Stella had always been the spoilt child of the Tredgold family. Her little selfishnesses and passions of desire to have her own way, and everything she might happen to want, had been so amusing that nobody had chidden or thought for a moment (as everybody thought with Katherine) of the bad effect upon her character and temper of having all these passions satisfied and getting everything she stormed or cried for. Aunt after aunt had passed in shadow, as it were, across the highly lighted circle of Mr. Tredgold’s home life, all of them breaking down at last in the impossibility of keeping pace with Stella, or satisfying her impetuous little spirit; and governess after governess in the same way had performed a sort of processional march through the house. Stella’s perpetual flow of mockery and mimicry had all the time kept her father in endless amusement. The mockery was not very clever, but he was easily pleased and thought it capital fun. There was so much inhumanity in his constitution, though he was a kind man in his way and very indulgent to those who belonged to him, that he had no objection to see his own old sister (though a good creature) outrageously mimicked in all her peculiarities, much less the sisters of his late wife. Little Stella, while still under the age of sixteen, had driven off all these ladies and kept her father in constant amusement. “The little hussy!” he said, “the little vixen!” and chuckled and laughed till it was feared he might choke some time, being afflicted with bronchitis, in those convulsions of delight. Katherine, who was the champion of the aunts, and wept as one after the other departed, amused him greatly too. “She is an old maid born!” he said, “and she sticks up for her kind, but Stella will have her pick, and marry a prince, and take off the old cats as long as she lives.”

“But if she lives,” said a severe governess who for some time kept the household in awe, “she will become old too, and probably be an old cat in the opinion of those that come after her.”

“No fear,” cried the foolish old man—“no fear.” In his opinion Stella would never be anything but pretty and young, and radiant with fun and fascination.

And since the period when the girls “came out” there had been nothing but a whirl of gaiety in the house. They did not come out in the legitimate way, by being presented to Her Majesty and thus placed on the roll of society in the usual meaning of the word, but only by appearing at the first important ball in the locality, and giving it so to be understood that they were prepared to accept any invitations that might come in their way. They had come out together, Stella being much too masterful and impatient to permit any such step on Katherine’s part without her, so that Katherine had been more than nineteen while Stella was not much over sixteen when this important step took place. Three years had passed since that time. Stella was twenty, and beginning to feel like a rather blasÉ woman of the world; while Katherine at twenty-three was supposed to be stepping back to that obscurity which her father had prophesied for her, not far off from the region of the old cats to which she was supposed to belong. Curiously enough, no prince had come out of the unknown for the brighter sister. The only suitor that had appeared had been for Katherine, and had been almost laughed out of countenance, poor man, before he took his dismissal, which was, indeed, rather given by the household in general than by the person chiefly concerned. He was an Indian civilian on his way back to some blazing station on the Plains, which was reason enough why he should be repulsed by the family; but probably the annoying thought that it was Katherine he wanted and not her sister had still more to do with it.

“It was a good thing at least that he had not the audacity to ask for you, my pet,” Mr. Tredgold said.

“For me!” said Stella, with a little shriek of horror, “I should very soon have given him his answer.” And Katherine, too, gave him his answer, but in a dazed and bewildered way. She was not at all in love with him, but it did glance across her mind that to be the first person with some one, to have a house of her own in which she should be supreme, and a man by her side who thought there was nobody like her—— But, then, was it possible that any man should really think that? or that any house could ever have this strange fascination of home which held her fast she could not tell how or why? She acquiesced accordingly in Mr. Stanford’s dismissal. But when she went out to look at the view in her moments of discouragement her mind was apt to return to him, to wonder sometimes what he was doing, where he was, or if he had found some one to be his companion, and of whom he could think that there was nobody like her in the world?

In the meantime, however, on the morning which followed the evening already recorded, Katherine had too much to do in the way of providing for the picnic to have much time to think. Stella had darted into her room half-dressed with a number of notes in her hand to tell her that everybody was coming. “Mrs. Seton brings six including her husband and herself—that makes four fresh new men besides little Seton, whom you can talk to if you like, Kate; and there’s three from the Rectory, and five from the Villa, and old Mildmay and Shanks to do propriety for papa’s sake.”

“I wish you would not speak of them in that way by their names. It does not take much trouble to say Miss Mildmay and Mrs. Shanks.”

“I’ll say the old cats, if you like,” Stella said with a laugh, “that’s shorter still. Do stir up a little, and be quick and let us have a good lunch.”

“How am I to get cold chickens at an hour’s notice?” said Katherine. “You seem to think they are all ready roasted in the poultry yard, and can be put in the hampers straight off. I don’t know what Mrs. Pearson will say.”

“She will only say what she has said a hundred times; but it always comes right all the same,” cried Stella, retreating into her own room to complete her toilette. And this was so true that Kate finished hers also in comparative calm. She was the housekeeper de jure, and interviewed Mrs. Pearson every morning with the profoundest gravity as if everything depended upon her; but at bottom Katherine knew very well that it was Mrs. Pearson who was the housekeeper de facto, and that she, like everyone else, managed somehow that Miss Stella should have her way.

“You know it’s just impossible,” said that authority a few minutes later. “Start at twelve and tell me at nine to provide for nearly twenty people! Where am I to get the chickens, not to speak of ham and cold beef and all the rest? Do ye think the chickens in the yard are roasted already?” cried the indignant housekeeper, using Katherine’s own argument, “and that I have only to set them out in the air to cool?”

“You see I did not know yesterday,” said the young mistress apologetically; “it was a sudden thought of Miss Stella’s last night.”

“She is a one for sudden thoughts!” cried Pearson, half-indignant, half-admiring; and after a little more protestation that it was impossible she began to arrange how it could be done. It was indeed so usual an experience that the protests were stereotyped, so to speak. Everything on the Cliff was sudden—even Katherine had acquired the habit, and preferred an impromptu to any careful preparation of events. “Then if anything is wrong we can say there was so very little time to do it in,” she said with an instinct of recklessness foreign to her nature. But Mrs. Pearson was wise and prudent and knew her business, so that it was very seldom anything went wrong.

On ordinary occasions every one knows how rare it is to have a thoroughly fine day for the most carefully arranged picnic. The association of rain with these festivities is traditional. There is nothing that has so bad an effect upon the most settled weather. Clouds blow up upon the sky and rain pours down at the very suggestion. But that strange Deity which we call Providence, and speak of in the neuter gender, is never more apparently capricious than in this respect. A picnic which is thoroughly undesirable, which has nothing in its favour, which brings people together who ought to be kept apart, and involves mischief of every kind, is free from all the usual mischances. That day dawned more brightly even than other days. It shone even cloudless, the glass rising, the wind dropping as if for the special enjoyment of some favourite of Heaven. It was already October, but quite warm, as warm as June, the colour of autumn adding only a charm the more, and neither chill nor cloud to dull the atmosphere. The sea shone like diamonds but more brilliant, curve upon curve of light following each other with every glittering facet in movement. The white cliff at the further point of the bay shone with a dazzling whiteness beyond comparison with anything else in sky or earth.

At twelve o’clock the sun overhead was like a benediction, not too hot as in July and August, just perfect everybody said; and the carriages and the horses with their shiny coats, and the gay guests in every tint of colour, with convivial smiles and pleasant faces, made the drive as gay as Rotten Row when Mr. Tredgold came forth to welcome and speed forth his guests. This was his own comparison often used, though the good man had never known much of Rotten Row. He stood in the porch, which had a rustical air though the house was so far from being rustical, and surveyed all these dazzling people with pride. Though he had been used for years now to such gay assemblages, he had never ceased to feel a great pride in them as though of “an honour unto which he was not born.” To see his girls holding out hospitality to all the grand folks was an unceasing satisfaction. He liked to see them at the head of everything, dispensing bounties. The objectionable lady who had brought so many men in her train did not come near Mr. Tredgold, but bowed to him from a safe distance, from his own waggonette in which she had placed herself.

“I am not going to be led like a lamb to that old bore,” she said to her party, which swarmed about her and was ready to laugh at everything she said; and they were all much amused by the old man’s bow, and by the wave of his hand, with which he seemed to make his visitors free of his luxuries.

“The old bore thinks himself an old swell,” said someone else. “Tredgold and Silverstamp, money changers,” said another. “Not half so good—Tredgold and Wurst, sausage makers,” cried a third. They all laughed so much, being easily satisfied in the way of wit, that Stella, who was going to drive, came up flourishing her whip, to know what was the joke.

“Oh, only about a funny sign we saw on the way,” said Mrs. Seton, with a glance all round, quenching the laughter. The last thing that could have entered Stella’s mind was that these guests of hers, so effusive in their acceptance of her invitation, so pleased to be there, with everything supplied for their day’s pleasure, were making a jest of anything that belonged to her. She felt that she was conferring a favour upon them, giving them “a great treat,” which they had no right to expect.

“You must tell me about it on the way,” she said, beaming upon them with gracious looks, which was the best joke of all, they all thought, stifling their laughter.

Mr. Tredgold sent a great many wreathed smiles and gracious gestures to the waggonette which was full of such a distinguished company, and with Stella and her whip just ready to mount the driving-seat. They were new friends he was aware. The men were all fashionable, “a cut above” the Sliplin or even the smaller county people. The old gentleman loved to see his little Stella among them, with her little delightful swagger and air of being A I everywhere. I hope nobody will think me responsible for the words in which poor Mr. Tredgold’s vulgar little thoughts expressed themselves. He did not swagger like Stella, but loved to see her swaggering. He himself would have been almost obsequious to the fine folks. He had a remnant of uneasy consciousness that he had no natural right to all this splendour, which made him deeply delighted when people who had a right to it condescended to accept it from his hand. But he was proud too to know that Stella did not at all share this feeling, but thought herself A I. So she was A I; no one there was fit to hold a candle to her. So he thought, standing at his door waving his hands, and calling out congratulations on the fine day and injunctions to his guests to enjoy themselves.

“Don’t spare anything—neither the horses nor the champagne; there is plenty more where these came from,” he said.

Then the waggonette dashed off, leading the way; and Katherine followed in the landau with the clergyman’s family from the Rectory, receiving more of Mr. Tredgold’s smiles and salutations, but not so enthusiastic.

“Mind you make everybody comfortable, Kate,” he cried. “Have you plenty of wraps and cushions? There’s any number in the hall; and I hope your hampers are full of nice things and plenty of champagne—plenty of good champagne; that’s what the ladies want to keep up their spirits. And don’t be afraid of it. I have none but the best in my house.”

The vehicle which came after the landau was something of the shandrydan order, with one humble horse and five people clustering upon it.

“Why didn’t you have one of our carriages!” he cried. “There’s a many in the stables that we never use. You had only to say the word, and the other waggonette would have been ready for you; far more comfortable than that old rattle-trap. And, bless us! here is the midge—the midge, I declare—with the two old—with two old friends; but, dear me, Mrs. Shanks, how much better you would have been in the brougham!”

“So I said,” said one of the ladies; “but Ruth Mildmay would not hear of it. She is all for independence and our own trap, but I like comfort best.”

“No,” said Miss Mildmay. “Indebted to our good friend we’ll always be for many a nice party, and good dinner and good wine as well; but my carriage must be my own, if it’s only a hired one; that is my opinion, Mr. Tredgold, whatever any one may say.”

“My dear good ladies,” said Mr. Tredgold, “this is Liberty Hall; you may come as you please and do as you please; only you know there’s heaps of horses in my stables, and when my daughters go out I like everything about them to be nice—nice horses, nice carriages. And why should you pay for a shabby affair that anybody can hire, when you might have my brougham with all the last improvements? But ladies will have their little whims and fads, we all know that.”

“Mr. Perkins,” cried Miss Mildmay out of the window to the driver of the fly, “go on! We’ll never make up to the others if you don’t drive fast; and the midge is not very safe when it goes along a heavy road.”

“As safe as a coach, and we’re in very good time, Miss,” said Mr. Perkins, waving his whip. Perkins felt himself to be of the party too, as indeed he was of most parties along the half circle of the bay.

“Ah, I told you,” cried Mr. Tredgold, with his chuckle, “you’d have been much better in the brougham.” He went on chuckling after this last detachment had driven unsteadily away. A midge is not a graceful nor perhaps a very safe vehicle. It is like a section of an omnibus, a square box on wheels wanting proportions, and I think it is used only by elderly ladies at seaside places. As it jogged forth Mr. Tredgold chuckled more and more. Though he had been so lavish in his offers of the brougham, the old gentleman was not displeased to see his old neighbours roll and shamble along in that uncomfortable way. It served them right for rejecting the luxury he had provided. It served them still more right for being poor. And yet there was this advantage in their being poor, that it threw up the fact of his own wealth, like a bright object on a dark background. He went back to his room after a while, casting a glance and a shiver at the garden blazing with sunshine and flowers which crowned the cliff. He knew there was always a little shrewd breeze blowing round the corner somewhere, and the view might be hanged for anything he cared. He went indoors to his room, where there was a nice little bit of fire. There was generally a little bit of fire somewhere wherever he was. It was much more concentrated than the sun, and could be controlled at his pleasure and suited him better. The sun shone when it pleased, but the fire burned when Mr. Tredgold pleased. He sat down and stretched himself out in his easy-chair and thought for a minute or two how excellent it was to have such a plenty of money, so many horses and carriages, and one of the nicest houses in the island—the very nicest he thought—and to give Stella everything she wanted. “She makes a fool of me,” he said to himself, chuckling. “If that little girl wanted the Koh-i-Noor, I’d be game to send off somebody careering over the earth to find out as good.” This was all for love of Stella and a little for glory of himself; and in this mood he took up his morning paper, which was his occupation for the day.