When Evelyn returned to the house she found her husband engaged with a visitor—no less a person than Sir John Marchbanks—who had some works going on near Kilrossie, drainages and such like, on which he was very anxious to have Mr. Rowland’s opinion. And Rowland, recalled to himself by the touch of the practical, had recovered his spirits and energy for the moment at least. He agreed to go and inspect the work, and to add to that kindness, as Sir John said, with a little pompous politeness, by staying to dinner afterwards, as country neighbours use. Evelyn had therefore no means of confiding Rankin’s revelation to her husband, even had she wished; and she was not sure that she wished to do so. The whole matter wanted more thinking over than she could give it in the agitated walk home and the hurried interval before he left with his visitor to walk to Kilrossie and see the works. “I warn you, Mrs. Rowland, that I will keep him as long as I can,” said Sir John. “We have great schemes of public work before us in the peninsula, and there is nobody here whose opinion is worth a button in comparison with his.”

“I shall make no objection; it will do him good,” said Evelyn: but she followed her husband into the library, where he went for a moment to fetch some papers. “James,” she said, with a little timidity, “may I send for Archie home?”

“May you send for—the devil!” said James Rowland. “What do you mean? What’s the boy to you?”

“He is Mary’s son——”

“You seem to think more of that,” he said with his angry laugh, “than that he’s mine—and has brought shame on my name.”

“We don’t know that; you cannot prove that. It is being talked of among the servants. Let me send for him. If he comes while you are away, it will be easier. Even if it were true,” cried Evelyn, “you would have to forgive him some time, James.”

“I am not so sure of that,” said her husband, grimly. “Anyhow, he is gone, and there’s an end——”

“There can never be an end. Let me write; let me send——”

“And do you think, you simple woman,” said Rowland, “that a dour fellow like that, a lad that swore at me, and flew in my very face from the first, will come back for the holding up of your little finger?” He took her hand in his, with admiring affection; there was something like a gleam of moisture in his eyes. “It is a bonnie little finger,” he said, “and a kind—and I would follow it over the world: but you must not think to triumph over a young brute like yon, as you do over me.”

“Oh, James, you are mistaken; he is not, he is not——”

“What is he not? I wish he was not a son of mine,” said the father, with darkening brow.

And he said nothing more, neither to forbid nor to permit. Perhaps there was an undercurrent in his heart of hope that she would try what that signal made with her little finger would do. He did not forbid it. His heart gave a heavy thump in his bosom at the proposal. She could do for them both what neither could do for himself—and if she might be right? Women, they say, have intuitions; perhaps she might be right! and the thundercloud might pass over, and he might yet live to believe, in time, that nothing had happened. But he shook his head as he went away. Anyhow, the little absence would be a good thing. It would break the spell of misery; he might be better able to think, to settle something that could be done, when he was away.

When the master of the house goes away, there is often a little sense of relief among the women, however beloved and prized he may be. It leaves them a great deal of freedom—freedom from the control of hours and seasons which, it is a law of the Medes and Persians, can never be infringed when he is at home. He may be no more punctual than the rest, but punctuality is imposed while he is there; and he may be as irregular as he pleases in his way, but the strictest regularity is enforced upon everybody else, out of respect to papa. When he goes away, there is a little slackening all round. Perhaps the mistress lingers in her room in the morning, does not come down to breakfast—and luncheon shades off into puddings and fruit instead of the copious meal of ordinary custom, or else is abolished altogether, the girls staying out, without warning, at some friendly neighbouring house. This was what happened at Rosmore on the morning after James Rowland’s departure. His wife did not come downstairs till it was late, feeling herself more safe to carry on her own thoughts in the seclusion of her own room, and when she appeared at lunch, Marion’s chair was empty, and Rosamond, alone, appeared to share that meal. The conversation languished between the two ladies, each of whom had questions to ask, which could not be put as long as Saunders and his satellite were in the room.

“I hope you have heard from Eddy,” Mrs. Rowland said.

“Oh, yes, I have heard from him. He has got back all right,” said Rosamond.

And then there was a silence, broken only by Evelyn’s recommendation of the pudding, which was one of Mrs. Wright’s best.

“Is your brother—very lonely, with nobody at home?” at length she said again.

“Eddy is never lonely, he has such heaps of friends; when one set is not in town, he falls back on another. When there’s no opera, there’s a music-hall—that sort of thing,” said Rosamond.

“I am afraid that means he is not very particular.”

“Not particular at all, so long as he is amused.”

“But that, unfortunately, my dear, is not the best rule in life.”

“Oh, I never thought it was a rule at all,” said Rosamond. “If it were, Eddy would detest it, you may be sure. He likes to do—what no one else does, or what he has never done before.”

“Did you know this Mr. Johnson—or some such name—Rosamond, whom he brought here?”

“Oh, Mrs. Rowland,” cried the girl, “I hope you will forgive him! He is such a little wretch for that. It must have been one of his silly practical jokes to bring that man here.”

“It is not the sort of practical joke which will get him friends,” said Evelyn seriously; the man was gone, and the embargo was removed. “He ought not to have brought him here. And did you know him, Rosamond?”

“I know him! but I know this, that Eddy told me not to dance with him; and I will say this much for Eddy,” said Rosamond, with a hot blush, “that he warned Marion too.”

“But both of you——”

“Yes, it is true. I did—that nobody might say I left my brother in the lurch—offered to dance when I saw him standing there, Eddy taking no notice. Even a—beast—like that, if you get him asked, you ought to be civil to him.” Rosamond’s cheeks were flushed, and she held her head very high. “But Marion did it out of contradiction, because he had told her not——”

“There is not much to commend in the whole matter,” said Evelyn, with a sigh. “But I think, on the whole, you were the least wrong. And has he dealings with people like these? Would that man have been likely to get your brother—under his power?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Rowland,” said Rosamond, with a glow on her cheeks.

“And yet it is plain enough, my dear. Is it possible that—about money or betting or anything of the kind, Eddy might have got under that man’s influence—in his power?”

Rosamond held her head higher than words could describe. “If you mean that he took money to introduce him into society——”

“I did not mean that,” said Evelyn in a parenthesis, but Rosamond did not pause to hear.

“—— as some people do,” the girl went on. “Oh the men one knows! There was Algy Holt, went about with an American, getting him asked out to places. Everybody knew it, and no one was so very severe! But if you think Eddy would do that, Mrs. Rowland! he may be silly—oh, I know he is! and spends money when he has not got it, and has to do all kinds of dreadful things to pay up;—but if you think he would do that——”

“My dear Rosamond, if you prefer to think it was a practical joke—but I don’t wish to be severe—I should like to know, if you know, what dreadful things he has to do to pay up, as you say?”

“Oh! he has to buy carriage wheels, and cigar-holders, and pictures, and one time he had a lot of paving-stones——”

Evelyn, who was very much wound up by this time, expecting terrible revelations without thinking how very unlikely it was that Rosamond would be the confidant of any guilty practices—here burst into a fit of unsteady laughter.

“There is nothing very dreadful in all that: though it is very ridiculous, and, I dare say, a horrid imposition,” she said.

“It is enough to break one’s heart!” cried Rosamond striking her hands together: “he borrows a certain sum and he gets the half of it or less, and that—and then he has to pay back the whole—— Oh how awful it is to be poor! for there is no end to it—it is going on for ever. And when he gets Gilston, he will have to sell it, and where will he be then? He sees it as well as I, but what can he do? Of course,” added Rosamond, drying her eyes, which were shining with fierce tears, “if he could marry somebody with a great deal of money, it might all come right.”

This was all that she got from Rosamond, with much sense of guilt in thus endeavouring to persuade the sister into betrayal of the brother’s secrets. And presently Marion returned, who had been amusing herself at Miss Eliza’s house with the young people there, and came back escorted by a large party, for whom it was necessary to provide tea and amusement till the early darkness had fallen. Evelyn, who could not rest, and who felt that the two or three days of her husband’s absence was all the time she had at her disposal to solve this problem in, threw a shawl over her head and followed the merry party down the avenue, when Marion re-escorted them to the first gate. She could not have told what help she expected to get from Marion, and yet it was possible that some spark might fall from the girl’s careless discourse. She met her coming quickly back, her white and pink cheeks glowing with the cold and the fun, echoes of which had scarcely yet died on the frosty air. It was almost dark, though a gray light still lingered in the sky, and the lamps were shining on the other side of the water in the villages and scattered houses along the opposite shore.

“Mamma!” cried Marion,—a flush of anxiety came upon her face though it was scarcely visible—“did you hear how they were going on? But you must not think it was my fault.”

“I heard nothing,” said Evelyn, to Marion’s evident relief; “but I came out—to speak to you.—Have you heard anything of—your brother?”

“Archie?—oh, no,” said the girl. “He would not write to me, for he would know I could not approve of him, when he has gone like that and affronted papa.”

“Like what?” said Mrs. Rowland anxiously.

“Oh!” said Marion, with a pause for reflection,—“well, just like that! The servants have got a story that it’s about money, but Archie is not a spender, and I don’t know how it could be about money. But if papa has turned him out of the house, it could not be without reason, and that is enough for me.”

This was true enough and yet was not true, for Marion secretly had made a great many more investigations about Archie than anybody knew; and was quite aware where he was, and that Aunt Jane was profoundly indignant, and considered, as was not unnatural, that the whole matter was the stepmother’s doing from beginning to end.

“I have written to him,” said Evelyn, “but he has not replied. My dear, you are his only sister; you ought to help to make it up. Will you write to him and beg him to come home?”

“But I would maybe be flying in his papa’s face if I did that.”

“Your father would not blame you. Don’t you see he is very unhappy?—his only son! May, you are prejudiced against me, both of you. It is perhaps not unnatural; never mind that; but try and help me with Archie, to bring him back—to bring him home.”

“And how am I to know,” said Marion, “that it is not just to ruin me too with papa, and get me sent away as well, that you are giving me that advice?”

Evelyn had derived much temporal advantage from her union with James Rowland. She had been made the mistress of a great house, with much authority and surrounded with honour, instead of a poor dependent woman; but she paid for it dearly in this moment, while the girl stood with her little impertinent head lifted, discharging this little poisoned arrow straight into Mrs. Rowland’s heart.

There was a moment of intense silence, to which all the dulling influences of nature,—the night, the frost, the darkness—gave additional effect. The panting of Evelyn’s breath, which she could not conceal, was the only sound. Marion was cool as the air and entirely self-possessed, waiting to see how her missile told, and noting with triumph that quickened breath.

“Of course after these words I can ask nothing more of you,” said Mrs. Rowland when she had attained the command of her own voice.

“Oh I was not meaning to be disagreeable,” said Marion lightly; “but as I have nobody to take care of me, I am just obliged to take care of myself. In an ordinary way I will just do whatever you bid me, mamma: but when it’s to commit myself with papa, that is different. He might get the idea that both his children were turning upon him. And I will not do that, not for Archie or any person. Every herring,” said Marion sententiously, with a recollection of her Aunt Jane’s wise sentiments, “must just hang by its own head.”

“It is time to go in, I think,” said Mrs. Rowland shivering; her cold, however, was moral rather than physical. This cautious, much regarding young person of nineteen bewildered all her elder ideas. Was it pure selfishness, or was it some recondite covering of affection to scare the unfamiliar gazer? Evelyn made a movement aside to let the uncomprehended being pass before her into the house.

And it may be supposed that the evening circle formed by these three was not very sympathetic. Mrs. Rowland was full of the most painful uncertainty as to what she should do: or rather what could she do, she asked herself? Nothing but proof would content or in any way move her husband: and how was proof to be had, and what would move Archie, who would probably resent the very evidence which exculpated him, feeling it almost an additional grievance? What was she to do among all these conflicting objects? The natural thing, as it would have appeared to most women in her circumstances, would have been to sit still and wait, and do nothing. No one desired her interposition, not even her husband, who had laughed over the impotence of that little finger which she thought Archie would have obeyed. A reasonable woman does not like to be told, however tenderly, that she thinks she can move the world by the signal of her little finger. Would it not, she asked herself, be more dignified, more seemly to keep silence, and be patient and wait? But then, on the other hand, there was the possibility that the crime would sink into the pit of the undiscovered and never be found out. It had not even that chance of being found out which thorough examination and search after the criminal would give. Rowland had adopted it, homologated it, as the Scotch lawyers say, accepted the false cheque as his own to save his son: so that no questions could be asked at the bank to throw light upon the manner in which it was drawn, or the person from whom it came. If she only dared to go there herself to find out! if she only might venture to make certain inquiries!—but it was impossible. Archie was not to be appealed to, for he would not stir a step to clear himself. What then could she do? she who alone possessed a clue. And then what a clue was that, the suppositions of a servant, the inferences of a half-instructed person, half-acquainted with the story! She sat through the long evening, pretending to read, in the great drawing-room, which was full of ruddy fire-light and lamplight, the most sheltered and warm and cheerful place, while the wind blew fierce outside. In the inner room, Rosamond was playing chords upon the piano in a kind of grand but simple symphony, while Marion, by the table, in the light of the lamp, in a white dress, with a face not unlike a flower, insignificant but pretty, a little thing, innocent and simple, to all external appearances, the ideal of guileless youth—sat working at a piece of bright coloured “fancy work,” as she called it. Who could have dreamt that so dark a problem lay between them, and that the question, what to do in so complex a matter, involving so much, should be rending in sunder the heart of the dignified and graceful mistress of the house?

“Mamma!” said Marion softly. It may be supposed that Mrs. Rowland was not particularly disposed at this moment to hear any such appeal, and silence fell again on the party, broken only by the low but splendid rumble of the long-drawn notes.

“Mamma!” said Marion again. She edged her chair a little closer, and gave a look over her shoulder towards the piano, where Rosamond sat unseen. “Did you ever think of asking Mr.——, her brother, about that cheque?”

“What cheque?” said Mrs. Rowland coldly.

“Oh,” said Marion, “it is all over the parish that it was a cheque, and the servants all know. If I were you, as you take so great an interest, I would just ask Eddy. He knows a lot of things.”

“I do not see how he could know what is your father’s business.”

“Hush, you needn’t speak so loud! he knows a lot of things,” said Marion, with a little sigh. “He is far far cleverer than Archie. He might find out. If it were me, I would ask him,” the girl said.

“Your brother’s interests,” said Evelyn quietly, “are surely your business as much as mine.”

“I am not saying,” said Marion, “one way or another: but just it is him that I would ask if it were me.”

“About what—about what?” cried Evelyn, pressing her hands together. “If you know anything, tell me at least, what he has to do with it? What can I find out from him? what——”

“She has stopped playing,” said Marion and she added with a little severity, “You will see, if you think, that whether or no—— it’s best she should not hear.”

They said good-night to her shortly after, kissing her both of them, according to the formula which girls are trained to go through: and went upstairs, one after the other, slim girlish creatures, innocent neophytes in life, as one would have thought, devoid of its saddening knowledge, its disenchanting experiences—leaving behind them a woman who had seen much sorrow and trouble, yet who was less acquainted than either of them, it seemed, with certain mysteries and problems.

May left her in a state of agitation and excitement, such as Evelyn had not yet known in the trials of her own life. She felt that Archie’s future was in her hands, though he rejected her interposition so bitterly; and what was more, her husband’s future, the happiness of the good man who had so much trust in her. If she could restore his son to him and did not, because of any reluctance of hers, any shrinking from exertion, and mean or secondary feeling, as for instance, that no one would be grateful to her for what she did, how unworthy would that be. Gratitude! what is gratitude but a repayment, the return for which no generous spirit looks. It is as mercenary to insist upon gratitude as upon money or any other recompense. What would it matter if no one ever knew, if no one ever said, “thank you?” What was that when Archie’s young life, and still closer and dearer, her good husband’s happiness, were at stake.

Evelyn walked about the drawing-room for a long time with her hands clasped, and her head bent, and thoughts pursuing thoughts, a host of quickly succeeding and often conflicting resolutions and questionings, hurrying through her mind. The butler, weary of waiting, peeped in by a half-open door, and retreated again, overawed by her absorption, which neither saw nor heard. Her maid upstairs yawned and waited, astonished and indignant. She was not in the habit of keeping the household out of bed by any caprice of hers, and all the less could they excuse her for her forgetfulness now. It was almost midnight before she was roused with a start by the chiming of the clock, and hurrying out, found Saunders respectful, but displeased outside, to whom she proffered a hasty apology, which had to be repeated when her maid confronted her half asleep yet wholly indignant. For a ball, which the servants enjoy as much as their master, allowance may be made; but on a night when nothing was happening, when the master was away, and the ladies expected to be more easy to serve, less exacting, keeping earlier hours than usual! And next day consternation still more deep struck the house: for Mrs. Rowland went away, taking only a bag with her, and explaining briefly that she had business in London, but would be back on the third day. Rosamond proposed to go with her, and so did Marion. She only smiled at them both, and declared that she would be back again before they had packed their things. She did not even take her maid! which was a sort of insult to the house. A mistress who can “do” for herself, who can travel unattached, and dress her own hair, etc., is a disappointment in a house like Rosmore.

She went away on Tuesday, and late on Wednesday night James Rowland came home, a day or two earlier than he had been expected. To describe his astonishment and disappointment when he arrived, and found her gone, is more than words are capable of. He had almost turned back from his own door and disappeared again into the darkness, from which he had looked out with such a rising of comfort and happiness in his home-coming, and of hope for what might have happened while he was away. “Mrs. Rowland not at home!” he said, stumbling across his own threshold as though the place was strange to him: “why, you must be dreaming,” but Saunders would not be driven from his explanation. The mistress had received news that she had to act upon at once, and the master being away, she had gone up to London instead of him, Saunders supposed. She expected to be home on Friday at the latest, which was the day on which he too was expected home. Rowland appeared at the dinner-table, to the great astonishment of the girls, and with a countenance of disgust and impatience difficult to describe. “So she has left you planted,” he said with a sharp laugh. It was impossible, indeed, that a man could return home much wanting his wife, calculating upon her, and find her gone, without feeling himself an injured man. He called Marion into the library after and questioned her. “Where has she gone? What has come over her? There is not a line, not a word to explain.”

“She was going to London on business—whatever that may mean,” said Marion. “She did not open her lips to me.”

“But at least you know where she is gone?”

“Papa,” said Marion, “you can have observed very little if you have not observed that mamma does not give her confidence to me.”

“Oh, confound your confidence. Where is my wife?” Rowland cried.

“I do not know,” said Marion primly. She added after a moment, staccato—“But I might give a guess: she was awfully taken up—- about Archie, papa.”

He uttered a sort of groan, looking fiercely at her, not missing a shade of meaning in Marion’s face.

“And she wanted me to interfere: but I just said that what papa decided must be right, and I would have nothing to do with it—against you. And then she was in great thought.—Did you ever hear, papa, that before she was married, mamma and Mr. Saumarez, their father, were great friends?”

“What has that to do with it?” he cried angrily.

“Well—there was some story Eddy always said, and he used to laugh; but he never would tell me right out: and he said he could make her do whatever he liked on that account. And last night she asked Rosamond a great many questions about when he was coming home and so forth, and I heard her say something about ‘your father’s advice.’”

James Rowland sprang to his feet with the suppressed roar of feeling, which in men of this kind does duty for the sigh or outcry of milder natures. There was something of the wild beast in it,—an impulse of rage, almost frenzy. Advice with that man on his affairs! take that vile cynic, that false traitor, that diseased atomy into her confidence on her husband’s decent concerns! His looks terrified his daughter; and as he paced about the room up and down, Marion took advantage of the first occasion on which he turned his back to her to escape. But Rowland did not even remark that she was gone. Oh, Evelyn! Evelyn! whom he trusted to the bottom of his heart, had she gone to expose the secrets of his house, his shame, and the breaking of his heart to that man! This shaft went to his very soul.