The readers of this history must be prepared to pass over an interval of something less than seven years from the end of the last chapter. I allow that it is a most undesirable break, but yet it has been involved from the beginning as a necessity of the narrative.

Nearly seven years had elapsed since Mr. Renton’s death at the moment when we again approach Renton Manor. He died in September, and it was the beginning of August when Mrs. Renton received a note from Mr. Ponsonby, the lawyer, announcing his intention of arriving at the Manor the next day. Mrs. Renton had not improved much in health, but she had laid aside her mourning, and wore grey and violet, and pretty caps, once more. Her existence had known very little change during all these years. Now and then the tonics had been changed, and she had substituted for a whole year the Revalenta Arabica for the arrowroot; but the difference was scarcely perceptible except to the maid and the cook, and I believe, on the whole, the arrowroot was found to agree with her best. She had taken her drive almost every day with a feeling that she was doing her duty. ‘My dear husband always made such a point of my drive,’ she said, plaintively, though for her own part she would have preferred her sofa; and so had lived on, very punctual in taking her medicine, a woman humbly conscious of fulfilling all the duties of her life. Mary Westbury had been generally her companion in these drives; and as she was younger and not so settled in mind, had sometimes, it must be allowed, felt as if life was no better than a leisurely promenade between two rows of hedgerows, sometimes green and sometimes brown. The carriage was very comfortable and the horses were very fat, and there were a great many charming points of view within a radius of fifteen miles round Renton; but still there were moments in which Mary was such an infidel as to wish herself jogging to market in the passing cart, or carrying a basket along the road, or anywhere rather than in that luxurious corner. If anything had happened to make Mrs. Renton ‘put down,’ as people say, her carriage, she would have regarded it as a calamity altogether immeasurable; but I think that both she and her niece would have felt a burden taken off their minds. She would have been left at peace on her sofa, and Mary could have taken needful exercise in her own way. But such a blessing in disguise was beyond praying for. Mr. Renton, though he had been so hard upon his sons, had provided very tenderly for his wife’s comfort.

Renton had been hers for these seven years, and had been kept precisely as it was when it was the home of the whole family,—not a servant dismissed nor a change made; and thus the height of comfort had been secured. Mary, too, was very comfortable,—no young woman could be more so. She had a maid of her own, which would have been an impossible luxury at home, and a liberal allowance for her dress, and a fire in her room, if she chose, from October to May, or indeed all the year through, if such was her pleasure; and the freedom of various libraries, and an excellent piano, and any amount of worsted work she chose. And then the drive every afternoon, wet and dry, ‘so that she has the air and the change, when we poor people, who have no carriage, must stay indoors,’ Mrs. Westbury said when she described her daughter’s happiness. And this felicity had gone on for nearly seven years.

‘I wonder what Mr. Ponsonby wants,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘He might have come without any intimation. I am sure he generally does. Why he should send word like this, as if he had some news to bring, I cannot conceive. I do hope it is nothing about the boys.’

‘It cannot be anything about them,’ said Mary. ‘Consider, godmamma, you had a letter from Ben just the other day, and Frank and Alice wrote by the last mail.’

‘That is all very true,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but how can I tell that they may not have telegraphed or something? And then there is Laurie always wandering all over the world. He may have gone off, as he did the first time, without letting any one know.’

‘But he would never have dreamed of sending Mr. Ponsonby to tell you,’ said Mary; ‘he would have written direct. Laurie is the best correspondent of them all.’

‘Or he may be going to be married,’ said Mrs. Renton,—‘he or Ben. By the way, he says something about Ben; but all those business people write such bad hands. Perhaps you can make it out. I am sure it is too much for me.’

After this little introduction, Mary took the lawyer’s letter with some slight tremulousness. She was nearly seven-and-twenty by this time, and ought, she said to herself, to have been quite steady about such matters. Of course some day Ben would marry, and so long as it was any one who would make him happy she could only be glad. Many a wandering thought about Millicent Tracy had come into her mind. Had she been faithful to him? Had there been any intercourse between them? Had he kept steadfast to his imagination of her for all these years? For it was only an imagination, as Mary felt sure. Every letter that came from Ben had caused her a certain tremor,—not, as she said to herself, that it would make any difference to her; but if he were to bind himself to a woman unworthy of him! And now that he was coming back so soon, it was with a thrill of more intense expectation than usual that she took Mr. Ponsonby’s letter in her hand. But there was nothing about marrying or giving in marriage in that sober epistle. It intimated to Mrs. Renton, in the first place, that the time specified in her husband’s will had nearly expired; that he had received a letter from her son Ben, informing him that he intended to meet him at the Manor, along with the other members of the family, on the 15th of September; and that, accordingly, Mr. Ponsonby was coming to Renton next day to go over the property with the bailiff, and see with his own eyes the condition in which everything was, that there might be no delay, when the time came, in making everything over to the heir. All that Mrs. Renton had made of this very distinct letter was the fact that the lawyer was to pay her a visit, and that there was something about Ben. But indeed Mr. Ponsonby did not write a legible hand.

‘Then it is just what Ben told us about coming home,’ said Mrs. Renton, ‘though he was not so particular to me in naming the day. He said the beginning of September, if you recollect, Mary; and Frank and his wife are coming by the next mail. I am afraid the children will make a dreadful commotion in the house, and altogether it will be so odd to see Renton full of people again. Of course, Laurie is coming, too. I don’t know what I shall do with them all. They can’t expect me to have parties and that sort of thing for them, Mary, in my state of health?’

‘No, dear godmamma,’ said Mary, soothingly, ‘they will not expect anything of the kind; and you will never think of the trouble when you have all the boys at home. Fancy Frank having boys of his own!’ she cried, with a little laugh. The choice lay between laughing and crying, and the first was certainly the best.

‘I hope his wife has kept up her practice,’ said Mrs. Renton, still with a cloud on her brow, ‘since that was what he married her for.’

‘Godmamma!’ cried Mary, with consternation.

‘Well, my dear, I don’t know what else she had to recommend her. No family, nor connexions; not a penny,—not even expectations! If it was not for her music, what was it for? And so many women give up practice when they marry. I always forget,—is it three or four children they have?’

‘Two, godmamma,’ said Mary, gently; ‘don’t you remember the poor, dear, little baby died?’

‘Well, it is quite enough,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘with nothing but their pay to depend upon. And there will be a black nurse, you may be sure, driving the servants out of their senses. But if she has kept up her practice, it will be an amusement for the boys. And things might have been worse. There might have been three families instead of one, you know, Mary; and then I think I should certainly have run away.’

‘Yes,—perhaps it is selfish,’ said Mary; ‘but I am glad, too, that they are not all married. It will be more like old times.’

‘Selfish!’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘I can’t see how it can be selfish. Of course Ben will have to marry some time or other, for the sake of the property. But I never can make out why young men marry, for my part. Haven’t they everything that heart can desire? and no care, and much more petted and taken notice of in society than if they were dragging a wife about with them everywhere? A girl is quite different. She has everything to gain, you see. I often wondered whether I have been doing my duty by you, Mary, keeping you out of the way of a good establishment in life.’

‘Pray don’t speak so, godmamma,’ said Mary, with a blush of indignation; ‘not to me at least.’

‘But I do, my dear. And I am sure no one ever deserved to be comfortably settled better than you do. However, I have always found, in my experience,’ said Mrs. Renton, with a profound look of wisdom, ‘that when these things are coming they come, however quietly you may be living; and, if they are not to come, they don’t, however much you may go into society. Look at Jane Sutton, who never was seen out of her father’s house, and now she’s Lady Egmont! I suppose we must expect Mr. Ponsonby to lunch.’

‘I should think he would come early,’ said Mary, with a smile; and, as it was Mrs. Renton’s hour for taking something, she went away to tell the housekeeper of the guest. And then she made a little tour of the house; peeping into the rooms, in some of which preparations had already begun. The west wing, in which the ‘boys’ rooms’ were, was all in commotion,—carpets taken up, women with pails and brooms in every corner. The only one as yet untouched was the little sitting-room, or dressing-room, attached to Ben’s chamber, where his old treasures were still hanging about,—his books and his pictures, and all his knicknacks. Into this oasis Mary strayed, with a strange thrill of expectation creeping over her. Seven years! what a slice it was out of a life; and how much had happened to the others and how little to herself! Mary felt as if she had done nothing but drive all these years in that most comfortable of family coaches, with her aunt by her side, and a bottle of medicine in the pocket of the carriage. And now they were all coming back! To what? What change should she find in them? and ah! what changes would they find in her? Ben must be thirty-two by this time; and Mary was seven-and-twenty, which, for a woman, is about twenty years older, as all the world knows!

As for ‘the Frank Rentons,’ they were not to be placed in the west wing at all, but in a suite of rooms over the great doorway, the guest-chambers of the house, as became their dignity as married people with children and nurses to be accommodated. How funny that was! Frank, who had always been the youngest in every way, whom they all,—even Mary herself in a manner,—had bullied and domineered over,—and here had he attained a point of social dignity to which none of the others had yet approached! Mary laughed to herself, and then she dried her eyes. It was an agitating crisis altogether, to which she looked forward with the strangest mixture of feelings. Laurie, it was true, had come home long since; and came to the Manor now and then, and had not drifted out of knowledge. But, then, one always knew exactly how Laurie would be, and it did not matter if he were in London or at the end of the world, so far as that went; but Ben—— And to think everything was going to be settled, and they were all coming home!

Mr. Ponsonby arrived next day; not, as they expected, to luncheon, but in the evening. He was an old friend of the family, and Mr. Renton, as people say, had no secrets from him. But that was a figure of speech, for the Ponsonbys had managed the Rentons’ affairs for generations, and there were no secrets to keep. ‘I shall want the whole day for what I have to do,’ he told Mary when he arrived; ‘so I thought it best to come overnight.’ And he dined with the two ladies, and did his best to make himself agreeable. His coming and his talk were the most tangible sign that they had yet had that their long vigil was over, and that the tide of life was about to flow back to them. He spoke in a very guarded way, betraying nothing of the secret he had kept those seven years; but when Mrs. Renton spoke of one thing and another which she wanted to have done, Mr. Ponsonby made answers which infinitely piqued Mary’s curiosity. ‘We must see what the will says about it,’ said the lawyer. ‘It is not worth while doing anything now till he is here to decide for himself. All that is the heir’s business, not mine.’

‘Do you mean Ben?’ said Mrs. Renton; for even she was moved to a little surprise.

‘I cannot tell whom I mean until the will is read,’ he said; ‘but, of course, whoever is the heir will be but too happy to do what you wish, my dear Mrs. Renton. It must be a great pleasure to you to have all your boys at home.’

‘Ye-es,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘but when one does not know whether they are coming to disappointment or to satisfaction! If they should have had to travel all this way for nothing, what a thing it would be,—if it were only for the expense!’

‘But I trust it will be satisfaction this time, and not disappointment,’ said the lawyer. ‘I am heartily glad, for my part, that the seven years are over. I hear the boys have all done so well, which is immensely to their credit, and, of course, is just what their excellent father meant.’

‘I never could think what he meant,’ said Mrs. Renton. ‘Lydia always says it was her fault; but he was not a man to follow anybody’s opinion but his own. As for doing well, I am not so sure about that. Ben has become a railway man;—think of that, Mr. Ponsonby! I never even approved of the railroad myself. I don’t see what use there is for so much hurry. I am sure I went a great deal oftener to town when we used to drive our own horses than now that there is a railway close to the gates. But he has pleased himself, which is always something. And Laurie has pleased himself, too. He paints very pretty pictures sometimes; but I don’t believe he will ever earn enough to keep him in gloves. And as for Frank,—a poor soldier with nothing but his pay and a family of little children! It is very different from what I had once hoped.’

‘But probably this is all over now,’ said Mr. Ponsonby,—‘or at least, we have every reason to believe so; and in the meantime they have had their struggles, and know what they are capable of. Let us hope, my dear madam, that everything will prove to have been for the best.’

‘I don’t doubt that everything is for the best,’ Mrs. Renton answered in plaintive tones. And then Mr. Ponsonby was left to his wine in the great old dining-room, which he had not been in since that dismal day when he read the will,—or rather the preface of the will,—to the startled family. It was a bright room enough in the morning when the sunshine came in, or on winter nights when the fire sparkled and glimmered in the wainscot; but it was very sombre in the dimness of a summer night, with one lamp on the table and the windows open, admitting the night with all its ghosts of sound and profound soft glooms. The family solicitor was not an imaginative man, and yet he could not help feeling that his old friend might come in any moment through the curtains, which hung half over the open window, and dictate to him some new condition in the will which had already wrought so much mischief. ‘Not a word more,’ Mr. Ponsonby caught himself saying; and then he roused up and went to Mary in the drawing-room, where she was seated alone in much the same magical half-darkness as that he had left.

‘I suppose it is the instinct of a Londoner,’ he said; ‘but I declare I don’t think this is safe. Sitting with windows open to the lawn, all alone at this hour! Suppose some one should walk in upon you before you had time to give an alarm?’

‘Who could walk in upon me?’ said Mary, laughing. ‘We are at Renton, you know, and not in Harley Street.’

‘Sure enough,’ said the townsman. ‘No, thanks; I prefer to face that window. Let me not be approached from behind; let me see what is coming, at least.’

‘How odd to think of such a thing!’ said Mary. ‘I sit here every evening after godmamma has gone to bed, and one cannot live unless all the windows are open. But oh, Mr. Ponsonby, do talk to me a little! Do you think,—do you really think,—that now, at last, things will be comfortable for the boys?’

‘Let us hope so,’ said the man of law, arranging himself comfortably in an easy-chair. ‘I suppose Mrs. Renton has gone to bed. Let us hope so, at least.’

‘Hope!’ cried eager Mary,—‘of course we all hope; but what do you think?’

‘My dear, I can’t tell you what I don’t know, and I must not tell you what I do know,’ said Mr. Ponsonby. ‘Do you never have any change from Renton? It is very fine air; but I don’t think it is exhilarating for young people. Do you ever go out?’

‘We drive every day,’ said Mary, with the faintest little grimace; and then she looked at her old friend, and permitted herself the relief of a laugh. ‘It is dismal sometimes,’ she said; ‘but when the boys are back I shall be free again, and go home.’

Mr. Ponsonby looked at her in silence as she spoke. ‘Home’ was a cottage, instead of a great house; but otherwise, in the eyes of the man accustomed to the world, there was not much difference between the one widow’s house and the other. ‘How do these women live?’ he said to himself. When the boys came home there might be a little movement, perhaps, and feeling of life about the old place,—and then she would go home! ‘That is just the time you ought to stay, I think, and see if they cannot make it a little more amusing for you,’ he said. ‘Do you never ride now?’

‘I have no one to ride with me. I could not go out alone, you know,’ Mary answered, without raising her eyes.

‘Well, I am not much of a man to ride with a young lady, but you shall come out with me to-morrow and go over the estate,—if there is anything you can ride in the stables. It will do you good. I must see that everything is in order for the heir. And you will not mind giving up the drive,—not for one day,—for the sake of an old friend?’ said the lawyer. ‘Good Lord! there’s a fellow coming in at the window, as I said. Ring the bell, my dear! Quick, and leave the rest to me!’

‘Why, it is Laurie!’ cried Mary, springing up, as Mr. Ponsonby seized the gilded stick which supported a little screen, and brandished it in the face of the new-comer. ‘That is just his way, frightening people out of their wits. Come in quickly, Laurie, if it is you, and not your ghost.’

‘It is not my ghost,’ said the figure at the window, advancing to shake hands with Mr. Ponsonby, who was still a little excited. ‘A ghost was never so dusty nor so thirsty. I have walked down from town all the way, to get a breath of air, and very much mystified I was to see a man in the dining-room from the end of the avenue as I came along. I thought at first it must be Ben.’

‘So there was some one about!’ said Mr. Ponsonby; ‘that explains my sensation. I had just been giving your cousin a lecture upon sitting alone with the windows open. Yes, Laurie, my boy, here I am, come to look over the ground for the last time, before it is given up to the heir.’

‘Ben will not be hard upon you,’ said Laurie, with a laugh; but as he spoke he looked fixedly at the solicitor, hoping,—which was like Laurie,—to beguile that astute practitioner into self-betrayal.

‘I don’t know any thing about Ben,’ he answered, smiling at the simple artifice; ‘but I know I must set my affairs in order, and be prepared to give up my trust. I want Mary to go with me over the estate. She is moping and pale, and a brisk canter will do her good. Will you see if there is anything she can ride?’

And then there ensued a little consultation as to whether Fairy was up to it. Fairy was a pet pony, as old as the hills, who had been eating herself into a plethoric condition for years; but Mary, who was not a very bold horsewoman, believed in the venerable animal, as did every soul about Renton. ‘She’s hold in years, but she’s young at ‘art, Miss; she’ll carry you like a bird,’ was the coachman’s opinion when he was called into the consultation. And then Laurie had a vast tankard brought to him, and refreshed himself after his long walk. When Mr. Ponsonby retired, the cousins stepped out again on to the lawn, and Mary looked on and talked while Laurie had his cigar. The moon, which was half over and late of rising, began to lighten slowly upwards, shining upon the river far below, while they were still left in darkness on the higher bank. ‘It is so strange to think we are all on the brink of a new life,’ Mary said, as she gazed down through an opening in the trees upon that silvery gleam, which was framed in by the dark, rustling branches. ‘Are we?’ said Laurie, with a kind of echo in his voice. Somehow he had taken his life awry, by the wrong corner, and there did not seem vigour enough left in him to care for a new beginning,—at least for himself.

‘Laurie,’ she said, encouraged by the darkness. He had thrown himself down in a garden-chair, and was visible only as a shadow, with a red point of cigar indicating his face; while she stood leaning on one of the lower branches of the lime-tree which framed in that glimpse of the light below. Their voices had the softened, mysterious sound which such a moment gives, and as neither of them was happy enough to draw new delight out of the influence of the night, both of them, by natural necessity, grew a little sad. ‘Laurie,’ Mary said, and faltered. ‘Sometimes I think I should like to know a little about you. I do know something about the others,—even Ben,—but you have always been a mystery to me since you first went away.’

‘I don’t think I am much of a mystery,’ said Laurie, not moving from his chair.

‘But you are a mystery,’ Mary repeated, with a little eagerness. ‘I don’t know what has come to you,—whether it is love, or whether it is loss,—don’t be angry, Laurie.’

‘It might be love and loss too,’ he said, with a little laugh, which was not cheerful, and then he rose and tossed away his cigar. ‘What if I were to say you were a mystery, too?’ he continued, not knowing how Mary’s cheeks burned in the darkness. ‘We all are, I suppose; and my poor old father that meant to do so well for us, and tossed us all abroad to scramble anyhow for life,—what do you say to that for a mystery, Mary? and here is the moment coming to prove which of us is preferred and which condemned. I am the poor fellow with one talent, who laid it up in the napkin. If he had not been so mean as to abuse his master, I think I should have sympathised with that poor wretch.’

‘I cannot say I sympathise with him,’ cried Mary, woman-like. ‘To be able to do, and not to do, that is what I cannot understand. But you have not hid your talent in a napkin, Laurie. I wish you had a better opinion of yourself.’

Upon which Laurie laughed, and drew her hand through his arm, and the two strayed together, silent, down under the shadow of the trees towards the opening which looked on the river. The moon creeping higher every moment, began to thread through the bewildering maze of branches with lines and links of silver; and there was always that one brilliant spot in the midst of the river, far below them, shining like burnished silver, scarcely dimpling under the moonbeams, which seemed to swell as well as glorify the rather scanty water. Their hearts were full of wistfulness and dreams. The world lay all as dark before them as those rustling, breathing woods, with, for one, a brightness in the future which might or might not,—most probably should not,—ever be attained; and for the other, only some fanciful, silvery thread twining through the sombre life. They paused, arm-in-arm, by that beech-tree at the corner where Ben and Mary had paused when he was last at home, and where he had shot that arrow at her,—as she said to herself,—of which she could still feel the point. But Laurie was very different from Ben. No spark of emotion went from one soul to the other as they stood so close and so kindly together. They were the parallel lines that never meet,—each thinking their own thoughts, each with a sigh that was not all pain, contemplating the well-known road behind them, the invisible path before;—and all the world around lying dark and light, stirring softly, breathing softly, in the long speechless vigil which we call night.

Next day Mr. Ponsonby went over the home-farm, and all the neighbouring land, inspecting everything, looking to farms, farm-buildings, drainage, timber,—all the necessities of the estate. Mary rode by his side on Fairy, who verified the coachman’s verdict, and carried her mistress like a bird,—at least as nearly like a bird as Mary wished. Laurie had gone back to town that morning by the train. When his cousin returned to luncheon, freshed and roused by her ride, it seemed to her almost as if the new life had already begun. The work-people who had been sent for from town had arrived with a van full of upholstery,—bales of fresh, pretty chintz for ‘the boys’ rooms,’ and new furniture for the extempore nursery. An air of movement was diffused about the whole house. The flood which had swept over Renton, almost engulfing the peace of the family, was almost over,—the waters were going down,—the household ark standing fast, and the saved ones beginning to appear at the long-closed windows. Such were Mary’s feelings as she went with her aunt for that inevitable drive. To-day the hedgerows were not so monotonous, the dust less stifling; and when they met Mr. Ponsonby on his cob, with the bailiff in attendance, the returning life rose into a sparkle and glow in Mary’s face. ‘Her ride has done her no end of good,’ Mr. Ponsonby cried, waving his hand as he rode past. ‘Good?’ said Mrs. Renton: ‘was there anything the matter with you, Mary? I am sure, if there is any good in riding, I wonder Dr. Mixton has never recommended it to me.’ And then the two drove on, as they had been driving, Mary thought, all these seven long years.