"Missie—are yo ben?"

The outer door of Browhead Farm was pushed inwards, and old Daffady's head and face appeared.

"Come in, Daffady—please come in!"

Miss Fountain's tone was of the friendliest. The cow-man obeyed her. He came in, holding his battered hat in his hand.

"Missie—A thowt I'd tell yo as t' rain had cleared oop—yo cud take a bit air verra weel, if yo felt to wish it."

Laura turned a pale but smiling face towards him. She had been passing through a week of illness, owing perhaps to the April bleakness of this high fell, and old Daffady was much concerned. They had made friends from the first days of her acquaintance with the farm. And during these April weeks since she had been the guest of her cousins, Daffady had shown her a hundred quaint attentions. The rugged old cow-man who now divided with Mrs. Mason the management of the farm was half amused, half scandalised, by what seemed to him the delicate uselessness of Miss Fountain. "I'm towd as doon i' Lunnon town, yo'll find scores o' this mak"—he would say to his intimate the old shepherd—"what th' Awmighty med em for, bets me. Now Miss Polly, she can sarve t' beese"—(by which the old North Countryman meant "cattle")—"and mek a hot mash for t' cawves, an cook an milk, an ivery oother soart o' thing as t' Lord give us t' wimmen for—bit Missie!—yo've nobbut to luke ut her 'ands. Nobbut what theer's soomat endearin i' these yoong flibberties—yo conno let em want for owt—bit it's the use of em worrits me above a bit."

Certainly all that old Daffady could do to supply the girl's wants was done. Whether it was a continuous supply of peat for the fire in these chilly April days; or a newspaper from the town; or a bundle of daffodils from the wood below—some signs of a fatherly mind he was always showing towards this little drone in the hive. And Laura delighted in him—racked her brains to keep him talking by the fireside.

"Well, Daffady, I'll take your advice.—I'm hungering to be out again.
But come in a bit first. When do you think the mistress will be back?"

Daffady awkwardly established himself just inside the door, looking first to see that his great nailed boots were making no unseemly marks upon the flags.

Laura was alone in the house. Mrs. Mason and Polly were gone to Whinthorpe, where they had some small sales to make. Mrs. Mason moreover was discontented with the terms under which she sold her milk; and there were inquiries to be made as to another factor, and perhaps a new bargain to be struck.

"Oh, the missis woan't be heÄm till dark," said Daffady. "She's not yan to do her business i' haÄste. She'll see to 't aa hersen. An she's reet there. Them as ladles their wits oot o' other foak's brains gits nobbut middlin sarved."

"You don't seem to miss Mr. Hubert very much?" said Laura, with a laughing look.

Daffady scratched his head.

"Noa—they say he's doin wonnerfu well, deÄn i' Froswick, an I'm juist glad on 't; for he wasna yan for work."

"Why, Daffady, they say now he's killing himself with work!"

Daffady grinned—a cautious grin.

"They'll deave yo, down i' th' town, wi their noise.—Yo'd think they were warked to deÄth.—Bit, yo can see for yorsen. Why, a farmin mon mut be allus agate: in t' mornin, what wi' cawves to serve, an t' coos to feed, an t' horses to fodder, yo're fair run aff your legs. Bit down i' Whinthorpe—or Froswick ayder, fer it's noa odds—why, theer's nowt stirrin for a yoong mon. If cat's loose, that's aboot what!"

Laura's face lit up. Very few things now had power to please her but
Daffady's dialect, and Daffady's scorns.

"And so all the world is idle but you farm people?"

"A doan't say egsackly idle," said Daffady, with a good-humoured tolerance.

"But the factory-hands, Daffady?"

"O!—a little stannin an twiddlin!" said Daffady contemptuously—"I allus ses they pays em abuve a bit."

"But the miners?—come, Daffady!"

"I'm not stannin to it aw roond," said Daffady patiently—"I laid it down i' th' general."

"And all the people, who work with their heads, Daffady, like—like my papa?"

The girl smiled softly, and turned her slim neck to look at the old man. She was charmingly pretty so, among the shadows of the farm kitchen—but very touching—as the old man dimly felt. The change in her that worked so uncomfortably upon his rustic feelings went far deeper than any mere aspect of health or sickness. The spectator felt beside her a ghostly presence—that "sad sister, Pain"—stealing her youth away, smile as she might.

"I doan't knaw aboot them, Missie—nor aboot yor fadther—thoo I'll uphod tha Muster Stephen was a terr'ble cliver mon. Bit if yo doan't bring a gude yed wi yo to th' farmin yo may let it alane.—When th' owd measter here was deein, Mr. Hubert was verra down-hearted yo understan, an verra wishfa to say soomat frendly to th' owd man, noo it had coom to th' lasst of im. 'Fadther'—he ses—'dear fadther—is there nowt I could do fer tha?'—'Aye, lad'—ses th' owd un—'gie me thy yed, an tak mine—thine is gude enoof to be buried wi.' An at that he shet his mouth, and deed."

Daffady told his story with relish. His contempt for Hubert was of many years' standing. Laura lifted her eyebrows.

"That was sharp, for the last word. I don't think you should stick pins when you're dying—dying!"—she repeated the word with a passionate energy—"going quite away—for ever." Then, with a sudden change of tone—"Can I have the cart to-morrow, Daffady?"

Daffady, who had been piling the fire with fresh peat, paused and looked down upon her. His long, lank face, his weather-stained clothes, his great, twisted hand were all of the same colour—the colour of wintry grass and lichened rock. But his eyes were bright and blue, and a vivid streak of white hair fell across his high forehead. As the girl asked her question, the old man's air of fatherly concern became more marked.

"Mut yo goa, missie? It did yo noa gude lasst time."

"Yes, I must go. I think so—I hope so!"—She checked herself. "But I'll wrap up."

"Mrs. Fountain's nobbut sadly, I unnerstan?"

"She's rather better again. But I must go to-morrow. Daffady, Cousin
Elizabeth won't forget to bring up the letters?"

"I niver knew her du sich a thing as thattens," said Daffady, with caution.

"And do you happen to know whether Mr. Bayley is coming to supper?"

"T' minister'll mebbe coom if t' weather hods up."

"Daffady—do you think—that when you don't agree with people about religion—it's right and proper to sit every night—and tear them to pieces?"

The colour had suddenly flooded her pale face—her attitude had thrown off languor.

Daffady showed embarrassment.

"Well, noa, missie—Aa doan't hod—mysen—wi personalities. Yo mun wrastle wi t' sin—an gaa saftly by t' sinner."

"Sin!" she said scornfully.

Daffady was quelled.

"I've allus thowt mysen," he said hastily, "as we'd a dËal to larn from Romanists i' soom ways. Noo, their noshun o' Purgatory—I daurna say a word for 't when t' minister's taakin, for there's noa warrant for 't i' Scriptur, as I can mek oot—bit I'll uphod yo, it's juist handy! Aa've often thowt so, i' my aan preachin. Heaven an hell are verra well for t' foak as are ower good, or ower bad; bit t' moast o' foak—are juist a mish-mash."

He shook his head slowly, and then ventured a glance at Miss Fountain to see whether he had appeased her.

Laura seemed to rouse herself with an effort from some thoughts of her own.

"Daffady—how the sun's shining! I'll go out. Daffady, you're very kind and nice to me—I wonder why?"

She laid one of the hands that seemed to the cow-man so absurd upon his arm, and smiled at him. The old man reddened and grunted. She sprang up with a laugh; and the kitchen was instantly filled by a whirlwind of barks from Fricka, who at last foresaw a walk.

* * * * *

Laura took her way up the fell. She climbed the hill above the farm, and then descended slowly upon a sheltered corner that held the old Browhead Chapel, whereof the fanatical Mr. Bayley—worse luck!—was the curate in charge.

She gave a wide berth to the vicarage, which with two or three cottages, embowered in larches and cherry-trees, lay immediately below the chapel. She descended upon the chapel from the fell, which lay wild about it and above it; she opened a little gate into the tiny churchyard, and found a sunny rock to sit on, while Fricka rushed about barking at the tits and the linnets.

Under the April sun and the light wind, the girl gave a sigh of pleasure. It was a spot she loved. The old chapel stood high on the side of a more inland valley that descended not to the sea, but to the Greet—a green open vale, made glorious at its upper end by the overpeering heads of great mountains, and falling softly through many folds and involutions to the woods of the Greet—the woods of Bannisdale.

So blithe and shining it was, on this April day! The course of the bright twisting stream was dimmed here and there by mists of fruit blossom. For the damson trees were all out, patterning the valleys,—marking the bounds of orchard and field, of stream and road. Each with its larch clump, the grey and white farms lay scattered on the pale green of the pastures; on either side of the valley the limestone pushed upward, through the grassy slopes of the fells, and made long edges and "scars" against the sky; while down by the river hummed the old mill where Laura had danced, a year before.

It was Westmoreland in its remoter, gentler aspect—Westmoreland far away from the dust of coaches and hotels—an untouched pastoral land, enwrought with a charm and sweetness none can know but those who love and linger. Its hues and lines are all sober and very simple. In these outlying fell districts, there is no splendour of colour, no majesty of peak or precipice. The mountain-land is at its homeliest—though still wild and free as the birds that flash about its streams. The purest radiance of cool sunlight floods it on an April day; there are pale subtleties of grey and purple in the rocks, in the shadows, in the distances, on which the eye may feed perpetually; and in the woods and bents a never-ceasing pageantry of flowers.

And what beauty in the little chapel-yard itself! Below it the ground ran down steeply to the village and the river, and at its edge—out of its loose boundary wall—rose a clump of Scotch firs, drawn in a grand Italian manner upon the delicacy of the scene beyond. Close to them a huge wild cherry thrust out its white boughs, not yet in their full splendour, and through their openings the distant blues of fell and sky wavered and shimmered as the wind played with the tree. And all round, among the humble nameless graves, the silkiest, finest grass—grass that gives a kind of quality, as of long and exquisite descent, to thousands of Westmoreland fields—grass that is the natural mother of flowers, and the sister of all clear streams. Daffodils grew in it now, though the daffodil hour was waning. A little faded but still lovely, they ran dancing in and out of the graves—up to the walls of the chapel itself—a foam of blossom breaking on the grey rock of the church.

Generations ago, when the fells were roadless and these valleys hardly peopled, the monks of a great priory church on the neighbouring coast built here this little pilgrimage chapel, on the highest point of a long and desolate track connecting the inland towns with the great abbeys of the coast, and with all the western seaboard. Fields had been enclosed and farms had risen about it; but still the little church was one of the loneliest and remotest of fanes. So lonely and remote that the violent hand of Puritanism had almost passed it by, had been content at least with a rough blow or two, defacing, not destroying. Above the moth-eaten table that replaced the ancient altar there still rose a window that breathed the very secreta of the old faith—a window of radiant fragments, piercing the twilight of the little church with strange uncomprehended things—images that linked the humble chapel and its worshippers with the great European story, with Chartres and Amiens, with Toledo and Rome.

For here, under a roof shaken every Sunday by Mr. Bayley's thunders, there stood a golden St. Anthony, a virginal St. Margaret. And all round them, in a ruined confusion, dim sacramental scenes—that flamed into jewels as the light smote them! In one corner a priest raised the Host. His delicate gold-patterned vestments, his tonsured head, and the monstrance in his hands, tormented the curate's eyes every Sunday as he began, robed in his black Genevan gown, to read the Commandments. And in the very centre of the stone tracery, a woman lifted herself in bed to receive the Holy Oil—so pale, so eager still, after all these centuries! Her white face spoke week by week to the dalesfolk as they sat in their high pews. Many a rough countrywoman, old perhaps, and crushed by toil and child-bearing, had wondered over her, had felt a sister in her, had loved her secretly.

But the children's dreams followed St. Anthony rather—the kind, sly old man, with the belled staff, up which his pig was climbing.

Laura haunted the little place.

She could not be made to go when Mr. Bayley preached; but on week-days she would get the key from the schoolmistress, and hang over the old pews, puzzling out the window—or trying to decipher some of the other Popish fragments that the church contained. Sometimes she would sit rigid, in a dream that took all the young roundness from her face. But it was like the Oratory church, and Benediction. It brought her somehow near to Helbeck, and to Bannisdale.

To-day, however, she could not tear herself from the breeze and the sun. She sat among the daffodils, in a sort of sad delight, wondering sometimes at the veil that had dropped between her and beauty—dulling and darkening all things.

Surely Cousin Elizabeth would bring a letter from Augustina. Every day she had been expecting it. This was the beginning of the second week after Easter. All the Easter functions at Bannisdale must now be over; the opening of the new orphanage to boot; and the gathering of Catholic gentry to meet the Bishop—in that dreary, neglected house! Augustina, indeed, knew nothing of these things—except from the reports that might be brought to her by the visitors to her sick room. Bannisdale had now no hostess. Mr. Helbeck kept the house as best he could.

Was it not three weeks and more, now, that Laura had been at the farm? And only two visits to Bannisdale! For the Squire, by Augustina's wish, and against the girl's own judgment, knew nothing of her presence in the neighbourhood, and she could only see her stepmother on days when Augustina could be certain that her brother was away. During part of Passion week, all Holy week, and half Easter week, priests had been staying in the house—or the orphanage ceremony had detained the Squire. But by now, surely, he had gone to London on some postponed business. That was what Mrs. Fountain expected. The girl hungered for her letter.

Poor Augustina! The heart malady had been developing rapidly. She was very ill, and Laura thought unhappy.

And yet, when the first shock of it was over—in spite of the bewilderment and grief she suffered in losing her companion—Mrs. Fountain had been quite willing to recognise and accept the situation which had been created by Laura's violent action. She wailed over the countermanded gowns and furnishings; but she was in truth relieved. "Now we know where we are again," she had said both to herself and Father Bowles. That strange topsy—turveydom of things was over. She was no more tormented with anxieties; and she moved again with personal ease and comfort about her old home.

Poor Alan of course felt it dreadfully. And Laura could not come to Bannisdale for a long, long time. But Mrs. Fountain could go to her—several times a year. And the Sisters were very good, and chatty. Oh no, it was best—much best!

But now—whether it came from physical weakening or no—Mrs. Fountain was always miserable, always complaining. She spoke of her brother perpetually. Yet when he was with her, she thought him hard and cold. It was evident to Laura that she feared him; that she was never at ease with him. Merely to speak of those increased austerities of his, which had marked the Lent of this year, troubled and frightened her.

Often, too, she would lie and look at Laura with an expression of dry bitterness and resentment, without speaking. It was as though she were equally angry with the passion which had changed her brother—and with Laura's strength in breaking from it.

* * * * *

Laura moved her seat a little. Between the wild cherry and the firs was a patch of deep blue distance. Those were his woods. But the house, was hidden by the hills.

"Somehow I have got to live!" she said to herself suddenly, with a violent trembling.

But how? For she bore two griefs. The grief for him, of which she never let a word pass her lips, was perhaps the strongest among the forces that were destroying her. She knew well that she had torn the heart that loved her—that she had set free a hundred dark and morbid forces in Helbeck's life.

But it was because she had realised, by the insight of a moment, the madness of what they had done, the gulf to which they were rushing—because, at one and the same instant, there had been revealed to her the fatality under which she must still resist, and he must become gradually, inevitably, her persecutor, and her tyrant!

Amid the emotion, the overwhelming impressions of his story of himself, that conviction had risen in her inmost being—a strange inexorable voice of judgment—bidding her go! In a flash, she had seen the wretched future years—the daily struggle—the aspect of violence, even of horror, that his pursuit of her, his pressure upon her will, might assume—the sharpening of all those wild forces in her own nature.

She was broken with the anguish of separation—and how she had been able to do what she had done, she did not know. But the inner voice persisted—that for the first time, amid the selfish, or passionate, or joy-seeking impulses of her youth, she had obeyed a higher law. The moral realities of the whole case closed her in. She saw no way out—no way in which, so far as her last act was concerned, she could have bettered or changed the deed. She had done it for him, first of all. He must be delivered from her. And she must have room to breathe, without making of her struggle for liberty a hideous struggle with him, and with love.

Well, but—comfort!—where was it to be had? The girl's sensuous craving nature fought like a tortured thing in the grasp laid upon it. How was it possible to go on suffering like this? She turned impatiently to one thought after another.

Beauty? Nature? Last year, yes! But now! That past physical ecstasy—in spring—in flowing water—in flowers—in light and colour—where was it gone? Let these tears—these helpless tears—make answer!

Music?—books?—the books that "make incomparable old maids"—friends?
The thought of the Friedlands made her realise that she could still love.
But after all—how little!—against how much!

Religion? All religion need not be as Alan Helbeck's. There was religion as the Friedlands understood it—a faith convinced of God, and of a meaning for human life, trusting the "larger hope" that springs out of the daily struggle of conscience, and the garnered experience of feeling. Both in Friedland and his wife, there breathed a true spiritual dignity and peace.

But Laura was not affected by this fact in the least. She put away the suggestions of it with impatience. Her father had not been so. Now that she had lost her lover, she clung the more fiercely to her father. And there had been no anodynes for him.

… Oh if the sun—the useless sun—would only go—and Cousin Elizabeth would come back—and bring that letter! Yes, one little pale joy there was still—for a few weeks or months. The craving for the bare rooms of Bannisdale possessed her—for that shadow-happiness of entering his house as he quitted it—walking its old boards unknown to him—touching the cushions and chairs in Augustina's room that he would touch, perhaps that very same night, or on the morrow!

Till Augustina's death.—Then both for Laura and for Helbeck—an
Unknown—before which the girl shut her eyes.

* * * * *

There was company that night in the farm kitchen. Mr. Bayley, the more than evangelical curate, came to tea.

He was a little man, with a small sharp anaemic face buried in red hair. It was two or three years of mission work, first in Mexico, and then at Lima as the envoy of one of the most thoroughgoing of Protestant societies, that had given him his strangely vivid notions of the place of Romanism among the world's forces. At no moment in this experience can he have had a grain of personal success. Lima, apparently, is of all towns in the universe the town where the beard of Protestantism is least worth the shaving—to quote a northern proverb. At any rate, Mr. Bayley returned to his native land at fifty with a permanent twist of brain. Hence these preposterous sermons in the fell chapel; this eager nosing out and tracking down of every scent of Popery; this fanatical satisfaction in such a kindred soul as that of Elizabeth Mason. Some mild Ritualism at Whinthorpe had given him occupation for years; and as for Bannisdale, he and the Masons between them had raised the most causeless of storms about Mr. Helbeck and his doings, from the beginning; they had kept up for years the most rancorous memory of the Williams affair; they had made the owner of the old Hall the bogey of a country-side.

Laura knew it well. She never spoke to the little red man if she could help it. What pleased her was to make Daffady talk of him—Daffady, whose contempt as a "Methody" for "paid priests" made him a sure ally.

"Why, he taaks i' church as thoo God Awmighty were on the pulpit stairs—gi-en him his worrds!" said the cow-man, with the natural distaste of all preachers for diatribes not their own; and Laura, when she wandered the fields with him, would drive him on to say more and worse.

Mr. Bayley, on the other hand, had found a new pleasure in his visits to the farm-since Miss Fountain's arrival. The young lady had escaped indeed from the evil thing—so as by fire. But she was far too pale and thin; she showed too many regrets. Moreover she was not willing to talk of Mr. Helbeck with his enemies. Indeed, she turned her back rigorously on any attempt to make her do so.

So all that was left to the two cronies was to sit night after night, talking to each other in the hot hope that Miss Fountain might be reached thereby and strengthened—that even Mrs. Fountain and that distant black brood of Bannisdale might in some indirect way be brought within the saving-power of the Gospel.

Strange fragments of this talk floated through the kitchen.—

"Oh, my dear friend!—forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils!—Now
Lima, as I have often told you, is a city of convents——"

There was a sudden grinding of chairs on the flagged floor. The grey head and the red approached each other; the nightly shudder began; while the girls chattered and coughed as loudly as they dared.

"No—a woan't—a conno believe 't!" Mrs. Mason would say at last, throwing herself back against her chair with very red cheeks. And Daffady would look round furtively, trying to hear.

But sometimes the curate would try to propitiate the young ladies. He made himself gentle; he raised the most delicate difficulties. He had, for instance, a very strange compassion for the Saints. "I hold it," he said—with an eye on Miss Fountain—"to be clearly demonstrable that the Invocation of Saints is, of all things, most lamentably injurious to the Saints themselves!"

"Hoo can he knaw?" said Polly to Laura, open-mouthed.

But Mrs. Mason frowned.

"A doan't hod wi Saints whativer," she said violently. "So A doan't fash mysel aboot em!"

Daffady sometimes would be drawn into these diversions, as he sat smoking on the settle. And then out of a natural slyness—perhaps on these latter occasions, from a secret sympathy for "missie"—he would often devote himself to proving the solidarity of all "church priests," Establishments, and prelatical Christians generally. Father Bowles might be in a "parlish" state; but as to all supporters of bishops and the heathenish custom of fixed prayers—whether they wore black gowns or no—"a man mut hae his doots."

Never had Daffady been so successful with his shafts as on this particular evening. Mrs. Mason grew redder and redder; her large face alternately flamed and darkened in the firelight. In the middle the girls tried to escape into the parlour. But she shouted imperiously after them.

"Polly—Laura—what art tha aboot? Coom back at yance. I'll not ha sickly foak sittin wi'oot a fire!"

They came back sheepishly. And when they were once more settled as audience, the mistress—who was by this time fanning herself tempestuously with the Whinthorpe paper—launched her last word:

"Daffady—thoo's naa call to lay doon t' law, on sic matters at aw. Mappen tha'll recolleck t' Bible—headstrong as tha art i' thy aan conceit. Bit t' Bible says 'How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough—whose taak is o' bullocks?' Aa coom on that yestherday—an A've bin sair exercised aboot thy preachin ever sen!"

Daffady held his peace.

The clergyman departed, and Daffady went out to the cattle. Laura had not given the red-haired man her hand. She had found it necessary to carry her work upstairs, at the precise moment of his departure. But when he was safely off the premises she came down again to say good-night to her cousins.

Oh! they had not been unkind to her these last weeks. Far from it. Mrs. Mason had felt a fierce triumph—she knew—in her broken engagement. Probably at first Cousin Elizabeth had only acquiesced in Hubert's demand that Miss Fountain should be asked to stay at the farm, out of an ugly wish to see the girl's discomfiture for herself. And she had not been able to forego the joy of bullying Mr. Helbeck's late betrothed through Mr. Bayley's mouth.

Nevertheless, when this dwindled ghostly Laura appeared, and began to flit through the low-ceiled room and dark passages of the farm—carefully avoiding any talk about herself or her story—always cheerful, self-possessed, elusive—the elder woman began after a little to have strange stirrings of soul towards her. The girl's invincible silence, taken with those physical signs of a consuming pain that were beyond her concealment, worked upon a nature that, as far as all personal life and emotion were concerned, was no less strong and silent. Polly saw with astonishment that fires were lit in the parlour at odd times—that Laura might read or practise. She was amazed to watch her mother put out some little delicacy at tea or supper that Laura might be made to eat.

And yet!—after all these amenities, Mr. Bayley would still be asked to supper, and Laura would still be pelted and harried from supper-time till bed.

To-night when Laura returned, Mrs. Mason was in a muttering and stormy
mood. Daffady had angered her sorely. Laura, moreover, had a letter from
Bannisdale, and since it came there had been passing lights in Miss
Fountain's eyes, and passing reds on her pale cheeks.

As the girl approached her cousin, Mrs. Mason turned upon her abruptly.

"Dostha want the cart to-morrow? Daffady said soomat aboot it."

"If it could be spared."

Mrs. Mason looked at her fixedly.

"If Aa was thoo," she said, "Aa'd not flutter ony more roond that can'le!"

Laura shrank as though her cousin had struck her. But she controlled herself.

"Do you forget my stepmother's state, Cousin Elizabeth?"

"Oh!—yo' con aw mak much o' what suits tha!" cried the mistress, as she walked fiercely to the outer door and locked it noisily from the great key-bunch hanging at her girdle.

The girl's eyes showed a look of flame. Then her head seemed to swim. She put her hand to her brow, and walked weakly across the kitchen to the door of the stairs.

"Mother!" cried Polly, in indignation; and she sprang after Laura. But Laura waved her back imperiously, and almost immediately they heard her door shut upstairs.

* * * * *

An hour later Laura was lying sleepless in her bed. It was a clear cold night—a spring frost after the rain. The moon shone through the white blind, on the old four-poster, on Laura's golden hair spread on the pillow, on the great meal-ark which barred the chimney, on the rude walls and woodwork of the room.

Her arms were thrown behind her head, supporting it. Nothing moved in the house, or the room—the only sound was the rustling of a mouse in one corner.

A door opened on a sudden. There was a step in the passage, and someone knocked at her door.

"Come in."

On the threshold stood Mrs. Mason in a cotton bedgown and petticoat, her grey locks in confusion about her massive face and piercing eyes.

She closed the door, and came to the bedside.

"Laura!—Aa've coom to ast thy pardon!"

Laura raised herself on one arm, and looked at the apparition with amazement.

"Mebbe A've doon wrang.—We shouldna quench the smoakin flax. Soa theer's my han, child—if thoo can teÄk it."

The old woman held out her hand. There was an indescribable sound in her voice, as of deep waters welling up.

Laura fell back on her pillows—the whitest, fragilest creature—under the shadows of the old bed. She opened her delicate arms. "Suppose you kiss me, Cousin Elizabeth!"

The elder woman stooped clumsily. The girl linked her arms round her neck and kissed her warmly, repeatedly, feeling through all her motherless sense the satisfaction of a long hunger in the contact of the old face and ample bosom.

The reserve of both forbade anything more. Mrs. Mason tucked in the small figure—lingered a little—said, "Laura, th'art not coald—nor sick?"—and when Laura answered cheerfully, the mistress went.

The girl's eyes were wet for a while; her heart beat fast. There had been few affections in her short life—far too few. Her nature gave itself with a fatal prodigality, or not at all. And now—what was there left to give?

But she slept more peacefully for Mrs. Mason's visit—with Augustina's letter of summons under her hand.

* * * * *

The day was still young when Laura reached Bannisdale.

Never had the house looked so desolate. Dust lay on the oaken boards and tables of the hall. There was no fire on the great hearth, and the blinds in the oriel windows were still mostly drawn. But the remains of yesterday's fire were visible yet, and a dirty duster and pan adorned the Squire's chair.

The Irishwoman with a half-crippled husband, who had replaced Mrs. Denton, was clearly incompetent. Mrs. Denton at least had been orderly and clean. The girl's heart smote her with a fresh pang as she made her way upstairs.

She found Augustina no worse; and in her room there was always comfort, and even brightness. She had a good nurse; a Catholic "Sister" from London, of a kind and cheerful type, that Laura herself could not dislike; and whatever working power there was in the household was concentrated on her service.

Miss Fountain took off her things, and settled in for the day. Augustina chattered incessantly, except when her weakness threw her into long dozes, mingled often, Laura thought, with slight wandering. Her wish evidently was to be always talking of her brother; but in this she checked herself whenever she could, as though controlled by some resolution of her own, or some advice from another.

Yet in the end she said a great deal about him. She spoke of the last weeks of Lent, of the priests who had been staying in the house; of the kindness that had been shown her. That wonderful network of spiritual care and attentions—like a special system of courtesy having its own rules and etiquette—with which Catholicism surrounds the dying, had been drawn about the poor little widow. During the last few weeks Mass had been said several times in her room; Father Leadham had given her Communion every day in Easter week; on Easter Sunday the children from the orphanage had come to sing to her; that Roman palm over the bed was brought her by Alan himself. The statuette of St. Joseph, too, was his gift.

So she lay and talked through the day, cheerfully enough. She did not want to hear of Cambridge or the Friedlands, still less of the farm. Her whole interest now was centred in her own state, and in the Catholic joys and duties which it still permitted. She never spoke of her husband; Laura bitterly noted it.

But there were moments when she watched her stepdaughter, and once when the Sister had left them she laid her hand on Laura's arm and whispered:

"Oh! Laura—he has grown so much greyer—since—since October."

The girl said nothing. Augustina closed her eyes, and said with much
twitching and agitation, "When—when I am gone, he will go to the
Jesuits—I know he will. The place will come to our cousin, Richard
Helbeck. He has plenty of money—it will be very different some day."

"Did—did Father Leadham tell you that?" said Laura, after a while.

"Yes. He admitted it. He said they had twice dissuaded him in former years. But now—when I'm gone—it'll be allowed."

Suddenly Augustina opened her eyes. "Laura! where are you?" Her little crooked face worked with tears. "I'm glad!—We ought all to be glad. I don't—I don't believe he ever has a happy moment!"

She began to weep piteously. Laura tried to console her, putting her cheek to hers, with inarticulate soothing words. But Augustina turned away from her—almost in irritation.

The girl's heart was wrung at every turn. She lingered, however, till the last minute—almost till the April dark had fallen.

When she reached the hall again, she stood a moment looking round its cold and gloom. First, with a start, she noticed a pile of torn envelopes and papers lying on a table, which had escaped her in the morning. The Squire must have thrown them down there in the early morning, just before starting on his journey. The small fact gave her a throb of strange joy—brought back the living presence. Then she noticed that the study door was open.

A temptation seized her—drove her before it. Silence and solitude possessed the house. The servants were far away in the long rambling basement. Augustina was asleep with her nurse beside her.

Laura went noiselessly across the hall. She pushed the door—she looked round his room.

No change. The books, the crucifix, the pictures, all as before. But the old walls, and wainscots, the air of the room, seemed still to hold the winter. They struck chill.

The same pile of books in daily use upon his table—a few little manuals and reprints—"The Spiritual Combat," the "Imitation," some sermons—the volume of "Acta Sanctorum" for the month.

She could not tear herself from them. Trembling, she hung over them, and her fingers blindly opened a little book which lay on the top. It fell apart at a place which had been marked—freshly marked, it seemed to her. A few lines had been scored in pencil, with a date beside them. She looked closer and read the date of the foregoing Easter Eve. And the passage with its scored lines ran thus:

"Drive far from us the crowd of evil spirits who strive to approach us; unloose the too firm hold of earthly things; untie with Thy gentle and wounded hands the fibres of our hearts that cling so fast round human affections; let our weary head rest on Thy bosom till the struggle is over, and our cold form falls back—dust and ashes."

She stood a moment—looking down upon the book—feeling life one throb of anguish. Then wildly she stooped and kissed the pages. Dropping on her knees too, she kissed the arm of the chair, the place where his hand would rest.

No one came—the solitude held. Gradually she got the better of her misery. She rose, replaced the book, and went.

* * * * *

The following night, very late, Laura again lay sleepless. But April was blowing and plashing outside. The high fell and the lonely farm seemed to lie in the very track of the storms, as they rushed from the south-west across the open moss to beat themselves upon the mountains.

But the moon shone sometimes, and then the girl's restlessness would remind her of the open fell-side, of pale lights upon the distant sea, of cool blasts whirling among the old thorns and junipers, and she would long to be up and away—escaped from this prison where she could not sleep.

How the wind could drop at times—to what an utter and treacherous silence! And what strange, misleading sounds the silence brought with it!

She sat up in bed. Surely someone had opened the further gate—the gate from the lane? But the wind surged in again, and she had to strain her ears. Nothing. Yes!—wheels and hoofs! a carriage of some sort approaching.

A sudden thought came to her. The dog-cart—it seemed to be such by the sound—drew up at the farm door, and a man descended. She heard the reins thrown over the horse's back, then the groping for the knocker, and at last blows loud and clear, startling the night.

Mrs. Mason's window was thrown open next, and her voice came out imperiously—"What is it?"

Laura's life seemed to hang on the answer.

"Will you please tell Miss Fountain that her stepmother is in great danger, and asks her to come at once."

She leapt from her bed, but must needs wait—turned again to stone—for the next word. It came after a pause.

"And wha's the message from?"

"Kindly tell her that Mr. Helbeck is here with the dog-cart."

The window closed. Laura slipped into her clothes, and by the time Mrs.
Mason emerged the girl was already in the passage.

"I heard," she said briefly. "Let us go down."

Mrs. Mason, pale and frowning, led the way. She undid the heavy bars and lock, and for the first time in her life stood confronted—on her own threshold—with the Papist Squire of Bannisdale.

Mr. Helbeck greeted her ceremoniously. But his black eyes, so deep-set and cavernous in his strong-boned face, did not seem to notice her. They ran past her to that small shadow in the background.

"Are you ready?" he said, addressing the shadow.

"One moment, please," said Laura. She was tying a thick veil round her hat, and struggling with the fastenings of her cloak.

Mrs. Mason looked from one to another like a baffled lioness. But to let them go without a word was beyond her. She turned to the Squire.

"Misther Helbeck!—yo'll tell me on your conscience—as it's reet and just—afther aw that's passt—'at this yoong woman should go wi yo?"

Laura shivered with rage and shame. Her fingers hastened. Mr. Helbeck showed no emotion whatever.

"Mrs. Fountain is dying," he said briefly; and again his eye—anxious, imperious—sought for the girl. She came hastily forward from the shadows of the kitchen.

Mr. Helbeck mounted the cart, and held out his hand to her.

"Have you got a shawl? The wind is very keen!" He spoke with the careful courtesy one uses to a stranger.

"Thank you—I am all right. Please let us go! Cousin Elizabeth!" Laura threw herself backwards a moment, as the cart began to move, and kissed her hand.

Mrs. Mason made no sign. She watched the cart, slowly picking its way over the rough ground of the farm-yard, till it turned the corner of the big barn and disappeared in the gusty darkness.

Then she turned housewards. She put down her guttering candle on the great oak table of the kitchen, and sank herself upon the settle.

"Soa—that's him!" she said to herself; and her peasant mind in a dull heat, like that of the peat fire beside her, went wandering back over the hatreds of twenty years.