without ruth, or heart, or even common charity. One has heard such tales of men wrapped up in some cold intellectual pursuit; how they get to forget everything, and despise love and duty, and all that is worth living for, for their miserable science. They would rather be fellows of a learned society than heads of happy houses; rather make some foolish discovery to be written down in the papers, than live a good life and look after their own. I have even known cases—certainly nothing so bad as this—but cases in which a man for his art, or his learning, or something, has driven his wife into miserable solitude, or still more miserable society. Yes, I have known such cases: and the curious thing is, that it is always the weak men, whose researches can be of use to no mortal being, who neglect everything for science. The great men are great enough to be men and philosophers too. All this I said in my heart with a contempt for our scientific gentleman which I did not disguise to myself. I finished my breakfast quickly, longing to go back to my guest, when all at once Martha and Nelly, the Admiral’s daughters, came running in, as they had a way of doing. They were great favourites of mine, or, at least, Nelly was—but I was annoyed more than I could tell to see them now.

‘We came in to ask if you were quite well,’ said Nelly. ‘Papa frightened us all with the strangest story. He insists that you came home quite late, leaning on Mary’s arm, and was sure you must have been ill. You can’t think how positive he is, and what a story he made out. He saw you from his window coming along the road, so he says; and now I look at you, Mrs. Mulgrave, you are a little pale.’

‘It was not I, you can tell the Admiral,’ I said. ‘I wonder his sharp eyes were deceived. It was a—friend—I have staying with me.’

‘A friend you have staying with you? Fancy, Nelly! and we not to know.’

‘She came quite late—yesterday,’ said I. ‘She is in—very poor health. She has come to be—quiet. Poor thing, I had to give her my arm.’

‘But I thought you were at the Stokes’ last night?’ said Martha.

‘So I was; but when I came back it was such a lovely night; you should have been out, Nelly, you who are so fond of moonlight. I never saw the Green look more beautiful. I could hardly make up my mind to come in.’

Dear, dear, dear! I wonder if all our fibs are really kept an account of? As I went on romancing I felt a little shiver run over me. But what could I do?

Nelly gave me a look. She was wiser than her sister, who took everything in a matter-of-fact way. She gave me a kiss, and said, ‘We had better go and satisfy papa. He was quite anxious.’

Nelly knew me best, and she did not believe me. But what story could I make up to Lady Denzil, for instance, whose eyes went through and through me, and saw everything I thought?

Then I went back to my charge. She had finished her breakfast, but she would not part with the shawl. She was sitting up in bed, stroking and patting it with her hand.

‘It is so lovely,’ she said, ‘I can’t give it up just yet. I like myself so much better when I have it on. Oh! I should be so much more proud of myself than I am if I lived like this. I should feel as if I were so much better. And don’t ask me, please! I can’t—I can’t get up to put myself in those dusty hideous clothes.’

‘They are not dusty now,’ I said, and a faint little sense of difficulty crossed my mind. She was taking everything for granted, as if she belonged to me, and had come on a visit. I think if I had offered to give her my Indian cashmere and all the best things I had she would not have been surprised.

She made no answer to this. She continued patting and caressing the shawl, laying down her beautiful cheek on her shoulder for the pleasure of feeling it. It was very senseless, very foolish, and yet it was such pretty play that I was more pleased than vexed. I sat down by her, watching her movements. They were so graceful always—nothing harsh, or rough, or unpleasant to the eye, and all so natural—like the movements of a child.

I don’t know how long I sat and watched her—almost as pleased as she was. It was only when time went on, and when I knew I was liable to interruption, that I roused myself up. I tried to lead her into serious conversation. ‘You look a great deal better,’ I said, ‘than I could have hoped to see you last night.’

‘Better than last night? Indeed, I should think so. Please, don’t speak of it. Last night was darkness, and this is light.’

‘Yes, but—— I fear I must speak of it. I should like to know how you got there, and if some one perhaps ought to be written to—some one who may be anxious about you.’

‘Nobody is anxious about me.’

‘Indeed I am sure you must be mistaken,’ I said. ‘I am sure you have friends, and then—— I don’t want to trouble you, but you must remember I don’t know your name.’

She threw back the shawl off her shoulders all at once, and sat up erect.

‘My name is Mrs. Reinhardt: I told you,’ she said, ‘and I hope you don’t doubt my word.’

It was impossible to look in her face, and say to her, ‘I don’t know anything about you. How can I tell whether your word is to be trusted or not?’ This was true, but I could not say it.

I faltered, ‘You were ill last night, and we were both excited and confused. I wish very much you would tell me now once again. I think you said you would.’

‘Oh, I suppose I did,’ she said, throwing the shawl away, and nestling down once more among the pillows. A look of irritation came over her face. ‘It is so tiresome,’ she said, ‘always having to explain. I felt so comfortable just now, as if I had got over that.’

There was an aggrieved tone in her voice, and she looked as if, out of her temporary pleasure and comfort, she had been brought back to painful reality in an unkind and uncalled-for way. I felt guilty before her. Her face said plainly, ‘I was at ease, and all for your satisfaction, for no reason at all, you have driven me back again into trouble.’ I cannot describe how uncomfortable I felt.

‘If I am to be of any use to you,’ I said apologetically, ‘you must see that I ought to know. It is not that I wish to disturb you.’

‘Everybody says that,’ she murmured, with an angry pull at the bedclothes; and then, all at once, in a moment, she brightened up, and met my look with a smile. My relief was immense.

‘I am a cross thing,’ she said; ‘don’t you think so? But it was so nice to be comfortable. I felt as it I should like to forget it all, and be happy. I felt good—— But never mind; you cannot help it. I must go back to all the mud, and dirt, and misery, and tell you everything. Don’t look distressed, for it is not your fault.’

Every word she said seemed to convince me more and more that it was my fault. I could scarcely keep from begging her pardon. How cruel I had been! And yet, and yet—— My head swam, what with the dim consciousness in my mind of the true state of affairs, and the sense of her view of the question, which had impressed itself so strongly upon me since I came into the room. Which was the right view I could not tell for the moment, and bewilderment filled my mind. I could only stare at her, and wait for what she pleased to say.

After my visitor had got over her little fit of passion I took up my shawl—my good shawl, which she had flung from her—and put it away; and then I sat down by the bedside to hear her story. She had begun to think; her face had changed again. Her bewildered sort of feeling (which I could not understand, but yet which seemed so natural) that she had got over all that was disagreeable, passed away, and her life came back to her, as it were. She remembered herself, and her past, which I did not know. She did not speak for some time, while I sat there waiting. She kept twitching at the clothes, and moving about restlessly from side to side. The look of content and comfort which had filled up the thin outline of her beautiful face, and given it for the moment the roundness of youth, disappeared. At last she looked up at me almost angrily as I sat waiting.

‘Oh, you are so calm,’ she said. ‘You take it all so quietly. You don’t know what it is to have your heart broken, and your character destroyed, and yourself driven mad. To see you so calm makes me wild. If I am to tell you my story I must get up; I must be my own self again; I must put on my filthy clothes.’

‘They are not filthy now. There are some clean things, if you like to use them,’ I said softly; but I was very glad she should get up. I left her to do so with an easier mind, and had the fire made up in the dining-room that she might not be in the way of visitors. It was a long time before she came, and when she at last made her appearance I found she had again wrapped herself in my Indian shawl. To tell the truth, I did not like it. I gave a slight start when I saw her, but I could not take it from her shoulders. She had put on her old black gown, which had been carefully brushed and the clean cuffs and collar I had put out for her, and had dressed her hair in a fashionable way. She was dressed as poorly as a woman could be, and yet it appeared she had all the pads and cushions, which young women were then so foolish as to wear, for her hair. She was tall, and very slight, as I had remarked last night, but my shawl about her shoulders took away the angularity from her figure, and made it dignified and noble. To find fault with such a splendid creature for borrowing a shawl! I could as soon have remonstrated with the Queen herself.

‘This is not the pretty room you brought me to last night,’ she said.

‘No; this is the dining-room. I thought it would be quieter and pleasanter for you, in case any one should call.’

‘Ah! yes, that was very considerate for my feelings,’ she said, ‘but I am used to it, I am always thrust into a corner now. It did not use to be so before that man came and ruined me. Whereabouts is it that he lives?’

‘You can see the house from the window,’ said I.

Then she went to the window and looked out. She shook her clenched fist at the cottage; her face grew dark like a sky covered by a thunder-cloud. She came back and seated herself in front of me, wrapping herself close in my shawl.

‘When I married him I was as beautiful as the day. That was what they all said,’ she began. ‘I was nineteen, and the artists used to go on their knees to me to sit to them. I might have married anybody. I don’t know why it was that I took him, I must have been mad; twenty years older than me at the least, and nothing to recommend him. Of course he was rich. Ah! and I was so young, and thought money could buy everything, and that it would last for ever. We had a house in town and a house in the country, and he gave me a lovely phaeton for the park, and we had a carriage and pair. It was very nice at first. He was always a curious man, never satisfied, but we did very well at first. He was not a man to make a woman happy, but still I got on well enough till he sent me away.’

‘He sent you away!’

‘Yes. Oh! that was nothing; that got to be quite common. When he thought I was enjoying myself, all at once he would say, “Pack up your things; we shall go to the country to-morrow;” always when I was enjoying myself.’

‘But if he went with you, that was not sending you away.’

‘Then it was taking me away—which is much the same—from all I cared for; and he did not always go with me. The last two times I was sent by myself as if I had been a prisoner. And then, at last, after years and years of oppression, he turned me out of the house,’ she said—‘turned me out! He dared to do it. Oh! only think how I hated him. He said every insult to me a man could say, and he turned me out of his house, and bade me never come back. One day I was there the mistress of all, with everything heart could desire, and the next day I was turned out, without a penny, without a home, still so pretty as I was, and at my age!’

‘Oh! that was terrible,’ I cried, moved more by her rising passion than by her words—‘that was dreadful. How could he do it? But you went to your friends—?’

‘I had no friends. My people were all dead, and I did not know much about them when they were living. He separated me from everybody, and he told lies of me—lies right and left. He had made up his mind to destroy me,’ she cried, bursting into sobs. ‘Oh! what a devil he is! Everything I could desire one day, and the next turned out!’

Looking at her where she sat, something came into my throat which choked me and kept me from speaking: and yet I felt that I must make an effort.

‘Without any—cause?’ I faltered with a mixture of confusion and pain.

‘Cause?’

‘I mean, did not he allege something—say something? He must have given some—excuse—for himself.’

She looked at me very composedly, not angry, as I had feared.

‘Cause? excuse?’ she repeated. ‘Of course he said it was my fault.’

She kept her eyes on me when she said this; no guilty colour was on her face, no flush even of shame at the thought of having been slandered. She was a great deal calmer than I was; indeed I was not calm at all, but disturbed beyond the power of expression, not knowing what to think.

‘He is very clever,’ she went on. ‘I am clever myself, in a kind of a way, but not a match for him. Men have education, you see. They are trained what to do; but I was so handsome that nobody thought I required any training. If I had been as clever as he is, ah! he would not have found it so easy. He drove me into a trap, and then he shut me down fast. That is four years ago. Fancy, four years without anything, wandering about, none of the comforts I was used to! I wonder how I gave in at the time: it was because he had broken my spirit. But I am different now; I have made up my mind, until he behaves to me as he ought, I will give him no peace, no grace!’

‘But you must not be revengeful,’ I said, knowing less and less what to say. ‘And if you were not happy together before, I am afraid you would not be so now.’

She did not make any answer; a vague sort of smile flitted over her face, then she gave a little shiver as of cold, and wrapped the shawl closer. ‘A shawl suits me,’ she said, ‘especially since I am so thin. Do you think a woman loses as much as they say by being thin? It is my heart-disease. When it comes on it is very bad, though afterwards I feel just as well as usual. But it must tell on one’s looks. Could you tell that I was thin by my face?’

‘No,’ I said, and I did not add, though it was on my lips, ‘O woman, one could not tell by your face that you were not an angel or a queen. And what are you? What are you?’ Alas! she was not an angel, I feared.

A little while longer she sat musing in silence. How little she had told me after all. How much more she must know in that world within herself to which she had now retired. At length she turned to me, her face lighted up with the most radiant smile. ‘Shall I be a great trouble to you?’ she asked. ‘Am I taking up anybody’s room?’

She spoke as a favourite friend might speak who had arrived suddenly, and did not quite know what your arrangements were, though she was confident nothing could make her coming a burden to you. She took away my breath.

‘N—no,’ I said; and then I took courage and added: ‘But your friends will be expecting you—the people where you live: and you are better now——’

I could not, had my life depended on it, have said more.

‘Oh, they will not mind much,’ she said. ‘I don’t live anywhere in particular. When one thinks that one’s own husband, the man who is bound to support one, has a home, and is close at hand, how do you think one can stay in a miserable lodging! But he does not care: he will sit there doing his horrible problems, and what is it to him if I were to die at his door! He would be glad. Yes, he would be glad. He would have me carted away as rubbish. He cares for nothing but his books and his experiments. I have sat at his door a whole night begging him to take me in, begging out of the cold and the snow, and his light has burnt steady, and he has gone on with his work, and then he has gone to bed and taken no notice. Oh, my God! I should have let him in had he been a cat or a dog.’

‘Oh, surely, surely you must be mistaken,’ I cried.

‘I am not mistaken. I heard the window open; he looked down at me, and then he went away. I know he knew me: and so he did last night. He knew I was there; and he had a fire lighted in the room where he works. So he knew it was cold, too; and I his wife, his lawful wedded wife, sitting out in the chill. Some time or other he thinks it will be too much for me, and I shall die, and he will be free.’

‘It is too dreadful to think of,’ said I. ‘I don’t think he could have known that you were there.’

She smiled without making any further reply. She held out her thin hands to the fire with a little nervous shiver. They would have been beautiful hands had they not been so thin, almost transparent. She wore but one ring, her wedding-ring; and that was so wide that it was secured to her finger with a silk thread. I suppose she perceived that I looked at it. She held it up to me with a smile.

‘See,’ she said, ‘how worn it is. But I have never put it off my finger; never gone by another name, or done anything to forfeit my rights. Whatever he may say against me, he cannot say that.’

At this moment she espied a chair in a corner which looked more comfortable than the one she was seated in, and rose and wheeled it to the fire. She said no ‘By’r leave’ to me, but did it as if she had been at home; there was something so natural and simple in this that I did not know how to object to it, but yet—I have had many a troublesome responsibility thrown upon me by strangers, but I was never so embarrassed or perplexed in my life. She drew the easy chair to the fire, she found a footstool and put her feet on it, basking in the warmth. She had my velvet slippers on her feet, my Indian shawl round her shoulders, and here she was settled and comfortable—for how long? I dared not even guess. A sick sort of consciousness came upon me that she had established herself and meant to stay.

After a while, during which I sat and watched, sitting bolt upright on my chair and gazing with a consternation and bewilderment which I cannot express upon her graceful attitude as she reclined back, wooing every kind of comfort, she suddenly drew her chair a little nearer to me and put her hand upon my knee.

‘Look here,’ she said hurriedly, ‘you must see him for me. If any one could move him to do his duty it would be you. You must see him, and tell him I am—willing to go back. Perhaps he may not listen to you at first, but if you keep your temper and persevere——’

‘I?’ said I, dismayed.

‘Yes, indeed, who else? only you could do it. And if you are patient with him and keep your temper—the great thing with him is to keep your temper—I never could do it, but you could. It would not be difficult to you. You have not got that sort of a nature, one can see it in your face.’

‘But you mistake me, I—I could not take it upon myself,’ I gasped.

‘Not when I ask you? You might feel you were not equal to it, I allow. But when I ask you? Oh, yes, you can do it. It is not so very hard, only to keep your temper, and to take no denial—no denial! Make him say he will not be so unkind any more. Oh, how tired it makes me even to think of it!’ she cried, suddenly putting up her hands to her face. ‘Please don’t ask me any more, but do it—do it! I know you can.’

And then she sat and rocked herself gently with her hands clasped over her face. This explanation had been too much for her, and somehow I felt that I was blamable, that it was my fault. I sat by her in a kind of dream, wondering what had happened to me. Was I under a spell? I did not seem able to move a step or raise a hand to throw off this burden from me. And the curious thing was that she never thanked me, never expressed, nor apparently felt, any sort of gratitude to me, but simply signified her will, and took my acquiescence as a right.

CHAPTER VII

I cannot tell how I got through that day: she got through it very comfortably, I think. In the evening she asked me to go into the pretty room she had been in last night.

‘I am so fond of what is pretty,’ she said; ‘I like everything that is nice and pleasant. I never would sit in any but the best rooms in the house if I had a house like this.’

‘But—someone might come in,’ I said. ‘To be sure the time for callers is over, but still my neighbours are very intimate with me, and some one might come in.’

‘Well?’ she said, looking up in my face. ‘If they do, I don’t mind. You may have objections perhaps, but I have none. I don’t mind.’

‘Oh! if you don’t mind,’ I said in my consternation; and I took up the cushion she had placed in her chair, and carried it humbly for her, while she made her way to the drawing-room.

I think I was scarcely in possession of my senses. I was dazed. The whole position was so extraordinary. I was ashamed to think of any one coming in and finding her there: not because I was ashamed of her, but for my own sake. What was I to say to anybody? How was I to explain myself? I had taken her in without knowing anything of her, and she had taken possession of my house. Fortunately, no one came that night. She placed herself on the sofa, where she had lain in her wretchedness the night before. She stretched herself out upon it, lying back with an air of absolute enjoyment. She had got a book—a novel—which she was reading, not taking very much notice of me; but now and then she would pause to say a word. I think had any one seen us seated together that evening, without knowing anything of the circumstances, he would have decided that she was the lady of the house and I her humble and rather stupid companion. But I was more than rather stupid—I felt like a fool; and that in nothing more than this—that I could not for my life tell what to do.

‘Nobody is coming to-night, I suppose?’ she said at last, putting down her book.

‘No, I suppose not.’

‘I thought from what you said you had always some one coming; and I like seeing people; I should like of all things to see some of the people here. Do you think if they saw me it would make any difference——? Oh, I can’t tell you exactly what I mean. I mean—but it is so very unpleasant to be always obliged to explain;’ and then she yawned: and then she said: ‘I am so tired; I think I shall go to bed. Hush! was not that some one at the door?’

‘It is my next neighbour going home,’ I said.

‘Does Reinhardt know the people about here?’

‘He has not gone into society at all; but many of them know him to speak to,’ said I.

‘Ah! that is always the way; you hide me out of sight, and you send word to your people not to come; but everybody is quite ready to make friends with him. Oh! I am so tired—I am tired of everything; life is so dull, so monotonous, always the same thing over, no pleasure, no amusement.’

‘I live a very dull, quiet life,’ I said, as firmly as I could; ‘I cannot expect it to suit you; and perhaps to-morrow you will be able to make arrangements to go to your own home.’

‘Ah!’ she said, giving a curious little cry. She looked at me, catching her breath; and then she cried, ‘My own home!—my own home! That is at the cottage yonder; you will open the door for me, and take me back there——’

‘But how can I? Be reasonable,’ I said. ‘I scarcely know—your husband; I don’t know—you; how can I mediate between you? I don’t know anything of the circumstances. There must have been some cause for all this. Indeed it will be a great deal better to go home and get some one to interfere who knows all.’

‘Don’t you believe in feelings?’ she said suddenly. ‘I do. The first time I saw Reinhardt I had the feeling I ought not to have anything to do with him, and I neglected it. When I saw you, it went through and through me like an arrow: ‘This is the person to do it. And I always trust my feelings. I am sure that you can do it, and no one else.’

‘Indeed—indeed you are mistaken.’

‘Oh! I am so tired,’ she cried again. ‘Let me go to bed. I can’t argue to-night; I am so dreadfully tired.’

This was her way of getting over a difficulty, and what could I do? I could not stop her from going to bed; I could not turn her out of my house. I went to the door of the west room with her, more embarrassed and uncomfortable than could be described. She turned round and waved her hand to me as she shut the door. The light of the candle which she held shone upon her pale, beautiful face. She had my shawl still round her. I, too, had a candle in my hand, and as I strayed back through the long passage I am sure I looked like a ghost. Bewilderment was in my soul. Had I taken a burden on my shoulders for life? Was I never to be free again? Never alone as I used to be? It had only lasted one day; but there seemed no reason why it should ever come to an end.

Then I went back and sat over the fire in the drawing-room, till it died away into white ashes, trying to decide what I should do. To consult somebody was of course my first thought; but whom could I consult? There was not one creature on the Green who would not blame me, who would not be shocked at my foolishness. I did not dare even to confess it to Lady Denzil. I must keep her concealed till I could persuade her to go away. And to think she should have been disappointed that nobody came! Good heavens! if anybody did come and see her, what should I do? Looming up before my imagination, in spite of all my resistance to it, came a picture of a possible interview with Mr. Reinhardt. It drove me half wild with fear to think of such a thing, and yet I felt as one sometimes does, that out of mere terror I should be driven to do it, if I could not persuade her to go away. That was my only hope, and I felt already what a forlorn hope it was.

And thus another day passed, and another night. She was quite well-behaved, and sometimes her beauty overwhelmed me so that I felt I could do anything for her; and sometimes her strange calmness and matter-of-course way of taking everything filled me with irritation. She never looked or spoke as if she were obliged to me, neither did she ever imply, by anything she said or did, that she meant to go away. She would stand for a long time by the window, gazing at the East Cottage; she even stepped out into the garden through the drawing-room window, and went and stood at the gate, looking out, though I called her back, and trembled lest she should be seen (and, of course, she was seen); but the answer she gave me when I objected put a stop to the controversy.

‘You are afraid to let people see me,’ she said; ‘but I don’t mind. There is nothing to be ashamed of in looking at Reinhardt’s house. If any one calls, it is quite the same to me. Indeed I would rather be seen than otherwise. I think it is right that people should see me.’

To this I made no answer, for my heart was growing faint. And then she turned, and seized my arm—it was in the garden.

‘Oh!’ she said, ‘listen to me. When are you going to see him? Are you going to-day?’

As she spoke the sound of footsteps quite close to us made me start. I had my back to the gate, and she was standing close to the verandah, so that she saw who was coming though I could not. She dropped my arm instantly; she subdued her voice; she put on a smile; and then she half-turned, and began to gather some rosebuds from the great monthly rose, with the air of one who is waiting to be called forward.

‘Oh, Mrs. Mulgrave! we have found you at last,’ said a voice in my ear, and, turning round, I saw the Stokes—Lottie and Lucy, and their brother Everard, a short way behind, following them on to the lawn.

‘At last?’ I said.

‘Yes, and I think we have a very good right to complain. Why, you have shut yourself up for two whole days. The Green is in a commotion about it,’ said Lottie, as she kissed me; and she threw a quick glance at the stranger, whom she did not know, and asked me, ‘Who is that?’ with her eyes.

‘And somebody said you had visitors, but we would not believe it,’ Lucy began, open-mouthed.

‘And so she has—one visitor, at least,’ said my guest, turning round, with her hand full of roses. Then she stopped short, and a look, which was half alarm, crept over her face. Everard Stoke was coming up behind.

‘How do you do, Mrs. Mulgrave?’ he said in his languid way. ‘It is not my fault if I came in unceremoniously. It’s the girls who are to blame.’

‘There is no one to blame,’ said I, turning round, and holding out my hand to him.

But even in the moment of my turning round a change had come over him. He gave a slight start, and he looked straight over my shoulder at my companion. I said to myself that perhaps they knew each other, and forgave him his rudeness. But the next moment he went on hastily, ‘We must not stay now. Lottie, I have just remembered something I promised to do for my mother. I have just thought of it. Mrs. Mulgrave will excuse me. Come away quick, please.’

‘Why, we have but just arrived!’ said Lucy, full of a girl’s resistance.

‘Come!’ her brother said; and before I could speak he had swept them away again, leaving me in greater consternation than ever. My companion had turned back, and was busy again among the roses, gathering them. I had not even her to respond to my look of wonder. What was the meaning of it? Could they have known each other, Everard and she?

‘Your friends are gone very soon,’ she said without turning to me; ‘it is rather strange; but I suppose they are strange people. Oh! how sweet these roses are—I never thought such pale roses could be so sweet.’

I made her no answer, and, what was strangest of all, she did not seem to expect it, for immediately after she went back into the drawing-room, and the next minute I heard her voice singing as if on the way to her own room. The more I thought of it the more strange it seemed.

That night she began to question me about my neighbours on the Green, and somehow managed to bring the conversation to the people who had called.

‘I thought I knew the man’s face; I must have met him out,’ she said, looking at me steadily.

Everard Stoke did not bear a good character on the Green. To have known him was no recommendation to any one; and this encounter did not increase my happiness. But after that first evening it did not disturb her. Next day went on like the previous one. I told the servants not to admit any visitors, and I felt as if I must be going mad. I could think only of one subject, my imagination could bring forward but one picture before me, and that was of a meeting with Mr. Reinhardt, which I kept going over in my mind. I said to myself, ‘I could not do it—I could not do it,’ with an angry vehemence, and yet I seemed to see just how he would look, and to hear what we were to say. It seemed to be the only outlet out of this impossible position in which I stood.

CHAPTER VIII

‘Lady Denzil says she must see you, please, ma’am,’ said Mary at my room door.

It had lasted for a week and I was downright ill. She would not go away; when I represented to her that I could not go on keeping her, that she must go to her own home, wherever that was, she either moaned that she had no home, or that I must open a way for her back to her husband. She was quite unmoved by my attempts to dislodge her. I told her I had people coming, and she assured me she did not mind, that there was plenty of room in the house, and that, if I wished it, she would change into a smaller chamber. This drove me almost out of my senses, I could not turn her out by force. I dared not face the criticisms of my neighbours: I shut myself up. I got a headache which never left me, and the result was, that I was quite ill. I had been lying down in my own room to try to get a little quiet and respite from the pain in my head; and I was impatient in my trouble, and felt disposed to turn my back on all the world.

‘I cannot see her,’ I said impatiently. ‘I am not well enough to see any one.’

‘Please, ma’am, is that what I am to say?’ asked Mary.

Then I recollected myself. Lady Denzil was my close friend and counsellor. I had been admitted into the secret places of her life, and she knew me in every aspect of mine. I would not send such a reply to my old friend. I rose from my sofa and went stumbling to the door, feeling more miserable than I can say. ‘Tell her I have a very bad headache, Mary. I will try to see her to-morrow. Give her my love, and say that I could not talk to-day, nor explain anything. If she will please leave it till to-morrow!—’

‘Please, ma’am,’ said Mary, earnestly, ‘I think it would be a deal better if you could make up your mind to see my lady to-day.’

‘I cannot do it—I cannot do it!’ I said. ‘If you but knew how my head aches! Give her my dear love, but I must keep quiet. If you tell her that, she will understand.’

‘If you won’t give no other answer, ma’am—’ said Mary, disapprovingly; and I had lost my wits so completely that I actually locked the door when she went down-stairs, in case some one should force the way. I went back to my sofa and lay down again. I had closed the shutters, I don’t know why—not that the light hurt me, but because I did not feel able to bear anything. I never lost my head in the same way before. I was irritable to such a degree that I could not bear any one to speak to me—this was, I suppose, because I felt that nobody would approve of me, and was ashamed of myself and my weakness. While I lay thus, she began to sing down-stairs; she had a pretty voice; there was a quaver in it, which was in reality a defect, but did not appear so when she sang. Her voice, I felt sure, could be heard half over the Green, and Lady Denzil would be sure to hear it, and what would they think of me? They would think she was a relation, somebody belonging to me, whom I had motive for hiding. No one would believe that she was a mere stranger whom I knew nothing of.

I kept as much away from her as I could during the day, and in the evening, when I came down-stairs, I managed to steal out by myself for a walk. I thought the fresh air would do me good, and, as all the people were at dinner, I was not likely to meet any one. When I felt myself outside and free, I stood still for a moment, and in my weakness three or four different impulses came upon me. In the first place I had a temptation to run away. It seems absurd to write it, but my feeling of nervous irritation was so great that I actually entertained for a moment the idea of abandoning my own house because this strange woman had taken possession of it. And then I thought of rushing to Lady Denzil, whom I had not long before sent away from my door, and entreating her to come and save me. When I had made but a few steps from my own gate a nervous terror made me pause again, and, turning round suddenly, I almost ran against some one coming in the opposite direction. I made a half-conscious clutch at him when I saw who it was, and then tried to hurry past in the fluctuations of my despair. But he stopped, struck, I suppose, by the strangeness of my looks.

‘Can I do anything for you?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes—everything!’ I gasped forth, not knowing what I said.

‘I! That is strange—that is very strange! but if it should be so!—Will you lean upon my arm, Mrs. Mulgrave? you are very much agitated.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I am very much agitated, but I will not lean upon you, for perhaps you will think I am your enemy—though I don’t mean to be anybody’s enemy, Heaven knows.’

‘Ah!’ he said. This little cry came from him unawares, and he fell back a step, and his face, which was like ivory, took a yellower pale tint. I do not mean that I observed this in my agitation at the moment, but I felt it. His countenance changed. He already divined what it was.

‘I am very sure of that—that you mean only to be kind to all the world,’ he said. He had a slight foreign accent, a roll of the r which is not in an English voice, and he spoke very deliberately, like one to whom English was an acquired language. I think this struck me now for the first time.

Then we paused and looked at each other—he on his guard; I, trembling in every limb trying to remember what I had said in my imaginary interviews with him, and feeling as if my very mind had gone. I made a despairing attempt to collect myself, to state her case in the best possible way, but I might as well have tried any impossible feat of athletics. I could not do it.

‘There is a lady,’ I faltered, ‘in my house.’

A kind of smile crossed his face at the first words. He gave a nod as if to say, ‘I know it;’ but again a change came over him when I finished my sentence.

‘In your house!’

‘Yes, in my house,’ I went on, finding myself at last wound up to speech. ‘I found her on Friday last at your door—seated in the dust, almost dying.’

Here he stopped, making an incredulous movement—a shrug of the shoulders, an elevation of the eyebrows.

‘It is true,’ I said: ‘she has heart-disease: she could scarcely walk the little distance to my house. Had you seen her, as I did, panting, gasping for very breath——’

‘I should have thought it a fiction,’ he said, bitterly, ‘and I know her best.’

‘It was no fiction. Oh, you may have had your wrongs. I say nothing to the contrary,’ I cried: ‘for anything I can tell, you may have been deeply wronged; but she is so beautiful, and so young, and loves pleasure and luxury so——’

I think he heard only the half of what I said, and that struck him like an unexpected arrow. He turned from me and walked a few steps away, and then came back again. ‘So beautiful and so young,’ he cried. ‘Who should know that so well as I?—who should know that so well as I?’

‘You know it, and still you let her sit at your door all through the lonely night? I would not let a tramp shiver at mine if I could help it. You let her perish within reach of you. You condemn her at her age, with her lovely face, unheard——’

He put out his hand to stop me. He was as much agitated as I was. ‘Her lovely face,’ he said to himself,—‘oh, her lovely face!’ That was the point at which I touched him. It woke recollections in him which were more eloquent than anything I could say.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘think of it.’ I do not know by what inspiration I laid hold upon this feature of the story—her beauty; perhaps because it was the real explanation of the power she had acquired over me.

But in a minute more he had overcome his agitation; he came to a sudden pause in front of me and looked at me in the face, though there were signs of a conflict in his. ‘It is vain to attempt to move me,’ he said, hoarsely. ‘I do not know why you should take it in hand, or why you should try to attain your object in this way. I did not expect it from such as you. Her lovely face—does that make her good or true or fit for a man’s wife?’

‘No doubt it was for that you married her,’ said I, with an impulse I could not restrain.

He turned away from me again; he made a few hasty steps and then he came back. ‘I do not choose to discuss my own history with a stranger,’ he said; and then softening into politeness: ‘You said I could do something for you. What can I do?’

This question suddenly brought me to a standstill, for even in my perplexity and confusion, and the state of semi-despair I had been thrown into by my visitor, a vestige of reason still remained in my mind. After all he must know her and his own concerns better than I could. His question seemed to stop my breath. ‘She is in my house,’ I said.

‘You are too charitable, Mrs. Mulgrave,’ he answered harshly. His voice sounded loud and sharp to me after the subdued tone in which we had been speaking, for we were the only two living creatures visible on the Green. Everything was quiet around us, and the night beginning to fall.

‘I did not mean to be charitable,’ I said, feeling that there was, without any consciousness of mine, a tone of apology in my voice. ‘I did not expect—what has happened. I meant her to leave me—next day.’

‘She will never leave you as long as you will keep her and give her all she wants,’ he said, in the same sharp, harsh voice.

‘Then Heaven help me!’ I cried, in my confusion, ‘what am I to do?’

He seized my arm, so that he hurt me, in what seemed a sudden access of passion. ‘It will teach you not to thrust yourself into other people’s concerns, or meddle with what does not concern you,’ he said. He had come quite close to me, and his face was flushed with passion. I think it was the only time I was ever so spoken to in my life. The effect was bewildering, but I was more surprised than afraid. In short, the curious shock of this unexpected rage, the rude, sudden touch, the angry voice, brought me to myself.

‘I think you forget yourself, Mr. Reinhardt,’ I said.

Then he dropped my arm as if the touch burned him, and turned away, and shook, as I could see, with the effort to control himself. His passion calmed me, but it swept over him like a storm. He muttered something at length, hurriedly, in which there was the word ‘pardon,’ as if he were forced most unwillingly to say it, and then he turned round upon me again: ‘I may have forgotten myself, as you say; but you force me to face a subject I would give the world to forget, and in the only way that makes it unavoidable. Good heavens! your amiability, and your Christianity, and all that, force me to take up again what I had put from me for ever. And you look for politeness, too!’

I did not make any answer: what was the use? At bottom, I did blame myself; I should not have interfered; I should have been firm enough and strong enough to take her to her home, wherever it was: I did not stand upon my defence. I let him say what he would; and I cannot tell how long this went on. I suppose the interval was not nearly so long as it seemed to me. He stood before me, and he smiled and frowned, and ground his teeth and discharged, as it were, bitter sentences at me. Englishmen can be brutal enough, but no Englishman, I think, would have done it in this way. He seemed to take a pleasure in saying everything that was most disagreeable. When he scowled at me I could bear it, but when he smiled and affected politeness I grew so angry that I could have struck him. Poor wretch! perhaps there was some justification for him after all.

‘Because you are a woman!’ he cried. ‘A woman!—what it is to be a woman! It gives you a right to set every power of hell in motion, and always to be spared the consequences; to upset every arrangement of the world, and disturb the quiet, and put your fingers into every mess, and always to be held blameless. That is your right. Oh, I like those women’s rights! I should have knocked down the man who had interfered as you have done; but, because you are a woman, I must come out of my quiet, I must derange my life, to save you from your folly. God in heaven! was that what those creatures, those slaves, those toys were made for? To interfere—for ever to interfere—and to be spared the consequences at any cost to us?’

I don’t know how I bore it all. I got tired after a while of the mere physical effort of standing to listen to him. I did not try to answer at first, and after the torrent began I could not, he spoke so fast and so vehemently. But at length I turned from him, and walked slowly, as well as I was able, to my own door. He paused for a moment as if in surprise, and then turned and walked on with me, talking and gesticulating. ‘Nothing else would have disturbed me,’ he said; ‘I had made my arrangements. How was I to tell that a fool, a woman,—would thrust herself into it, and put it on my honour as a gentleman to free her? What has honour to do with it? Why should I trouble more for a woman—an old woman—than for a man? Bah! Ah, I will be rude; yes, I am rude; it is a pleasure—it is a compensation. You are plain; you are old. You have lost what charms. Therefore, what right have you to be considered? Why should you not bear your own folly? Why should I interfere?’

‘Pray make yourself quite easy about me,’ I said, roused in my turn. ‘I did not appeal to you on my account, and anything you can do for me would be dearly purchased by submitting to this violence. Go your own way, and leave me to manage my own concerns.’

He stopped, bewildered; and then he asked with confusion, ‘What do you call your own concerns?’

‘Nothing that can any way affect you,’ I said, and in my passion I went in at my own gate and closed it upon him. I stood on one side defying him, and he stood on the other with confusion and amazement on his face.

‘You do not wish my help any more?’

‘No more. I shall act for myself, without thought of you,’ I said. He stood and gazed at me for a moment, and then suddenly he turned round and left me. I looked after him as he walked rapidly away, and I confess that, notwithstanding my indignation and pride, my heart sank. He was the only creature who could help me, and I had driven him away. I had taken once more upon myself the task which it had made me half frantic to think of. My heart fell. I looked back upon my house, which had been such a haven of quietness and rest for so many years, and felt that the Eden was spoiled—that it was no longer my paradise. And yet I had rejected the only help! I was very forlorn, standing there with my hand upon my gate under the chilly October stars, having thrust all my friends from me, and refused even the only possible deliverance. ‘I cannot allow myself to be insulted,’ I said to myself, trying to get some comfort from my pride, but that was cold consolation. I turned round to go in, sighing and ready to sink with fatigue and trouble; and then I suddenly heard moans coming from the house, and Mary calling and beckoning from the open door.

CHAPTER IX

‘Oh, ma’am, the poor lady’s took bad—the poor dear lady’s took very bad!’ This was Mary’s cry as she hurried me in. The windows were all wide open to give her air. She was lying on the sofa gasping for breath, her mouth and her eyes open, two hectic circles of red upon her cheeks, and that wildly anxious look upon her face which always accompanies a struggle for breath. I did not feel at all sure that she was not dying. I called out to my cook to run instantly for the doctor. Both the women had been in the room running about as she gave them wild orders, opening the windows one after another, fetching her fans, eau-de-cologne, water, wine—as one thing after another occurred to her. She stretched out her hands to me as I came in, and grasped and pulled me to her; she said something which I could not make out in her gasping, broken voice, and I nodded my head and pretended to understand, saying, ‘Yes, yes,’ to calm her—‘Yes, yes.’ It did not seem to matter what one said or promised at such a moment. For some time, every gasp looked to me as if it must be her last. I bathed her forehead with eau-de-cologne, I wetted her lips with wine; I had hard ado not to cry out, too, in sympathy with her distress. I shut down now one window, now another, fearing the cold for her, and then opening them again, in obedience to her gestures to give her air. I seem to see and to feel now, as I recall it, the room so unlike itself, with the cold night air blowing through and through it, and the great squares of blackness and night, with a bit of sky in one, which broke confusedly the familiar walls, and made it doubtful to my bewildered and excited mind whether I was out of doors or in—whether the chairs and sofa and the lamp on the table had been transported into the garden, or the garden had invaded the house. The wind made me shiver; the flame of the lamp wavered even within its protecting glass; darkness and mystery breathed in; and, in the centre absorbing all thoughts, was this struggle between, as I thought, death and life. I cannot tell how time passed, or how long we were in this suspense; but it seemed to me that half the night must have been over before the doctor came, in evening dress, with huge white wristbands, as if he were going to perform an operation. Notwithstanding the anxiety I was in, this fantastic idea flashed across my mind: for his cuffs were always too long and white. But it was a relief beyond description when he came: the responsibility, at least, seemed to be taken off my shoulders. I had scarcely permitted myself to hope before that the paroxysm was already beginning to subside; but now it became evident to me; and Dr. Houghton gave her something, which at once relieved her. I sat down beside the sofa, feeling half stupefied with the sensation of relief, and watched her breathing gradually grow calmer, and the struggle abate. I think my own brain had given way slightly under the tension. It seemed to me that the room behind me was full of people whispering and flitting about, and that all kinds of echoes and murmurs of voices were coming in at the open windows. I suppose it was only my own maids, and Susan from the Admiral’s next door who had come to see what was the matter; but the strange sensation of being almost in the open air, and the worn-out state in which I was, produced this effect. I could not move however to put a stop to it. I could do nothing but sit still and watch. And thus the scene of the first evening, when I brought this strange inmate home to my house, reproduced itself, with another bewildering effect, before my eyes. She was no longer dusty and miserable; her poor black dress was neat and covered by my shawl; her hair had been elaborately dressed, and, though a little disordered, still showed how carefully it had been arranged; but otherwise, the attitude, the look, were exactly the same. Her head was thrown back in utter exhaustion upon the dark velvet pillow, which showed it in relief, like a white cameo on the dark background of the pietra dura. Her eyes were softly closed, and her lips. The doctor, who had gone away to write a prescription, was struck by her wonderful beauty, as I had been that night. He started in his surprise when he came back and saw how she had dropped asleep. He drew me aside in his amazement; the discovery flashed upon him all in a moment, as it had done on me. When a woman is very ill, when one’s mind is full of anxiety for her, her beauty is the last thing one thinks of. So that the sudden sight of her confounded him. ‘How beautiful she is!’ he said in my ear with a certain agitation; and though I am only a woman, I had been agitated, too, when I found it out.

It was just when the doctor had said this that my eye was suddenly caught by a strange figure at one of the open windows. It stepped on to the sill, dark against the blackness without, and there paused a moment. Had this occurred at any other time I should, no doubt, have been very much frightened, I should have rushed to the window and demanded to know what he wanted, with terror and indignation; but to-night I took it as a matter of course. I did not even move, but kept still by the side of my patient’s sofa and looked at him: and when he came in it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world. He entered with a sudden, impetuous movement as if something had pushed him forward. He advanced into the middle of the room—into the little circle round the sofa. It was Mr. Reinhardt. He had never been in my house before, or in any house on the Green, and Dr. Houghton looked at him and looked at me with positive consternation. For my part, I gave him no greeting. I did not say a word. It seemed natural that he should come, that was all.

There was a curious sort of smile upon his face; he was wound up to some course of action or other. What he thought of doing I cannot tell. His face looked as if he had come with the intention of taking her by the shoulders and turning her out. I don’t know why I thought so, but there was a certain mixture of fierceness, and contempt, and impatience in his look which suggested the idea. ‘I have come to put a stop to all this. I shall not put up with it for a moment longer.’ Though he did not speak a word, this seemed to sound in my ears, somehow, as if he had said it in his mind. But when he came to the sofa and saw her laid out in that dead sleep, her face white as marble, the blue veins visible on her closed eyelids, the breath faintly coming and going, he came to a sudden pause. I think for the first moment he thought she was dead. He gave a short cry, and then turned to me wildly, as if I were responsible. ‘You have killed her,’ he said. He was in that state of suppressed passion in which anything might happen. He would have railed at her had he found her conscious, he would have railed at me if I would have let him: he was half mad.

‘Tell him,’ I said, turning to the doctor. Dr. Houghton was a man of the world, and tried very hard not to look surprised. He put his hand upon Mr. Reinhardt’s shoulder to draw him away: but he would not be drawn away. He stood fast there, with his brows contracted and his eyes fixed on the sleeping face: he listened to the doctor’s explanations without moving or looking up. He said not a word further to any one, but drew a chair in front of the sofa and sat down there with his eyes fixed upon her. Oh, what thoughts must have been going through his mind. The woman whom he had loved—I do not doubt passionately in his way—whom he had married, whom he had cast away from him! And there she lay before him unconscious, unaware of his presence, beautiful as when she had been his, like a creature seen in a dream.

‘He had better be got to go away before she wakes,’ Dr. Houghton said in my ear. ‘Do you think you can make one more exertion, Mrs. Mulgrave, and send him away? Can you hear what I am saying? She will be in a very weak state, and any excitement might be dangerous. I don’t know what connection there is between them, but can’t you send him away? Who is this next?’

This time it was a very timid figure at the window, a halting, furtive old man peeping in. And somehow this, too, seemed quite natural to me. I felt that I knew everything that happened as if I had planned it all beforehand. ‘It is his servant come to look for him,’ said I. And the doctor went to the window with impatience and pulled poor old White in, and shut it down.

‘The draught goes through and through one,’ he said, with a shiver. It was quite true; I was trembling with cold where I sat by the sleeping woman’s side; but it had not occurred to me to shut the window; everything seemed unchangeable, as if we had nothing to do with it except to accept whatever happened. When White came in he looked round him with great astonishment, and made me a very humble, frightened bow, while he whispered and explained to the doctor how it was he had taken the liberty. Then he gradually approached his master;—but when he saw the figure on the sofa consternation swallowed up all his other sentiments. He flung his arms above his head and uttered a stifled cry, and then he rushed at his master with a sudden vehemence which showed how deeply the sight had moved him. He put his hand upon Mr. Reinhardt’s shoulder and shook him gently.

‘Sir, sir!’ he cried; then stooped to his ear and whispered, ‘Master; Mr. Reinhardt; master!’ Reinhardt took no notice of the old man, he sat absorbed with his eyes fixed on that marble, beautiful face. ‘Oh, sir, come with me! Oh! come with me, my dear master!’ said the old man. ‘You know what I’m saying is for your good—you know it’s for your good. It’s getting late, sir, time for the house to be shut up. Oh, Mr. Reinhardt—sir, come away with me! come with me—do!’

Mr. Reinhardt pushed him impatiently away, but did not answer a word; he never removed his eyes from her for a moment. They seemed to me to grow like Charon’s eyes, like circles of fire, while he gazed at her. Was it in wrath—was it in love?

‘Mrs. Mulgrave, ma’am,’ cried White, turning to me, but always in a voice which was scarcely above a whisper, ‘Oh, speak to him! It ain’t for his good to sit and stare at her like that. I know what comes of it. If he sits like that and looks to her it’ll all begin over again. He ain’t a man that can stand it, he ain’t indeed. Oh, my lady, if you’ll be a friend to him, speak and make him go.’

‘Ah!’ said a soft, sighing voice. ‘Ah! old White!’ We all started as if a shell had fallen among us: and yet it was not wonderful that she should wake with all this conversation going on by her bed—and besides she had slept a long time, more than an hour. She had not changed her position in the least, all she had done was to open her eyes. I don’t know whether it was simply her supreme yet indolent self-estimation which kept her from paying us the compliment of making any movement on our account, or if it was from some consciousness that her beauty could not be shown to greater advantage. But certainly she did not move. She only opened her eyes, and said, ‘Ah, old White!’

But oh, to see how the man started, who was nearer to her than White! It was as if a ball or a sword-stroke had gone through him. He sprang from his chair, and then he checked himself and drew it close and sat down again. He glanced round upon us all as if he would have cleared not only the chamber but the world of us, had it been possible, and then he leant over her and said sternly, ‘There are others here besides White.’

‘Ah!’ Either she was afraid of him or pretended to be; she clutched at my sleeve with her hand, she shrank back a little, but still did not change her attitude nor raise herself so as to see his face.

‘I am here,’ he went on, his voice trembling with passion. ‘I whom you have hunted, whose life you have poisoned. Oh, woman! you dare not look at me nor speak to me, but you wrong me behind my back. You whisper tales of me wherever I go. Here I had a moment’s peace and you have ruined it. Tell these people the truth once in your life. Is it I that am in the wrong or you?’

A frightened look had stolen over her face, her eyebrows contracted as with fear. Her eyes became full of tears, and the corners of her beautiful mouth quivered. Heaven forgive me! I asked myself was it all feigning, or had she something kinder and better in her which I had never seen till now? But those eyes, which were like great cups of light filled with dew, once more turned to him. She remained immovable, looking up to his face, when he repeated hoarsely, ‘You or I, which is in the wrong?’

She answered with a shiver which ran all over her, ‘I.’ Her voice was like a sigh. I did not know what his wrongs might be, but whatever they were, at that moment there could be no doubt about it. He, a hard, unsympathetic, inhuman soul, it must be he that was in the wrong, not she, though she confessed it so sweetly; and if this effect was produced upon me, what should it be upon him?

Mr. Reinhardt shook like a leaf in the wind. He had not expected this. It was a surprise to him. He had expected to be blamed. It startled him so, that for the moment he was silent, gazing at her. But old White was not silent. ‘Oh! master, master, come away, come home,’ he pleaded, wringing his hands; and then he came and touched my shoulder and cried like a child. ‘Speak to him, send him away!’ he cried. ‘It is for his own good. If she speaks to him like that, if she keeps her temper, it is all over; it will have all to be begun again.’

Reinhardt made a long pause. He looked as if he were gathering up his strength to speak again, and when he did so, it was with the fictitious heat of a man whose heart is melting. ‘How dare you say “I,”’ he said, ‘when you do not mean it?—when all your life you have said otherwise? You have reproached me, stirred up my friends against me, kept your own sins in the background and published mine. You have done this for years, and now is it a new art you are trying? Do not think you can deceive me,’ he cried, getting up in his agitation; ‘it is impossible. I am not such a credulous fool.’

She kept her eyes on the ceiling, not looking at him; the moisture in them seemed to swell, but did not overflow. ‘I may not change then?’ she said, very low. ‘I may not see that I am wrong? I am not to be permitted to repent?’

He turned from her and began to pace up and down the room; he plucked at his waistcoat and cravat as though they choked him. More than once he returned to the sofa as if with something to say, but went away again. When White approached, he was pushed away with impatience, and once with such force that he span round as he was driven back. This last repulse seemed to convince him. ‘Be a fool, then, if you will, sir,’ he said sharply, and withdrew altogether into a corner, where he watched the scene. I do not think Reinhardt even saw this or anything else. He was walking up and down hastily like a man out of his mind, struggling, one could not but see, with a hundred demons, and tempting his fate.

He came back again however in his tumultuous uncertainty, and bent over her once more. ‘Talk of repentance—talk of change,’ he cried bitterly. ‘How often have you pretended as much? Do you hear me, woman?’ (bending down so close that his breath must have touched her)—‘how often have you done it? how often have you pretended? Oh, false, false as death!’

She put her hand upon his shoulder, almost on his neck. He broke away from her with a hoarse cry; he made another wild march round the room. Then he came back.

‘Julia,’ he cried, ‘Julia, Julia, Julia! Mine!’

She lay still as a tiger that is going to spring. He fell on his knees beside her, weeping, storming in his passion. Good Lord! was it my doing? was I responsible? White gave me a furious look, and rushed out of the room. The husband and wife were reconciled.

CHAPTER X

This is about the end of the story so far as I am concerned. He spent the night there by her sofa, kissing her dress and her hands, and watching her in a transport of passion and perhaps delight. For the last I would not answer. It must have been at best a troubled joy; and a man’s infatuation for a beautiful face is not what I call love, though it is often a very tragic and terrible passion. He took her away in the morning, but not to his own house. They went straight from mine to London, that great receptacle of everybody’s misery and happiness. I saw them both before they left, though only for a moment. She was still lying on the sofa as when I left her, and the half disorder of her hair, the exhaustion in her face, seemed rather to enhance her beauty. Any one else would have looked jaded and worn out, but a faint flush of triumph and satisfaction had stolen over her (partly perhaps produced by her weakness) and woke the marble into life. She stretched out her hand to me carelessly as I went in. She said with a smile, ‘You see my feeling was right. I always trust my feelings. I knew you were the person to do it, and you have done it. I felt it whenever I saw your face.’

‘I hope it will be lasting, and that you may be happy,’ I said, faltering, not knowing what tone to take.

‘Oh, yes, it is to be hoped so. He is going to take me to London,’ she answered carelessly. ‘I am quite sorry to leave your nice house, everything has been so comfortable. It is small and it is plain, but you know how to make yourself comfortable. I suppose when one has lived so long one naturally does.’

This was all her thanks to me. The husband took the matter in a different way. They had a fire lighted and coffee taken to them in the drawing-room (which was left in the saddest confusion after all the disturbance of the night); and it was when the carriage he had ordered was at the door, and she had gone to make herself ready, that he came to me. I was in the dining-room with my breakfast on the table, which I was too much worn out to take. His face was very strange; it was full of suppressed excitement, with a wild, strained look about the eyes, and a certain air of heat and haste, though his colour was like ivory as usual. ‘I have to thank you,’ he said to me, very stiffly, ‘and if I said anything amiss in my surprise last night, I hope you will forgive it. I can only thank you now; nothing else is possible. But I must add, I hope we shall never meet again.’

‘I assure you, if we do, it shall not be with my will,’ said I, feeling very angry as I think I had a right to be.

He bowed, but made no reply; not because words failed him. I felt that he would have liked nothing better than to have fallen upon me and metaphorically torn me to pieces. He had been overcome by his own heart or passions, and had taken her back, but he hated me for having drawn him to do so. He saw the tragic folly of the step he was taking. There was a gloom in his excitement such as I cannot describe. He had no strength to resist her, but she was hateful to him even while he adored her. And doubly hateful, without any counter-balancing attraction, was I, who had as it were betrayed him to his fate.

‘I trust your wife and you will be happy—now,’ I said, trying to speak firmly. He interrupted me with a hoarse laugh.

‘My wife!’

‘Is she not your wife?’ I said in alarm.

He laughed again, even more hoarsely, with a sharp tone in the sound. ‘What do you call a woman who is taken back after—everything? Who is taken back because—— What is she, do you suppose? What is he, the everlasting dupe and fool! Don’t speak to me any more.’ He hurried away from me, and then turned round again at the door. ‘I spoke a little wildly perhaps,’ he said, with a smile, which was more disagreeable than his rage, ‘without due thought for Mrs. Reinhardt’s reputation. Make yourself quite easy—she is my wife.’

That was the last I saw of them. I was too much offended to go to the door to see them leave the house, but it is impossible to describe the relief with which I listened to the wheels ringing along the road as they went away. Was it really true?—was this nightmare removed from me, and my house my own again? I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. I fell down on my knees and made some sort of confused thanksgiving. It seemed to me as if I had been in this horrible bondage half my life.

Mary came in about half-an-hour after to take away the breakfast things. I had swallowed a cup of tea, but I had not been able to eat. Mary was still disapproving, but quieter than at first; she shook her head over the untouched food. ‘We’ll be having you ill next, ma’am,’ she said, with an evident feeling that cook and she would in that case have good reason to complain; and then, after a pause, she added severely, ‘I don’t know if you knew, ma’am, as the lady is gone off in your best shawl?’

‘My shawl!’ I had thought no more of it: but this sudden news took away my breath.

‘She was always fond of it,’ said Mary grimly. ‘She liked the best of everything did that lady; and she couldn’t make up her mind to take it off when she went away.’

Though I was so confounded and confused, I made an effort to keep up appearances still. ‘She will send it back, of course, as soon as she gets—home,’ I said; ‘as soon as she gets—her own things.’

‘I am sure I hope so, ma’am,’ said Mary, carrying off her tray. Her tone was not one to inspire hope in the listener, and I confess that for the rest of the morning my shawl held a very large place in my thoughts. It was the most valuable piece of personal property I possessed. When I used to take it out and wrap it round me, it was always with a certain pride. It was the kind of wrap which dignifies any dress. ‘With that handsome shawl, it does not matter what else you wear,’ Mrs. Stoke was in the habit of saying to me; and though Mrs. Stoke was not a great authority in most matters, she knew what she was saying on this point. I said to myself, ‘Of course she will send it back,’ but I had a very chill sensation of doubt about my heart.

All the morning I sat still over the fire, with a longing to go and talk to some one. For more than a week now, I had not exchanged a word with my neighbours, and this was terrible to a person like me, living surrounded by so many whose lives had come to be a part of mine. But I had not the courage to take the initiative. I cannot tell how I longed for some one to come, for the ice to be broken. And it was only natural that people should be surprised and offended, and even have learned to distrust me. For who could they suppose I was hiding away like that—some mysterious sinner belonging to myself—some one I had a special interest in? And then she had been recognized by Everard Stoke!

At about twelve o’clock my quietness was disturbed by the sound of some one coming; my heart began to beat and my face to flush, but it was only old White with his fellow-servant, Mississarah, as he called her, pronouncing the two words as if they were one. Their visit put me in possession of the whole miserable story. It was like a tale of enchantment all through. The man had been a mature man of forty or more, buried in science and learning, when he first saw the beautiful creature who since seemed to have been the curse of his life. She was an innkeeper’s daughter, untaught and unrefined. He had tried to educate her, married her, done everything that a man mad with love could do to make her a lady—nay, to make her a decorous woman—but he had failed and over again failed. They did not tell me, and I did not wish to hear, what special sins she had done against him. I suppose she had done everything that a wicked wife could do. She had been put into honourable retirement with the hope of recovery again and again. Then she had been sent away in anger. But every time the unfortunate husband had fallen under her personal influence—the influence of her beauty—she had been taken back.

‘She hates him,’ poor White said, almost crying, ‘but he can’t resist her. He’s mad, ma’am, mad, that’s what it is. He could kill hisself for giving in, but he can’t help hisself. We’ve had to watch him night and day as he shouldn’t hear her nor see her, for when her money’s done she always comes back to him. He’ll kill her some day or kill hisself. Mississarah knows as I’m speaking true.’

‘As true as the Bible,’ said Mississarah; but she was softer than he towards the wife. ‘He was too wise and too good for her, ma’am,’ she said, ‘a fool and a wise man can’t walk together—it’s hard on the wise man, but maybe it’s a bit hard too on the fool. Folks don’t make themselves. She mightn’t have been so bad——’

‘Oh, go along; go along, Mississarah, do,’ said White. ‘We’ll have to go off from here where all was quiet and nice, and start again without knowing no more than Adam. But he’ll kill her, some day, you’ll see, or he’ll kill hisself.’

Mississarah was a north-country woman, and had a little feeling that her master was a foreigner, and therefore necessarily more or less guilty; but White was half a foreigner himself and totally devoted to his master. When they had poured forth their sorrows to me, they went away disconsolate, and their fears about leaving East Cottage were so soon justified that I never saw them more.

And then came my melancholy luncheon, which was set on the table for me, and which I loathed the sight of. To escape from it I went into the drawing-room, from which all traces of last night’s confusion were gone. I was so miserable, and lonely, and weary that I think I dropped asleep over the fire. I had been up almost all night, and there seemed nothing so comfortable in all the world as forgetting one’s very existence and being able to get to sleep.

I woke with the murmur of voices in my ears. Lady Denzil was sitting by me holding my hand. She gave me a kiss, and whispered to me in her soft voice,—‘We know all about it—we know all about it, my dear,’ patting me softly with her kind hand. I’m afraid I broke down and cried like a child. I am growing old myself, to be sure, but Lady Denzil, thank Heaven, might have been even my mother—and if you consider all the agitation, all the disturbance I had come through!

I think everybody on the Green called that day, and each visitor was more kind than the other. ‘I shall always consider it a special providence, however, that none of us called or were introduced to her,’ Mrs. General Perronet said solemnly. But she was the only one who made any allusion to the terrible guest I had been hiding in my house. They took me out to get the air—they made me walk to the Dell to see the autumn colour on the trees. They carried me off to dine at the Lodge, and brought me home with a body-guard. ‘You are not fit to be trusted to walk home by yourself,’ Lottie Stoke said, giving me her arm. In short, the Green received me back with acclamations, as if I had been a returned Prodigal, and I found that I could laugh over the new and most unexpected rÔle, which I thus found myself filling, as soon as the next day.

Some time after, I received my shawl in a rough parcel, sent by railway. It was torn in two or three places by the pins it had been fastened with, and had several small stains upon it. It was sent without a word, without any apologies, with Mrs. Reinhardt’s compliments written outside the brown paper cover, in a coarse hand. And that was the only direct communication I ever had with my strange guest. Before Christmas however there was a paragraph in some of the papers that L. Reinhardt, Esq., had volunteered to accompany an expedition going to Africa in order to make some scientific observations. There was a great crowded, enthusiastic meeting of the Geographical Society, in which his wonderful devotion was dwelt on and the sacrifice he was making to the interests of science. And he was even mentioned in the House of Commons, where some great personage took it upon him to say that in the arrangement of the expedition the greatest assistance had been received from Mr. Reinhardt, who, himself a man of wealth and leisure, had generously devoted his energies to it, and smoothed away a great many of the difficulties in the way—a good work for which science and his country would alike be grateful to him, said the orator. Oh, me! oh, me! I looked up in Lady Denzil’s face as Sir Thomas read out these words to us. Sir Thomas took it quite calmly, and was rather pleased indeed that Mr. Reinhardt, by getting himself publicly thanked in the House of Commons, had justified the impulse which prompted himself, Sir Thomas Denzil, head as it were of society on the Green, to call upon him. But my lady laid her soft old hand on mine, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘Do not let us blame him, my dear,—do not let us blame him,’ she said to me when we were alone. She had known what temptation was.