THE next morning Vincent awoke with a sense of personal occupation and business, which perhaps is only possible to a man engaged with the actual occurrences of individual life. Professional duties and the general necessities of existing, do not give that thrill of sensible importance and use which a man feels who is busy with affairs which concern his own or other people’s very heart and being. The young Nonconformist was no longer the sentimentalist who had made the gaping assembly at Salem Chapel uneasy over their tea-drinking. That dark and secret ocean of life which he had apostrophised, opened up to him immediately thereafter one of its most mysterious scenes. This had shaken Vincent rudely out of his own youthful vagaries. Perhaps the most true of philosophers, contemplating, however profoundly, the secrets of nature or thought, would come to a sudden standstill over a visible abyss of human guilt, wretchedness, heroic self-restraint, and courage, yawning apparent in the meditative way. What, then, were the poor dialectics of Church and State controversy, or the fluctuations of an uncertain young mind feeling itself superior to its work, to such a spectacle of passionate life, full of evil and of noble qualities—of guilt and suffering more intense than anything philosophy dreams of? The thin veil which youthful ignorance, believing in the supremacy of thought and superior charm of intellectual concerns, lays over the world, shrivelled up under the fiery lurid light of that passionate scene. Two people clearly, who had once loved each other, hating each other to the death, struggling desperately over a lesser thread of life proceeding from them both—the mother, driven to the lowest extremities of existence, standing up like a wild creature to defend her offspring—what could philosophy say to such phenomena? A wild circle of passion sprang into conscious being under the young man’s half-frightened eyes—wild figures that filled the world, leaving small space for the calm suggestions of thought, and even to truth itself so little vantage-ground. Love, Hatred, Anger, Jealousy, Revenge—how many more? Vincent, who was no longer the lofty reasoning Vincent of Homerton, found life look different under the light of those torch-bearers. But he had no leisure on this particular morning to survey the subject. He had to carry his report and explanation to the strange woman who had so seized upon and involved him in her concerns.

Mrs. Hilyard was seated in her room, just as he had seen her before, working with flying needle and nervous fingers at her coarsest needlework. She said, “Come in,” and did not rise when he entered. She gave him an eager, inquiring look, more importunate and commanding than any words, but never stopped working, moving her thin fingers as if there was some spell in the continuance of her labour. She was impatient of his silence before he had closed the door—desperate when he said the usual greeting. She opened her pale lips and spoke, but Vincent heard nothing. She was beyond speech.

“The message went off last night, and I wrote to my mother,” said Vincent; “don’t fear. She will do what you wish, and everything will be well.”

It was some time before Mrs. Hilyard quite conquered her agitation; when she succeeded, she spoke so entirely in her usual tone that Vincent started, being inexperienced in such changes. He contemplated her with tragic eyes in her living martyrdom; she, on the contrary, more conscious of her own powers, her own strength of resistance and activity of life, than of any sacrifice, had nothing about her the least tragical, and spoke according to nature. Instead of any passionate burst of self-revelation, this is what she said—

“Thank you. I am very much obliged to you. How everything is to be well, does not appear to me; but I will take your word for it. I hope I may take your word for your mother also, Mr. Vincent. You have a right to know how this is. Do you claim it, and must I tell you now?”

Here for the first time Vincent recollected in what an unjustifiable way he had obtained his information. Strangely enough, it had never struck him before. He had felt himself somehow identified with the woman in the strange interview he had overheard. The man was a personal enemy. His interest in the matter was so honest and simple amid all the complication of his youthful superficial insincerities, that this equivocal action was one of the very few which Vincent had actually never questioned even to himself. He was confounded now when he saw how the matter stood. His face became suddenly crimson;—shame took possession of his soul.

“Good heavens, I have done the most dishonourable action!” cried Vincent, betrayed into sudden exclamation by the horror of the discovery. Then he paused, turning an alarmed look upon his new friend. She took it very calmly. She glanced up at him with a comic glance in her eyes, and a twitch at the corners of her mouth. Notwithstanding last night—notwithstanding the anxiety which she dared not move in her own person to alleviate—she was still capable of being amused. Her eyes said, “What now?” with no very alarming apprehensions. The situation was a frightful one for poor Vincent.

“You will be quite justified in turning me out of your house,” he said, clearing his throat, and in great confusion; “but if you will believe it, I never till this moment saw how atrocious—— Mrs. Hilyard, I was in the vestry; the window was open; I heard your conversation last night.”

For a moment Vincent had all the punishment he expected, and greater. Her eyes blazed upon him out of that pale dark face with a certain contempt and lofty indifference. There was a pause. Mr. Vincent crushed his best hat in his hands, and sat speechless doing penance. He was dismayed with the discovery of his own meanness. Nobody could deliver such a cutting sentence as he was pronouncing on himself.

“All the world might have listened, so far as I am concerned,” she said, after a while, quietly enough. “I am sorry you did it; but the discovery is worse for yourself than for me.” Then, after another pause, “I don’t mean to quarrel. I am glad for my own sake, though sorry for yours. Now you know better than I can tell you. There were some pleasant flowers of speech to be gathered in that dark garden,” she continued, with another odd upward gleam of her eyes. “We must have startled your clerical ideas rather. At the moment, however, Mr. Vincent, people like Colonel Mildmay and myself mean what we say.”

“If I had gained my knowledge in a legitimate way,” said the shame-stricken minister, not venturing to look her in the face, “I should have said that I hoped it was only for the moment.”

Mrs. Hilyard laid down her work, and looked across at him with undisguised amusement. “I am sorry there is nobody here to perceive this beautiful situation,” she said. “Who would not have their ghostly father commit himself, if he repented after this fashion? Thank you, Mr. Vincent, for what you don’t say. And now we shall drop the subject, don’t you think? Were the deacons all charmed with the tea-meeting last night?”

“You want me to go now,” said Vincent, rising, with disconcerted looks.

“Not because I am angry. I am not angry,” she said, rising and holding out her hand to him. “It was a pity, but it was an inadvertence, and no dishonourable action. Yes, go. I am best to be avoided till I hear how this journey has been managed, and what your mother says. It was a sudden thought, that sending them to Lonsdale. I know that, even if he has not already found the right one, he will search all the others now. And your Lonsdale has been examined and exhausted; all is safe there. Yes, go. I am glad you know; but don’t say anything to Alice, if you see her, as she is sure to seek you out. You know who I mean by Alice? Lady Western—yes. Good-bye. I trust you, notwithstanding the vestry window; but close it after this on January nights.”

She had sunk into her seat again, and was absorbed in her needlework, before Vincent left the room. He looked back upon her before he shut the door, but she had no look to spare from that all-engrossing work; her thin fingers were more scarred than ever, and stained with the coarse blue stuff. All his life after the young man never saw that colour without thinking of the stains on those poor hands.

He went about his work assiduously all that day, visiting sick people, poor people, men and women, “which were sinners.” That dark ocean of life with which he had frightened the Salem people last night, Mr. Vincent made deeper investigations into this day than he had made before during all the time he had been in Carlingford. He kept clear of the smug comfort of the leading people of “the connection.” Absolute want, suffering, and sorrow, were comparatively new to him; and being as yet a stranger to philanthropic schemes, and not at all scientific in the distribution of his sympathies, the minister of Salem conducted himself in a way which would have called forth the profoundest contempt and pity of the curate of St. Roque’s. He believed everybody’s story, and emptied his purse with the wildest liberality; for, indeed, visitation of the poor had not been a branch of study at Homerton. Tired and all but penniless, he did not turn his steps homeward till the wintry afternoon was sinking into night, and the lamps began to be lighted about the cheerful streets. As he came into George Street he saw Lady Western’s carriage waiting at the door of Masters’s. Alice! that was the name they called her. He looked at the celestial chariot wistfully. He had nothing to do with it or its beautiful mistress—never, as anything but a stranger, worshipping afar off, could the Dissenting minister of Carlingford approach that lovely vision—never think of her but as of a planet, ineffably distant—never——

“My lady’s compliments,” said a tall voice on a level with Vincent’s eyebrows: “will you please to step over and speak to her ladyship?” The startled Nonconformist raised his eyes. The big footman, whose happy privilege it was to wait upon that lady of his dreams, stood respectful by his side, and from the carriage opposite the fairest face in the world was beaming, the prettiest of hands waving to him. Vincent believed afterwards that he crossed the entire breadth of George Street in a single stride.

“I am so glad to see you, Mr. Vincent,” said Lady Western, giving him her hand; “I did so want to see you after the other night. Oh, how could you be so clever and wicked—so wicked to your friends! Indeed, I shall never be pleased till you recant, and confess how wrong you were. I must tell you why I went that night. I could not tell what on earth to do with my brother, and I took him to amuse him; or else, you know, I never could have gone to hear the poor dear old Church attacked. And how violent you were too! Indeed I must not say how clever I thought it, or I should feel I was an enemy to the Church. Now I want you to dine with me, and I shall have somebody to come who will be a match for you. I am very fond of clever society, though there is so little of it in Carlingford. Tell me, will you come to-morrow? I am disengaged. Oh, pray, do! and Mr. Wentworth shall come too, and you shall fight.”

Lady Western clapped her pretty hands together with the greatest animation. As for Vincent, all the superior thoughts in which he would probably have indulged—the contrast he would have drawn between the desperate brother and this butterfly creature, fluttering on the edge of mysteries so dark and evil, had she been anybody else—deserted him totally in the present crisis. She was not anybody else—she was herself. The words that fell from those sweetest lips were of a half-divine simplicity to the bewildered young man. He would have gone off straightway to the end of the world if she had chosen to command him. All unwarned by his previous failure, paradise opened again to his delighted eyes.

“And I want to consult you about our friend,” said Lady Western; “it will be so kind of you to come. I am so pleased you have no engagement. I am sure you thought us very stupid last time; and I am stupid, I confess,” added the beauty, turning those sweet eyes, which were more eloquent than genius, upon the slave who was reconquered by a glance; “but I like clever people dearly. Good-bye till to-morrow. I shall quite reckon upon to-morrow. Oh, there is Mr. Wentworth! John, call Mr. Wentworth to speak to me. Good morning—remember, half-past six—now, you must not forget.”

Spite of the fact that Mr. Wentworth took his place immediately by the side of the carriage, Vincent passed on, a changed man. Forget! He smiled to himself at the possibility, and as he walked on to his lodging, a wonderful maze of expectation fell upon the young man’s mind. Why, he asked, was he brought into this strange connection with Her relations and their story? what could be, he said to himself with a little awe, the purpose of that Providence which shapes men’s ends, in interweaving his life with Hers by these links of common interest? The skies throbbed with wonder and miracle as soon as they were lighted up by her smile. Who could predict what might be coming, through all the impossibilities of fact and circumstance? He would not dissipate that delicious haze by any definite expectations like those which brought him to sudden grief on a former occasion. He was content to believe it was not for nothing that all these strange circles of fate were weaving round his charmed feet.

In this elevated frame of mind, scarcely aware of the prosaic ground he trod, Vincent reached home. The little maid at the door said something about a lady, to which he paid no attention, being occupied with his own thoughts. With an unconscious illumination on his face he mounted the stair lightly, three steps at a time, to his own rooms. The lamp was lighted in his little sitting-room, and some one rose nervously from the table as he went in at the door. What was this sudden terror which fell upon the young man in the renewed glory of his youthful hopes? It was his mother, pale and faint, with sleepless tearful eyes, who, with the cry of an aching heart, worn out by fatigue and suspense, came forward, holding out anxious hands to him, and dropped in an utter abandon of weariness and distress into his astonished arms.