WEEKS and months have passed by at Mirk Abbey; the snow has thawed, and the cold winds of March have done their worst, and the spring is clothing nature's nakedness with garments of green. Yet all this time, my Lady, who is so fond of outdoor exercise, even in rough weather, and such a constant visitor of the poor, has never been seen beyond the Park gates. To be sure, she has had more to keep her within than usual, for the captain has got his leave prolonged at the beginning of the year, but came home for three weeks very shortly after, and is at Mirk again at the present time. Miss Rose Aynton, too, a very nice young lady, and most attentive to her hostess, seems to have become quite a resident at the Abbey, for, with the exception of a week's absence in London, she has remained there since Christmas, her departure having indeed been vaguely fixed more than once, but only to be as indefinitely postponed. It is now understood that she will certainly stay over the festivities attendant upon Sir Richard's coming of age in June. The baronet himself, who, his detractors say, always prefers the country, where he is somebody, to town, where baronets are plentiful, has scarcely been away at all. He writes to inquiring friends in London, most of whom happen to have marriageable daughters, that he is immersed in business connected with the estate, and cannot leave Mirk at present. Mr Rinkel, the agent, however, has seen no cause to relax his ordinary exertions, in consequence of this new-born application of the young gentleman to his own affairs; and Walter wickedly asserts that his brother is in reality occupied with no other business whatever, save that of keeping the man Derrick from trespassing upon the Abbey lands. He is very glad, he says, that Richard has at last found an object in life, and hopes that, like the French sportsman's woodcock, it will last him for a good long time.

It does not help to heal the breach between the brothers that Walter and this same man have grown very intimate, a fact which Sir Richard (assuming to himself a metaphor usually applied only to Providence) stigmatises as “flying in his face.”—His mother, however, declines to take this view of it—declines even to express an opinion about it one way or another, and avoids the subject as much as she can. Even with the confidential maid, notwithstanding her decision about Mr Derrick's ineligibility as a suitor, she forbears to reason with respect to this matter, although it is understood that the forbidden swain is gaining ground in the affections of Mistress Forest. There is but one person to whom my Lady has opened her lips concerning the man she dimly saw by lantern-light on Christmas Eve, and has never seen since. Her confidant—if one can be called so to whom so little was confided—is Mr Arthur Haldane, the only son of the doctor, and one who has been a great favourite with Lady Lisgard from his youth up, not for his own sake merely, although he is honest and kind, and very winning with those who look beyond externals (for he is not goodlooking, or, at least, does not appear so by contrast with her own handsome sons), but for another reason: my Lady owed him a reparation of love for a wrong that she had inadvertently done his father.

Dr Haldane and the late Sir Robert had been at school together, and their boy-friendship had lasted, as it seldom does, through their university course. Their mutual esteem had not afterwards suffered by propinquity, when they came to pass their days within a few hundred yards of one another; and when my Lady married, she found that the dearest friend her husband had on earth was Dr Haldane. She was not the woman to come between her husband's friends and himself; and the doctor (who had had his doubts about the matter before he came to know her) was wont to declare the Abbey was even more of a second home to him than it used to he, now that his old friend had placed so charming a mistress at the head of it. He was always welcome there, and being himself a widower, was glad to take advantage of Sir Robert's hospitality whenever he could; a knife and fork were laid for him at table all the year round; and when he did not appear at the dinner-hour, either husband or wife was sure to observe: “I am afraid we shall not see the doctor with us to-day.” It would have seemed as though nothing short of death could have interrupted such cordiality as this.

But in those days there was such a thing as Politics. The baronet was a Tory, and his friend a Whig of what was afterwards called “advanced opinions.” They bickered over their wine three nights out of every seven, though they never failed to drink each other's healths before they sought the company of the hostess. These political discussions (unfortunately, as it turned out) were scrupulously confined to the diningroom, so that my Lady had no idea of the strength of the respective prejudices of the combatants, and of the severity of the trial to which their friendship was so often subjected. Brought up as she had been among persons in humble life, who were engaged in bread-winning (a very monopolising occupation), and educated in France, where the question of English reform was never mooted, she knew little or nothing of the matters which formed the subjects of dispute, although they were setting half England together by the ears. It seems strange to read of now, but the idol which Toryism had set up to worship at that epoch was a heartless and vulgar fop, whom it sycophantically dubbed the First Gentleman in Europe; while the Whigs pinned their faith upon the virtue of his wife, a woman as vulgar as himself, and whom her enemies endeavoured to shew was almost as vicious. Over this good-for-nothing pair, Lords, Commons, and People were quarrelling together, like a mob at a dog-fight, and the public press was solely occupied with hounding them on. To dip into a newspaper of that date is to make an excursion to Billingsgate, for both parties, equally unable to whitewash their candidate, confined themselves to vilifying their opponent.

When the report upon the bill of Pains and Penalties against Queen Caroline was finally approved by a majority of nine only, and those nine representing the votes of the ministers themselves, the popular excitement culminated. The Whigs decreed that there should be illuminations throughout the kingdom, and (what seems hard) that their adversaries should express the same satisfaction in a similar manner. For three consecutive nights, the Londoners made plain the innocence of their queen, so far as pyrotechnics and oil-lamps could do it; and for one night, the country was expected to do the like. Vast mobs paraded the streets of the provincial towns, to see that this was done, and even made excursions to the country-houses of the Disaffected. Among others, Mirk Abbey was threatened with a visitation of this sort; and I must confess that the doctor rather chuckled over the notion, that the stubborn Sir Robert, who had called his sovereign lady so many opprobrious epithets, would have to dedicate his candles to her, as though she were his patron saint. The baronet, on his part, protested that every window in his house should be broken rather than exhibit so much as a farthing-dip; but he said nothing to his wife about the matter, lest it should make her nervous.

They happened to be engaged to pass that November week at a friend's house in the country, and left home accordingly.

The gentleman with whom they stayed himself suffered some inconvenience from the rioters on the night in question; and when Sir Robert came back, he was even less inclined to be a convert to his Whig friend's opinions than before.

“But you did illuminate,” said the doctor with a chuckle, as they sat together after dinner, as usual, upon the day of his return.

“I did nothing of the kind, sir,” returned the baronet angrily.

“Well, your servants did it for you, then, and I presume by your orders. Mr Brougham himself could not have exhibited his patriotism more significantly. The Abbey was a blaze of light from basement to garret.”

“That is a lie!” cried Sir Robert, making the glasses jump with the force with which he brought his fist down upon the table.

“A what?” exclaimed the doctor, rising from the table livid with rage. “Do you, then, call me a liar?”

“Yes,” thundered the baronet; “like all your radical crew.”

The two men that had so long been nearer and dearer to each other than brothers never again interchanged one word.

Dr Haldane left the Abbey, solemnly protesting that he would never cross its threshold again during the lifetime of its owner; and he kept his determination even in the hour when his old friend lay a-dying.

Now, poor Lady Lisgard was the person to blame for all this. Before Sir Robert and she had set out on their visit, the housekeeper had told her that everybody was going to illuminate their houses on the 12th, on account of what had happened in London with respect to Queen Caroline; and she was afraid that if some sign of rejoicing was not shewn at the Abbey, the mob would do some damage. A candle in each of the windows would save a hundred pounds of mischief belike. “Well, then, put a candle,” said my Lady, not dreaming that by that simple order she was wounding her husband in his most vital point, his pride, and making a sacrifice of principles that he held only second to those of the Christian Religion. She did not even think it necessary to tell him that she had left this command behind her; but when she heard him praise the determination of the friend with whom they stayed, not to submit to the dictation of the rabble, she had not the heart to tell him of the mistake she had committed, and which it was by that time too late to remedy. That mistake, and, still more, her unfortunate reticence, had caused the quarrel, destined never to be healed, betwixt her husband and his friend. They both forgave her, but she could not forgive herself. It seemed to her that she could never do enough to shew how sorry she was for her grievous fault. We have said how she made up so far as was in her power, in love and duty to Sir Robert, for the loss of his friend; but to that friend himself, self-exiled from her roof, and out of the reach, as it were, of reparation, how was she to atone for the wrong she had inadvertently done him? When the quarrel first took place, the doctor's wrath was quite unquenchable; he would listen to nothing except an apology—a debt which Sir Robert (although he certainly owed it) most resolutely refused to pay. The doctor, who had hitherto confined his Whiggism to after-dinner eloquence, and coarse but biting epigrams, which had earned him the reputation of a philosopher with those of his own party, thereupon became an active political partisan, and not only voted at election-time, but canvassed with might and main against the Lisgard interest; nay, he even composed, as we have ventured to hint, satirical ballads against the paternal rule of that respectable family.

But although neither sex nor age was spared in those savage days, not one word did the vengeful doctor breathe about my Lady; nay, it was on record that when some too uncompromising apostle of Liberty had reflected upon her humble extraction in the presence of that friend estranged, he had risen to his full height of five feet eight, and levelled the slanderer to the earth. Perhaps my Lady did not esteem him the less upon that account; but certain it was that the first visit she paid after Sir Robert's death was to the doctor's house, taking with her, it was said, from her husband's dying lips, a message of affectionate reconciliation. The baronet had never brought himself to alter the words in his will by which he had appointed his tried and loving friend, Bartholomew Haldane, trustee for his children; and of course the doctor accepted his trust. He never could be induced to visit the Abbey, although his oath no longer forbade it; but the Lisgard children were his constant guests, and his only son, Arthur Haldane, was as another brother to them, and almost as another son to my Lady. His nature was grave and serious, like Sir Richard's, but very tender withal, and she felt that she could confide in him what she could not have confided to the rigid young baronet, although he was her own flesh and blood; nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, when she took Arthur's arm that April morning, upon pretence of shewing him some alterations that were proposed to be made at a place in the Abbey-grounds called the “Watersmeet,” she thought it necessary to preface what she was going to say to him with an explanation.

“My dear Arthur,” said she, when they had got out of view of the house, “you will think it cruel that I have brought you away from the society of that charming young lady, Miss Aynton, to chat with an old woman like me, who have boys of my own to take counsel with; but the fact is, I have inveigled you hither to get an opinion from you which I could scarcely ask of your learned brother.”

This was conferring a brevet rank upon Sir Richard, who had not yet been called to the Bar, although he was reading for it; while Arthur had been in practice for some years.

“My dear Lady Lisgard,” returned the other smiling, “I must, for my professional credit's sake, enter my protest against what you say about Miss Aynton, as irrelevant, and travelling out of the record, but besides that, it is a delusion which I should be sorry to see you entertain. Miss Aynton is nothing whatever to me; although, indeed, if she were, I would rather chat with you than with any young lady (save one) in Christendom.”

The young barrister's tone was so unnecessarily earnest and impressive, that one so acute as Lady Lisgard could scarcely have failed to see that he courted inquiry concerning such excess of zeal. She either saw it not, however, or refused to see it; and he was far too delicate by nature to press it upon her attention. “And now, ma mÈre,” continued he, taking her hand in his affectionately, “in what way can I be of use to you?”

“By your good sense, and by your good feeling, Arthur. I need the aid of your talents and your virtues, too, dear boy; I want your best advice, and then your promise that you will never disclose that I have asked it.”

“You shall have both those, ma mÈre. As the pashas say to the sultan when there is nothing to fear: 'I bring you my head;' as for my heart—that has been devoted to you these many years.”