SIR EDWIN LANDSEER intended to produce a broad contrast when he painted two dogs, and ticketed them respectively “Low Life” and “High Life.” I need hardly say he succeeded in his attempt. Never were dog nature and dog surroundings more widely opposed than those which are to be found in the two pictures.

I have already described Prince’s appearance, and sketched his history, while I have left my readers to study for themselves the copy which the painter has supplied of the dog’s primitive abode. But I must turn back and call attention to it at this point, in order to mark the gulf between it and Carlo’s home. First, look at Prince’s lodging, with its rude block for a table, the red-handled knife on the block, the pewter pot which has contained his master’s beer and still holds his pipe standing behind the dog, and, lying at his feet, a well-polished bone.

Next, contemplate Carlo sitting in an elegant, pensive attitude in his master’s study; was there ever a deeper gulf alike between dogs and their quarters?

Carlo belongs as unmistakeably to the castle—one turret of which, with its fluttering flag when the family are at home, we see through the study window in the picture—as the castle belongs to Carlo. Both dog and scene—the table littered with books and writing materials, the riding-gloves, the fine old bell glass and flask of rare old wine, the foils, together with that glimpse through the window of the castle turret—are products of centuries of civilisation and generations of culture. Now look at the dog himself, as refined as any fine lady, for no fine gentleman was ever so absolutely removed from the faintest trace of rude nature—not to say from caddishness or snobbishness. Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. Measure him from the tip of his long nose to the point of his long tail, from his small head and slender throat to his delicate haunches and fine legs, and do not forget his large soft eyes and exquisite skin. Is he not grace personified?—grace, not dignity, for dignity implies power. Indeed there are critics who would limit Carlo’s dominant attribute to superlative elegance, since they allege that perfect grace demands natural vigour, and vigour or power is exactly the quality which the dog lacks. Being a high-bred hound, he may be fleet as a bird—fleet as Master Magrath of racing renown; but stamina, endurance (apart from fleetness), simple force of constitution and character, are not in him.

I have said Carlo is positively burdened with refinement. You cannot look at him without suspecting what a weight the vulgar world is on his mind. It does not enrage him; he is too mildly superior for that. Rage is more or less of a brutal quality, and Carlo is as little of a savage brute as any four-footed creature ever was. The wilful low life and rude practices of the mass of living beings simply depress his not very strong spirits, and torture his keen sensibilities. He is often rendered wretched by the mere coarseness of the world in general; and this wretchedness bulks so largely in his excited imagination that his peculiar trial shuts out from him every other dog’s trial. Carlo has fared delicately all his days. He has never known what it is to want food and shelter; the best and most suitable of everything has been provided sedulously for his use by the men whose business it is to wait upon him, instead of his having had to hunt hard to satisfy his most pressing wants, and to submit to being hunted in turn, kicked and abused for presuming to have wants, and for seeking to satisfy them. He has hardly ever heard a rough word addressed to him, so that he will mope for hours if he is merely overlooked—if his master has not smiled upon him, stroked his head, taken in his hand one fine paw after the other. Naturally, Carlo has little sympathy to spare from his own sentimental woes, which he plaintively airs and nurses, for the matter-of-fact miseries of homeless dogs, starved, beaten, done to death for the idle amusement of the spectators.

Yet Carlo is a gentle, generous dog, by natural temperament, and, so far from having no feelings, his feelings are only of too fine a description. The truth is, there is a subtle—all the more serious—danger to moral character in exquisitely fine feelings, especially when they accompany a morbidly fastidious taste and effeminate habits.

When I say effeminate habits, I wish not to be mistaken. I do not mean that Carlo was a larger lap-dog, utterly idle and useless—that he sat and lay all day and all night in that luxurious study, or in a still more luxurious drawing-room, or in a kennel very little behind the two rooms in comfort and beauty. On the contrary, he saw plenty of sun and wind. He had been trained, like his master, to count as the best part of his time those hours which were spent in the open air, and in active exercise. Coursing was exactly to Carlo what stalking deer, riding to hounds, and rowing a boat were to his master. When the dog’s blood and breeding were up, he could make a good fight in his doggish sport.

What I do intend to convey is, that in Carlo, and, for that matter, in his master also, the instincts of self-preservation, self-resource, and independence were sensibly and unconsciously weakened. The two could not have earned a dinner for themselves to save their lives, and if they had earned it they would not have known what to do with it, unless some foreign aid had happily come to them. Even after they had been initiated into the necessary process, they would have been so revolted by all the plain details inevitable to preparing a dinner, that they would have left it to be devoured by hardier applicants, till hunger urged them on to the stifling of their over-trained and stimulated susceptibilities.

Carlo first saw the light in a perfectly appointed kennel, built in the shape of a pagoda, one of the show-places in a noble ancestral park. His birth was attended with all the Éclat of the coming into the world of a great and important personage, and his pedigree was as proudly and hotly upheld as that of many a prince whose inheritance depends on his family tree. The young heir up at the castle had scarcely been welcomed with greater exultation, or had more unremitting care and attention bestowed on him than was lavished by the kennel staff on the puppy, the finest of the litter, the progeny of a valuable and favourite dog. Neither were the kennel men and boys the only or the principal persons who waited on the levees of Carlo. My lord and my lady visited him almost daily; the most cherished visitors at the castle were taken to inspect his points, and admire his promise; indeed it was regarded as a mark of favour, on the part of the earl and the countess, when some comparatively humble visitor—parson, lawyer, or doctor, with his wife or daughters—was invited to go to the kennel and have a look at the special puppy. The kennel was the first place the young lord ran to when he was home from Eton.

Carlo was led through all the trying stages of puppyhood with the most tender anxiety for his welfare. His weaning and teething were carefully seen to. I am almost sure that he was inoculated for distemper, either in the ear or under a front leg, at a spot which could not be reached by tooth or claw; and that the operation was performed by a distinguished veterinary surgeon, who came from the next large town for the purpose.

If I am right, by this means the dog was enabled to escape altogether the common scourge of the young of the dog race. And I believe the most distant suspicion of mange, imported by some extraordinary means to Carlo, would have been enough to have driven the head kennel-man into a fit, would have covered with gloom the countenance of the young lord, and would even have brought a cloud over the brow of his father the earl, who was a famous statesman, and was understood to have the destinies of nations at his beck.

That was a great day to more than the dog—on which he was emancipated from kennel thraldom, and was brought to the castle, where he was destined to be the companion and friend of the future earl when he was at home, though by this decision a sacrifice was made, of what would probably have been Carlo’s laurels as a regular coursing dog. Carlo might course occasionally, stirred by his master’s presence and encouragement, but no study or drawing-room dog, whatever his pedigree, could go in with a hope of winning the great matches equal to that of the dog who was kept up to the mark, by being maintained solely for that end.

It was an evidence of the degree to which social claims are permitted to prevail in every circle. “De Vaux wishes to have the dog constantly with him,” said De Vaux’s mother, as if the desire of the heir settled the question; “and Carlo is such a nice gentlemanly dog. I have been so frightened for De Vaux’s taking a fancy to a hideous turnspit, or a rough German boar-hound, or a fighting bull-terrier, with a beauty spot over one eye, or even to some wretched cur. Young men are so odd now-a-days,” she finished with a sigh of relief.

Not a footman or a housemaid was not respectful to Carlo, well-nigh as to my lord and my lady—tolerant of the trouble he gave the servants, flattered if he took any notice of them. Like all aristocratic dogs, he was inclined to keep his distance from the domestics, even from his old friends of the kennel, so soon as he saw that they were not his masters—that his master, who was also his familiar friend, proved to be their master, and stopped short with being so. Carlo was disposed to keep up an almost unbroken reserve towards the worthy persons, in their own way, who used the back stairs. He would no more have thought of visiting the kitchen, or even the housekeeper’s room or the butler’s pantry, on terms of equality, than I daresay you and I, my reader, would dream of doing, if we were, like Carlo, not so much the servant as the privileged member of an earl’s family. But Carlo was such a gentlemanly dog, as my lady had said, that he was incapable of arrogance, far less insolence. His manner was, like that of Queen Charlotte when she curtseyed to her humblest maid-servant, or of King George when he took off his hat to the gentlemen of his band, always gracious and affable.

My lord and my lady had a great partiality for Carlo. My lord would take him for a walk when the dog’s master was not at home. My lady would encourage him to sit with her in her morning-room, where she conducted her correspondence, and to glide after her in her conservatory and flower-garden, where she gathered flowers, and played at being a gardener in a big apron and gauntlet gloves, wielding shears for the destruction of dead leaves and twigs.

Carlo was introduced into the family picture which a great artist from London came down to the castle to paint. The dog had been painted several times before, and photographed on occasions without number—with De Vaux on his pony, with my lady standing on the terrace, or entering the family’s almshouses; but it was the first time that Carlo had been put on the same canvas with the head of the house, and in a picture which was destined to be one of the great works of the generation, secured for the castle. My lord, who himself dabbled in art, likened the introduction of Carlo into the piece to the use made of the white greyhound by Rubens in the “Arundel Family,” and to the similar employment of a dog, with the best effect, in Van Dyck’s “Wilton Family.” One cannot wonder that Carlo felt perfectly justified in regarding himself as a member of the earl’s family.

But Carlo was De Vaux’s special property, and the relation between them continued unbroken, in spite of the young man’s frequent absences on his travels, during the first period of the connection. These absences were trying to Carlo, who had little else to do save to miss his friend, and pine for his return; and the more he pined, the more he was praised and petted for his fidelity and devotion, till—as the dog had naturally no dislike, but, on the contrary, a great yearning for praise and petting, provided they were administered with the delicacy which he demanded in all the dealings with him—he ran a great risk either of falling into a normal condition of pining, or of becoming guilty of the most abominable affectation, passing by insensible degrees into hardened hypocrisy.

Carlo was saved from these pitfalls by De Vaux’s return from his travels, which had of course extended from Europe to Asia, including Palestine and Damascus; Africa, as far as has been made out of the course of the Nile; and America, across the continent to the Rocky Mountains.

After the celebration of De Vaux coming of age—which, to tell the truth, was in its exuberant rejoicings a considerable infliction both on him and Carlo—the heir settled down as far as he was likely to do in his ancestral home, and took Carlo into his constant society, until the dog had nothing more left to wish for.

Ah! there was the rub; it was the having nothing more left to wish for that threatened to be Carlo’s bane—to weigh him down with satiety, and oppress him with a sense of life accomplished. De Vaux laboured under a touch of the same complaint, only it took a higher form in the man than in the dog, and De Vaux and all his friends gave it another name. They made out that De Vaux, with his gifts and prospects, was rendered so difficult to satisfy, while he had such a craving after perfection, that the whole machinery of history and society disheartened and distressed him, until he could not make up his mind—and it did not really seem worth while to make it up—to join any political party, conservative or reforming, or take up any calling or work in life, beyond dreaming over what might have been, and deploring what was.

De Vaux was not unlike Carlo in body and mind, if you make allowance for the fact that the man was royally endowed compared to the dog. The young lord was a fine handsome young fellow, more elegant than muscular, in spite of the muscular education he had received both at his public school and his university, yet quite manly enough to despise sybarite indulgences and face hardships when they came in the way of his sport or travels. What was enervated in him had to do with his excessive fastidiousness and his want of hopefulness, his mental and moral languor. He was sufficiently thoughtful always, and courteously considerate when one came across him personally—so kindly that he would not have harmed a fly—always unless in the way of sport.

De Vaux was grieved to disappoint his noble parents, who would have liked him, with his rank and talents, to enter the world and do his devoir, and win his spurs gallantly. But to him the game was not worth the candle; and when he regarded his fellow-players and the weapons he must use, he shrank unconquerably from the contest. Altogether, he was of as little use in the toiling, struggling world—except it might be in affording an example of refraining from the indulgence of gross appetites which he did not possess, and of pursuing cultivation for its own sake—as one can well imagine in the case of a highly responsible man.

Perhaps, as a consequence, De Vaux suffered greatly, like Carlo, from that sickening of a vague disease, that inexplicable, unbearable depression, that weight of sympathy thrown back on itself, which will always beset such men. I do not know how he could have stood it, without breaking out into some abnormal eccentricity, or seeking a miserable refuge from himself and his weakness in excess or vice, if it had not been for the intellectual and muscular sides of him, both of which had been carefully developed. They afforded him the relief of a variety of interests in study, art, science, in long walks and rides—wherein not only his nerves and muscle were braced, but a wholesome love of natural history was farther fostered, in fishing, shooting, deer-stalking, hunting, each in its proper season. Neither was he, in his father’s house, at liberty to neglect intercourse with his neighbours, though they afforded him much less solace, and frequently grated painfully on his fine perceptions, so that they drove him to give tokens of sinking, with all his advantages, into the life of a confirmed recluse before he was thirty years of age.

Withal, it was rather a melancholy spectacle to see De Vaux and Carlo sitting listlessly together on a glad spring morning, or a serene summer evening, by the bank of a trout stream, or at the man’s study window—De Vaux’s long legs crossed, his long hand supporting his drooping head, his eyes gazing wistfully and moodily into the distance; while the dog, reflecting closely his master’s expression, if not his attitude, sat with his head declined also, and his nose sniffing the air in a kind of tender despondency—both so weary and sad, with wonderfully treacherous fascination for them in the energy-sapping sadness—and yet both so goodly in their respective fashions; De Vaux not yet twenty-three, Carlo not turned ten years.

There was only one element of light to be thankful for in this, among the many mysteries of existence. When you thought of the low life of Prince and his friend Jack, with all their shortcomings and deprivations, and, in the middle of it, how courageously—though it might be with a stolid courage—the dog and the lad endured misfortunes unmerited as well as merited, and what an absolute hearty relish remained to them wherewith to seize and enjoy every scrap of pleasure that came in their way in the course of the day’s difficulties; how they were not weary of life, in spite of the troubles they had known, but were always looking forward, in the teeth of their experience, to happier to-morrows—even when Prince was dragging out his dreary days in Mr. Jerry Noakes’ yard—then you could not help seeing there was compensation in life both for men and dogs. At least, where men’s blundering arrangements are concerned, it is the tendency of riches to produce surfeit, and of polish to sharpen the blade to an impracticable fineness, till it not only wears out the scabbard, but bends and breaks in the hand of him who uses it.

But, for my part, I think the man and dog here were far too much alike for their good. If they could have been parted, and De Vaux fitted with a rollicking, though gruff young mastiff or Newfoundland, and Carlo with a light-hearted, if empty-headed young squire, it would have been better for both of them.

In course of time the earl became superannuated, and more responsibilities were heaped on De Vaux’s shoulders, bending, notwithstanding their developed muscularity, under their present load, which the bearer was growing more and more fain to shirk.

My lady, plied with representations by friends and relatives of the family, became alarmed at the supineness of her son, with the waste of all his youthful promise, and his increasing inclination to let the active current of life sweep by him, while he buried himself in a remote retreat, taking with him his unemployed talent to rust there.

One winter evening at the castle the curtains were drawn, and tea had been brought in and carried out. Mother and son were alone together in their several corners, behind their respective screens, and having their private little tables, laden with books, drawing materials, ladies’ work, and flowers, between them and the blazing fire. Carlo was stretched decorously on the white bear skin which served as a hearthrug. Then the countess spoke out, and urged on De Vaux all the arguments which could stir his principles or rouse his ambition. But he had always the same answer.

Was it his father’s wishes that were pled? Ah! it was too late, so far as affording his father gratification went; besides, De Vaux had been persuaded from the first that, since he must have followed his own convictions, he would have run counter to his father’s opinions, and only contrived to vex and disappoint him in a public career.

Was it the good of his country he was bidden mind? De Vaux laughed softly, but with more pensive sadness than cynical bitterness in the laugh, at the idea of his being of any service to speak of to the nation. There were better qualified men than he to do the country’s work—men who could stick to a party, and have all the consistency and combined strength which such resolute adhesion gave; men not too scrupulous—not cumbered with a double sight, which saw both sides of a question, or with a vague, hazy farsightedness—he did not count it a gain, he was not meaning to praise himself in reckoning the defects which prevented him from observing clearly and concisely—which was always anticipating dim consequences, magnified to giants in their dimness. At the same time, he really felt he could not work—he could not do himself or any other body justice in union with fellows who were tools of a faction, or slaves to a theory; and he was not such a Don Quixote as to propose to fight the battles of the country and Parliament single-handed.

Was it a suggestion of authorship? He had been a prize-man at Oxford; he had been fond of making researches in various fields of intellect; his style, as shown in his letters when he had been on his travels, had been commended by distinguished literary men and diners out as the juste milieu between simplicity and brilliance. The family papers alone might supply him with delightful subjects for essays.

De Vaux laughed again, and protested that the world was too full of books; that the making of books in his generation, much more than in that of Solomon, was “vanity,” and he was not fool enough to add without any distinct calling to those toppling monster heaps, which, however evanescent, threatened to crush for the present, by the mere force of numbers, the half-dozen books capable of surviving the catastrophe. As for the records of the house, he was not disposed to turn them out for daws to peck at, neither had he any desire to wash his dirty linen in public, if she would forgive him the coarseness of the simile.

Was it a proposal of giving more personal attention to the management of the estate, now that his father was no longer able to take any part in it, or even to consult with the agent, in near prospect of the time when De Vaux should be sole master?

Here the poor lady began to cry, half at being forced to allude to the approaching death of her old husband, half at the recollection that he had always told her that to be an earl and a great landed proprietor were not the sinecures that ignorant people imagined they were. Yet De Vaux, who might have known better from what he had seen of his father’s cares and worries, and with his own cleverness, was taking his future position with unbecoming indifference, and declining to serve any apprenticeship to it since the time when he had been a bright boy, proud to accompany his father to the offices and the home farm.

De Vaux’s affectionate heart was touched. He assured his mother that he hoped his father would still be spared, and trusted he might rally and resume some of his former habits. “In such a case, my dear mother,” he said, “do you think he would like to find me prematurely interfering with his plans, and overturning his arrangements, particularly when Anwell is the briskest, most trustworthy old fellow out. He has a greater knowledge of the capabilities of the estate, and of country interests, than even my father had—don’t be angry; I have often heard him say so—or, I need not add, than I am likely to acquire, though I live to the age of Methuselah, which God forbid. It must have been a heavy task for the oldest of the antediluvians to get along without the comfort of so much as a contemporary to share his penalties. No, no; ‘sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.’ We have Scripture authority for that, and I shall recommend the vicar to take the text for his homily next Sunday if you will fret about my future troubles. I shall think I am in your way if you are so anxious to get rid of me and my spare time. In order to bring about that, there ought to be a new crusade—quite enough in the unaccountable laziness of your son to justify that. Eh, mum?” He ended with a flash of youthful fun, which was some consolation to his mother for her failure.

But she was more puzzled than ever. It was all De Vaux’s superior cultivation, ability, and good feeling which stood in the way, of course. There was a great deal of good taste, good sense, and good feeling in what he had said, especially in his reluctance to grasp the sceptre falling from his poor father’s hands. It was so different with Lady Netherby’s son, who was little better than an amateur coachman—in those days, too, when coaches had almost ceased to exist; or Lord Dorchester, who was a learned prig as well as a marquis; or young Ascham of Ryelands, who, as everybody knew, had sold himself to the Jews, and was eagerly anticipating his father’s death for his release. She recognised the difference thankfully. On the other hand, though she and her lord had been fairly polished, intelligent, well-disposed persons, she had not been, so to speak,

and it was a little hard to have a son whose genius and virtue took this turn. But De Vaux was the product of the age.

The countess hit on a new device. She would have young people about the house. It might be that De Vaux, though he was too kind and long-suffering to own it, even to himself, found his home a little slow, shut up, as he was, with a couple of elderly people, one of the two growing more and more infirm every day. No doubt the unequal association told on the boy’s spirits—even his dog Carlo looked dull. A disadvantage like that was enough to confirm De Vaux in those mooning, moping habits—his one fault, and which somebody had frightened her by foreboding might end in valetudinarianism; citing Lord Paulet, who had not been beyond his own park for years, though he was not over forty, and Sir Charles Ridley, who could not face a stranger to save his life.

She would begin by having girls, since it would be rather a delicate matter, and have the air of an act of interference on her part, if she were to bring young men about the place who were not even of De Vaux’s old quad or college, and were certainly not of his selection and invitation.

It showed the extent of the countess’s secret alarm on her son’s account, and of her unselfish devotion to his welfare, when she fixed upon getting girls to the castle to entertain him. Good woman as she was, she had not loved to contemplate her successor, and she had been tempted to keep her boy to herself as long as she could. But she would encounter the danger, and even bring herself to make the sacrifice cheerfully, because of the true mother’s love which she bore him.

De Vaux had an utter aversion to loud, fast girls, and two or three even nice girls, with their incessant claims on his attention, might be too much for him and Carlo—might serve to bore rather than enliven him. But there was one quiet little girl, the daughter of a favourite cousin of her ladyship and of a brother peer, held in especial esteem by her husband, and who my lady thought would be the very material for a first experiment. Accordingly, Lady Margaret was invited to spend a little time at the castle, and the invitation was accepted.

De Vaux had made no objection when he heard of the probable guest. He thought a young woman’s company for a few weeks might be a boon to his mother, and though he was becoming every day more of a hermit, and more averse to the slightest exertion out of the ordinary routine, he would not interfere with his mother’s pleasure, and he too would bear a little on his mother’s account.

When Lady Margaret arrived she did not look like a person who would be in anybody’s way, and even Carlo did not insist on sitting at attention, and refusing in a melancholy manner to be at home in her company. She was a very quiet, very shy, very young girl—on first acquaintance almost too quiet, shy, and young for the countess’s purpose, she feared. Lady Margaret required to be drawn out herself in place of drawing out De Vaux; and she was hardly even pretty, for her fair hair had been cut out on account of an illness, and was only half-grown and thin; while she was as thin as her hair, and so pale, that she resembled a wan, washed-out little ghost. My lady felt disappointed.

If the countess and De Vaux had known it, poor Lady Margaret was undergoing a severe ordeal, and was suffering, without any sign, agonies of mauvais honte and of incipient home sickness. It was the first time that she had been away among strangers without either her mother or her governess. She was naturally timid, and she had only recently recovered from a bad illness which had shaken her nerves. Everything was strange and overwhelming to her; even the sound of her own titled name startled her, seeing that she was accustomed to be called Peggy at home.

The countess was very kind, and De Vaux looked a preux chevalier; but Lady Margaret did not know them, and they did not know her. She could not tell in the least how they should ever become acquainted, or how she should get over the weeks she must spend at the castle. But mamma had wished her to come. Berry had said the change would be good for her, and she knew she was a silly, spoilt girl. No doubt the trial was beneficial, and she ought to make the best of it.

The best was within the reach of a creature so humble, so full of good-will and generous enthusiasm, in spite of her bashfulness and nervousness. In a marvellously short time Lady Margaret began to be reconciled to her situation, and to get the better of its disadvantages. Every day she was a fresh surprise to my lady and De Vaux—she opened up into such brightness and bonniness, as well as sweetness, before their admiring eyes.

The girl’s health was profiting by the change, combined with the friendliness of her entertainers. She was coming out in her natural colours of innocent trustfulness and happiness. My lady was getting as fond of her as if Lady Margaret had been the countess’s daughter.

Lady Margaret was a perpetual wonder to De Vaux, after she was at ease with him, and he could remark how constantly she was occupied, and how fresh and unflagging was her interest in whatever she was engaged with, whether it was reading a new book, or drawing an original design for the countess’s work, or borrowing a hint from the castle schools for her own schools, or learning from Mrs. Woods the hen-wife, or Forbes the gardener, the last plans for prairie chickens and orchises. She was as ardent as a child, and her ardour knew no decrease. She carried about with her a perennial spring of gladness, which was not impaired by her earnestness and seriousness; for she could be very earnest and serious on grave topics, and she was not an ignorant girl—I mean, not ignorant of the sorrowful, terrible verities of life. She had been brought up in a family that took a deep interest in humanity at large, and were early accustomed to see the world as it is, and not to fear to soil their raiment by coming in contact with the draggled garments of others. These people were possessed with a passion of humanity, the fervent conviction that to the pure all things are pure, while to the strong and the good is appointed, under God’s grace, the task of supporting and bringing back the weak and the bad.

De Vaux believed that Lady Margaret’s mind had been too great for her body—not that she was exceptionally clever, only unboundedly sympathetic, unweariedly helpful. But all the drain of the sympathy and help she afforded, in addition to the delicate health she had suffered, did not suffice to take the girlish lightheartedness and mirth out of her, after it was no longer checked by her first reserve.

He was amused watching her in the park one day, when she thought she was alone with Carlo. She had a bit of stick in her hand, which she was throwing away from her with a great show of empressement, to encourage the dog to follow and pick it up. He could guess she was saying, “I should like to see you run for a bit of fun. Good dog. Oh dear! is there no fun in you?—I know there is very little left in your master. I wonder if you can run, except after a hare. If you only would, I think it might shake you up, and put a little spirit in you. Of course I should not expect you to run like my Buzfuz or Berry’s Reiver; but if you would just try a little bit to please me.”

All that she got Carlo to do was to wag his tail as if he were shaking his head. “I believe the brute thinks it would lower his dignity and mine if he were to run,” said De Vaux to himself, impatiently. He could have found it in his heart to rise up from under the tree where he lay, and go and run for her delectation, and to show her that he could run, though he had not exerted his long legs, save at cricket, since they were short legs, and had done their best at football.

“Do you never whistle, Lord De Vaux?” she asked curiously one day. “My brother Berry is a great whistler, and I miss the music. I know it is very homely music, but none seems to me so blythe or so straight from the heart. I wish girls might whistle if they could. I will confess to you I have tried and failed. Berry said it was the feeblest attempt at the magnificent—like a mouse squeaking.”

He did not answer her that he had no heart-hilarity from which to whistle, and that he had sometimes been moved to envy a ploughboy who went whistling joyously past him, only pausing to take off his cap to the young lord on his walk or ride.

The next time De Vaux was in his room, with the door ajar, and was aware that Lady Margaret was going along the corridor, he whistled with all his might, though it took away his breath, so unwonted was the performance; and involuntarily he fell into a solemn and stately measure, like the “Dead March in Saul.” Still, he responded to her suggestion better than Carlo had done, and he made her laugh—though he was happily unconscious of it—at his doleful strain. She called him to herself “the melancholy Jaques,” and said, though he was a product of the age, a specimen of the kind existed in the time of Queen Elizabeth.

But I don’t know that Lady Margaret thought the worse of him, or liked him the less, because of her private wit at his expense; though he—being, like other young men, stupid where young girls are concerned—might have been at that date hurt and offended, and even imagined that she despised him because she made game of him.

One morning, as an excuse for his elegant idleness—of which he began to feel slightly ashamed, when he was forced to see how busy this delicate little girl was, and generally on the behalf of others—he repeated to her the speech he had addressed to his mother, of his wanting a modern crusade to induce him to put on his armor.

“But there is a crusade going on all around us, for every one of us, always,” she said, opening her eyes wide. “We have never been without one since”—she stopped, but he knew what she meant.

“I quite envy those fellows who have their own way to make in the world,” he observed on another occasion, still with an underlying motive of self-defence, and speaking in allusion to her younger brothers’ work in their military and naval schools.

“Oh! but Berry does most of all,” she explained promptly; “and he is an eldest son—like you, I had almost said, but you are an only son and child. I pity you, if you will forgive me for pitying you.”

“Not forgive, but thank you, and I pity myself,” he answered quickly, for it had at that moment struck him that, if he had possessed an admiring sister to quote him as she quoted “Berry,” or to look up to and depend upon him as she described her schoolboy brothers looking up to and depending on their elder brother, he might have had more faith in himself, and more inducement for exertion.

“Lord Beresford is going into Parliament,”—she continued the conversation, always delighted to speak about Berry,—“and, do you know, Berry will never make a great speaker?” she confided to him, as if it were a matter of extreme surprise, no less than regret, to more than herself. “Berry acts, he does not speak. He has few words, except on rare occasions. He says he could not be eloquent to save his life. But that is nonsense; at least I have heard him what I call eloquent—to save other people’s lives, when he had to argue against the bad water and worse drainage in Friarton, the town next us. He hopes to be a useful member; and he says though he hates to be in town, and it makes him shiver to think there is the most distant chance of his having to speak within earshot of the reporters and the strangers’ gallery, and ironical cheers from the opposition benches, yet he ought to make himself acquainted with the working of the House of Commons, and to put himself in training, since, if he live, he must sit in the other House one day.”

“He is very good,” said De Vaux, abstractedly.

“Oh yes,” said Lady Margaret warmly, without any affectation of contradicting him. “I must not tell you what I think, because Berry says, if I go about praising him or any of the others, we shall be set down as the Mutual Admiration Society; only I may be permitted to mention that he does not need to go into Parliament for occupation. Our vicar—with whom, by-the-bye, Berry has some differences—always maintains that my eldest brother, what with his clubs, societies, and night-schools, his allotment schemes and co-operative experiments, is the hardest-worked man in the parish.”

“For a member of the bloated aristocracy,” commented De Vaux, with somewhat grim humour.

“Yes; is it not an odd order for Berry, as well as yourself, to belong to?” she asked, laughing merrily; and then she added seriously—“But it is no laughing matter. Berry says he does not wonder at that, or indeed at any term of opprobrium, after the awful gulf which has been permitted to yawn and deepen between the ranks.”

“Lord Beresford will never fill it,” said Lord De Vaux dogmatically, and with a suspicion of irritation. “Not above a tithe of the people for whom he is spending himself will even understand him—far less be a bit the better for his waste of life and energy.”

“Berry says a man’s life would be well spent in helping a handful of his fellow-creatures, especially his countrymen—not to say our own people down at Southfolds,” said Lady Margaret serenely.

“Did I say a tithe? Probably not more than one will follow your brother’s lead.”

“Berry says he would not grudge his work if one man, woman, or child were the gainer by it,” said Lady Margaret proudly.

“What manner of man, woman, or child ought he or she to be who is to cost so much,” protested De Vaux ironically. “A beer-drinking clown, a long-tongued slattern, a dirty-faced imp of mischief—one and all of them dropping their r’s and revelling in their h’s.”

“Lord De Vaux!” said Lady Margaret, taken in by his tone, and getting red and indignant. “Berry says he has heard as good sense and as poetic thoughts from men and women who abused their r’s and h’s, as he ever listened to from their neighbours who respected these important letters. He is tempted to hold that it is a prejudice to be so particular about their disposal. More than that, he protests that, if the use of a tooth-brush would cause him to have a profound aversion to and contempt for the multitude who do not employ such an aid to their toilet, he would rather renounce tooth-brushes for ever, and continue to care for his brother.”

Lady Margaret had recovered her good-humour by this time, and saw he was trying her; so she added waggishly, “I must tell you, Lord De Vaux, that I have the greatest respect for an honest old woman who commits the enormity of taking snuff, as papa remembers your great-grandmother and mine doing freely, and that Berry’s model boy has red hair and a face covered with freckles.”

“What will you do without Berry?” he questioned her insidiously.

“I don’t know,” she answered, her face falling, and herself dropping forthwith into the new trap laid for her. “We’ll miss him dreadfully, and we are only to go to town after Easter for a few weeks, just that I may be presented, as mamma does not think that I am strong enough to stand the season. Berry will have nobody from home with him for the rest of the time, except Reiver, to make him feel less lonely, poor dear fellow.”

“You might take Carlo and me in exchange for Reiver and Berry. I think you could make something of us—get us to run unprofessionally, and do a little work in time.”

She looked up quickly to see how much he was in jest, and how much in earnest. She looked down again, and said hastily, “Carlo and you do not need me or any one to make you run and work, when it is in you both to run faster and work better than the rest of the world, if you choose.”

She did not intend to flatter him by any means, but he was not displeased with her answer—not though she put aside his petition.

The conviction had been growing upon De Vaux, till it was like an inspiration, that Lady Margaret and her brother held the right standard which he had missed—the one bracing and ennobling view of life—in which a man can live and die, serve God and man, and cast behind him self with all its weakness and waywardness.

He could do it as he was a Christian man, Heaven helping him. He had known what she had meant by a crusade all around us, for every man and woman, always. He had remembered who had first bidden man take up the cross, and condemned the servant who had hidden his talent in the earth. It made De Vaux thoughtful and sorrowful; but in spite of his sorrow, and the humility which was at its root, he was more hopeful than he had been since boyhood in taking these reflections to heart, and in seeing in the light of Lady Margaret’s conception of duty what an egotist he had been, and how near he had got to making shipwreck of his life, by yielding to scruples and whims, and forgetting the great call which is on him and every man.

My lady never had reason to regret having summoned Lady Margaret to stimulate De Vaux. Lady Margaret did finally take both man and brute in hand; but De Vaux had learned to work to purpose long before then, having, as she had said, the power to work in him, while it was his own fault if it lay dormant and shrivelled away. She never could or would accept the credit of his working, but she was ready to allow that she had helped to make Carlo a more cheerful dog than she had found him. She had not done everything, for Carlo had always reflected his master’s mood, and when De Vaux looked alive, and stepped out briskly to keep some engagement which went against the grain with him, but the obligation of which he had come to recognise, Carlo looked alive also, and accommodated himself to his master’s quickened pace, and even to the spring which had entered into the young man’s tread with the light in his eye. But Carlo could not go everywhere with his master—could not even be so much with him as formerly, after De Vaux grew a busy man with ever-increasing engagements; so that it was all the better for the dog that he had a brave little lady by whose side he could trot on her numberless errands, until he had no time left to fall back into his old painful consideration of the stumbles, the blunders, the coarseness and vulgarity of his neighbours, or to indulge in morbid moping and pining.