MRS. TRENT'S STORY.

"I never heard of such an extraordinary thing," said Lesley.

"Then that shows how little you know of the world," said Doctor Sophy, amicably. "I've heard of a hundred cases of the kind."

"Well, there are some elements of oddity in this case," remarked Caspar Brooke, striking in with unexpected readiness to defend his daughter's views. "Kingston was not a giddy young girl, who would go off with any man who made love to her. Indeed, I can't quite fancy any man making love to her at all. She was remarkably plain, poor woman."

"She had beautiful eyes," said Lesley. "And she was so nice and quiet and kind. And I really thought that she was—fond of me." She paused before she uttered the last three words, being a little afraid that they would be thought sentimental. And indeed Miss Brooke did give a contemptuous snort, but Caspar smiled kindly, and patted his daughter's hand.

"Don't take it to heart," he said. "'Fondness' is a very indeterminate term, and one that you must not scrutinize too closely. This little black beast, for instance"—caressing, as he spoke, the head of the ebony-hued cat which sat upon the arm of his chair—"which I picked up half-starving in the street when it was a kitten, is fond of me because I feed it: but suppose that I were too poor to give it milk and chicken-bones, do you think it would retain any affection for me? A sublimated cupboard-love is all that we can expect now-a-days from cats—and servants."

"When you can write as you do about love," said Lesley, who was coming to know her father well enough to tease him now and then, "I wonder that you dare venture to express yourself in this cold-blooded way in our hearing!"

"Ah, but, my dear, I was not talking about love," said Caspar, lightly. "I was talking about 'fondness,' which is a very different matter. You did not say that your maid, Kingston, loved you—I suppose she was hardly likely to go that length—you said that she was fond of you. Very probably. But fondness has its limits."

Lesley smiled in reply, and did not utter the thought that occurred to her. What she really believed was that Kingston was not only "fond" of her, after the instinctive fashion of a dumb creature that one feeds, but loved her, as one woman loves another. Although her democratic feelings came to her through her father's teaching, or by inheritance from him, she did not quite like to say this to him: he might think it foolish to believe that a servant whom she had not known for very many weeks actually loved her; and yet she had the conviction that Kingston's attachment was deeper and more sincere than that of many a woman who claimed to be her friend. And she was both grieved and puzzled by Kingston's disappearance.

For this was on Monday morning, and the woman had not come back to Mr. Brooke's. Great had been the astonishment of every one in the house when it was found that the quiet, well-spoken, well-behaved Mary Kingston, who had hitherto proved herself so trustworthy and so conscientious, had gone away—disappeared utterly and entirely, without leaving a word of explanation behind. She had last been seen on the pavement, shortly before midnight, assisting a lady to get into a hansom. Nobody had seen her re-enter the house. It seemed as if she had been spirited away. She had gone without a bonnet or shawl, in her plain black dress and white cap and apron, as if she meant to return in a minute or two, and she had not appeared again. The shawl that she had taken with her was not missed, for Miss Brooke continued for some time under the impression that it had been lent to one of the visitors.

The conversation recorded above took place at Mr. Brooke's luncheon-table. It was not often that he was present at this meal, but on this occasion he had joined his sister and daughter, and questioned them with considerable interest about Kingston. After lunch, he put his hand gently on Lesley's arm, just as she was leaving the dining-room, and said, in a tone where sympathy was veiled with banter—

"Never mind, my dear. We will get you another maid, who will be less fond of you, and then perhaps she will stay."

"I don't want another maid, thank you, papa. And, indeed, I do think Kingston was fond of me," said Lesley earnestly.

Mr. Brooke shrugged his shoulders. "Verily," he said, "the credulity of some women——"

"But it isn't credulity," said Lesley, with something between a smile and a sigh, "it is faith. And I can't altogether disbelieve in poor Kingston—even now."

Mr. Brooke shook his head, but made no rejoinder. Privately he thought Lesley foolishly mistaken, but believed that time would do its usual office in correcting the mistakes of the young.

His own incredulity received a considerable shock somewhat later in the day. About four o'clock a knock came to his study, and the knock was followed by the appearance of the sour-visaged Sarah.

"If you please, sir, there's that woman herself wants to see you."

"What woman, Sarah?" said Caspar, carelessly. He was writing and smoking, and did not look up from his work.

"The woman, Kingston, that ran away," said Sarah, indignantly. "I nearly shut the door in her face, sir, I did."

"That wouldn't have been legal," said Mr. Brooke. "Why doesn't she see Miss Brooke or Miss Lesley? I am busy."

"I expect she thinks she can get round you more easy," said Sarah, who was a very old servant, and occasionally took liberties with her master and mistress.

"She won't do that, Sarah," said Caspar, laughing a little in spite of himself. "Show her in."

He laid down his pen and his pipe with a rather weary air. Really, he was becoming involved in no end of domestic worries, and with few compensations for his trouble! Such was his silent thought. Lesley would, shortly leave him: Alice had refused to come back to his house. Well, it would be but for a short time. He had almost made up his mind that when Lesley was gone he would give up a house altogether, establish his sister in a flat, throw journalism to the winds, and go abroad. The life that he had led so long, the life of London offices and streets, of the study and the committee-room, had become distasteful to him. As he thrust away from him the manuscript at which he had been busy, his lips were, half unconsciously, murmuring a very well-worn quotation—

And from this passing day-dream he was roused by the entrance of a woman whom he knew only as his daughter's maid.

He was struck at once by some indefinable change that had passed over her since he had seen her last. He had noticed her, as he noticed everybody that came within his ken; and he had remarked the mechanical precision of her demeanor, the dull sadness of her lifeless eyes. There was a light in her face now, a tremulous quiver of her lips, a slight color in her thin cheeks. She looked like a creature who could feel and think: not an automaton, worked by ingenious machinery.

He noted the change, but did not estimate it at its true worth. He thought she was simply excited by the consciousness of her misdemeanor, and by the prospect of an interview with him. He put on his most magisterial manner as he spoke to her.

"Well, Kingston," he said, "I hope you have come to explain the cause of the great inconvenience you have brought upon Miss Brooke and my daughter."

"That is exactly what I have come to do, sir," said Kingston, looking him full in the face, and speaking in clear, decided tones, such as he had never heard from her before. She generally spoke in a muffled sort of way, as though she did not care to exert herself—as though she did not want her true voice to be heard.

"Sit down," said Mr. Brooke, more kindly. He had the true gentleman's instinct; he could not bear to see a woman stand while he was seated, although she was only his daughter's maid, and—presumably—a culprit awaiting condemnation. "Now tell me all about it."

"Thank you, sir, I'd prefer to stand," said Kingston, quietly. "At any rate, until I've told you one or two things about myself. To begin with: my name was Kingston before my marriage, but it's not Kingston now."

"Do you mean that you have got married since Saturday?" asked Caspar, quietly.

The woman uttered a short, gasping sort of laugh. "Since Saturday? Oh, no, sir. I've been married for the last six years, or more. I am Francis Trent's wife—Francis the brother of Mr. Oliver Trent, who was here last Saturday night."

And then, overcome with her confession, or with the look of mute astonishment—which he could not repress—on Caspar Brooke's countenance, she dropped into the chair that he had offered her, covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud. It took her hearer some seconds before he could adjust his mind to this new revelation.

"Do you mean," he said at last, "that brother of Mr. Trent's"—he had nearly said "of Mrs. Romaine's"—"who—who——" He paused, feeling unable to put into words the question that was in his mind.

"That got into trouble some years ago, you mean," said Mrs. Trent, lifting her face from her hands, and trying to control her trembling voice. "Yes, I mean him. I know all about the story. He got into trouble, and he's gone from bad to worse ever since. I've done my best for him, but it doesn't seem as if I could do much more now."

"Why?"

"He's been ill—I think he's had an accident—but I don't rightly know what's been the matter with him. Mr. Brooke, sir, I hope you'll believe me in what I say. When I came here first I didn't know that you were friends with his sister and his brother, or I wouldn't have come near the place. And when I found it out I'd got fond of Miss Lesley, and thought it would be no harm to stay."

"But what—what on earth—made you take a situation as ladies'-maid at all?" cried Caspar, pulling his beard in his perplexity, as he listened to her story.

"I wanted to earn money. He could not work—and I could not bear to see him want."

"Could not work? Was it not a matter of the will? He could have worked if he had wished to work," said Mr. Brooke, rather sternly. "That Francis Trent should let his wife go out as——"

"Oh, well, it was work I was used to," said Francis Trent's wife, patiently. "I'd been in service when I was a girl, and knew something about it. And it was honest work. There's plenty of ways of earning money which are worse than being a servant in your house, and to Miss Lesley, too."

Lesley's words came back to Caspar's mind. She had had "faith" in Kingston's attachment, and her faith seemed now to be justified. Women's instincts, as Caspar acknowledged to himself, are in some ways certainly juster than those of men.

"Is he not strong? Is there no sort of work that he can do?" he demanded, with asperity. "If you had come to me at the beginning and told me who you were, I might have found something for him. It is not right that his wife should be waiting upon my daughter. Tell me what he can do."

"I don't think he can do much now," was Mary Trent's answer. "He's very much broken down. I daresay you wouldn't know him if you saw him. I don't think he could do a day's work, so there's all the more reason that I should work for both."

She spoke truly enough as regarded the present; but, by a suppression of the truth which was almost heroic she concealed the fact that for many years Francis had been able but unwilling to work. Now, certainly, he was incapacitated, and she spoke as if he had been an invalid for years. Thus Caspar Brooke understood her, and his next words were uttered in a gentler tone.

"I am very sorry that you should have been brought into these straits, Mrs. Trent. Will you give me your address, and let me think over the matter? Mrs. Romaine or Mr. Oliver Trent——"

"I'd rather not have anything to do with them," said Mrs. Trent, quietly, but with an involuntary lifting of her head. "Mrs. Romaine knows I am his wife, but she won't speak to me or see me." Caspar moved uneasily in his chair. This account of Rosalind's behavior did not coincide with his own idea of her softness and gentleness. "And Oliver Trent is the man who has brought more misery on me than any other man in the world."

"But if I promise—as I will do—not to give your address to Mrs. Romaine or Mr. Trent, will you not let me know where you live?" said Caspar, with the gentle intonation that had often won him his way in spite of greater obstacles than poor Mary Trent's obstinate will.

She gave him her address, after a little hesitation. It was in a Whitechapel slum. Then, seeing in his face that he would have liked to ask more questions, she went on hurriedly—

"But I have not come here to take up your time. I only wanted to explain to you why I left your house on Saturday—which I'm very sorry to have been obliged to do. And one other thing—but I'll tell you that afterwards."

"Well? Why did you go on Saturday, Mrs. Trent?" said Mr. Brooke, more curious than he would have liked to allow. But she did not reply as directly to his question as he wanted her to do.

"I was only a poor girl when Francis married me," she said, "but I loved him as true as any one could have loved, and I would have worked my fingers to the bone for him. And he was good to me, in his way. He got to depend upon me and trust to me; and I used to feel—especially when he'd had a little more than he ought to have—as if he was more of a child to me than a husband. It was to provide for him that I came here. And then—one day when I'd been here a little while—I went to his lodgings to give him some money I'd been saving up for him—and I found him gone—gone—without a word—without a message—disappeared, so to speak, and me left behind to be miserable."

Caspar ejaculated "Scoundrel!" behind his hand, but Mrs. Trent heard and caught up the word.

"No, you're wrong, sir, he was no scoundrel," she said calmly. "He'd met with an accident and been taken to an hospital. He was there for weeks and weeks, not able to give an account of himself, or, as far as I can make out, even to give his name. He came out last week, and made his way, by sort of instinct, to your house, where he knew I was living. I came out on the steps and saw him there—my husband that I'd given up for lost. I ran up to him—you'd have done the same in my place—and went with him without thinking of anybody else."

"I see. But why did you not leave a word of explanation behind."

"I daren't quit hold of him for a moment, sir. He was so dazed and stupid, he didn't even know me at the first. That was why I say it was instinct, not knowledge, that guided him to the place. If I had left him to speak to any one in the house, he might have gone off, and I never seen him again. That was why I felt obliged to go sir, and am very sorry for the inconvenience I know I must have caused."

Caspar nodded gravely. "I see," he said. "Of course it was inconvenient, and we were anxious—there's no denying that. But I can see the matter from your point of view. Would you like to see Miss Lesley and explain it to her?"

"I'd rather leave it in your hands, sir," said Mary Trent. "Because there's one thing more I've got to mention before I go. And Miss Lesley may not thank me for mentioning it, although I do it to save her—poor lamb—and to save you too, sir, from a great trouble and sorrow and disgrace that hangs over you all just now."

Caspar flushed. "Disgrace?" he said, almost angrily.

And Mrs. Trent looked at him full in the face and nodded gravely, as she answered—

"Yes, sir, disgrace."