“Had I better go? I should like to.”

“Go! why of course you had better go,” answered the Squire, putting down the letter.

“It will be the very thing for you, Johnny,” added Mrs. Todhetley. “We were saying yesterday that you ought to have a change.”

I had not been well for some time; not strong. My old headaches stuck to me worse than usual; Duffham complained that the pulse was feeble. Therefore a letter from Dr. Knox of Lefford, pressing me to go and stay with them, seemed to have come on purpose. Janet had added a postscript: “You must come, Johnny Ludlow, if it is only to see my two babies, and you must not think of staying less than a month.” Tod was from home, visiting in Leicestershire.

Three days, and I was off, bag and baggage. To Worcester first, and then onwards again, direct for Lefford. The very journey seemed to do me good. It was a lovely spring day: the hedges were bursting into bud; primroses and violets nestled in the mossy banks.

You have not forgotten, I dare say, how poor Janet Carey’s hard life, her troubles, and the sickness those troubles brought, culminated in a brave ending when Arnold Knox, of Lefford, made her his wife. Some five years had elapsed since then, and we were all of us that much older. They had asked me to visit them over and over again, but until now I had not done it. Mr. Tamlyn, Arnold’s former master and present partner, with whom they lived, was growing old; he only attended to a few of the old patients now.

It was a cross-grained kind of route, and much longer than it need have been could we have gone straight as a bird flies. The train made all sorts of detours, and I had to change no less than three times. For the last few miles I had had the carriage to myself, but at Toome Junction, the last station before Lefford, a gentleman got in: a rather elderly man with grey hair. Not a syllable did we say, one to another—Englishmen like—and at length Lefford was gained.

“In to time exactly,” cried this gentleman then, peering out at the gas-lighted station. “The clock’s on the stroke of eight.”

Getting my portmanteau, I looked about for Dr. Knox’s brougham, which would be waiting for me, and soon pitched upon one, standing near the flys. But my late fellow-passenger strode on before me.

“I thought I spied you out, Wall,” he said to the coachman. “Quite a chance your being here, I suppose?”

“I’m waiting for a gentleman from Worcester, sir,” answered the man, looking uncommonly pleased, as he touched his hat. “Dr. Knox couldn’t come himself.”

“Well, I suppose you can take me as well as the gentleman from Worcester,” answered the other, as he turned from patting the old horse, and saw me standing there. And we got into the carriage.

It proved to be Mr. Shuttleworth, he who had been old Tamlyn’s partner for a short time, and had married his sister. Tamlyn’s people did not know he was coming to-night, he told me. He was on his way to a distant place, to see a relative who was ill; by making a round of it, he could take Lefford, and drop in at Mr. Tamlyn’s for the night—and was doing so.

Janet came running to the door, Mr. Tamlyn walking slowly behind her. He had a sad countenance, and scanty grey hair, and looked ever so much older than his actual years. Since his son died, poor Bertie, life’s sunshine had gone out for him. Very much surprised were they to see Mr. Shuttleworth as well as me.

Janet gave us a sumptuous high-tea, pouring out unlimited cups of tea and pressing us to eat of all the good things. Except that she had filled out a little from the skeleton she was, and looked as joyous now as she had once looked sad, I saw little difference in her. Her boy, Arnold, was aged three and a half: the little girl, named Margaret, after Miss Deveen, could just walk.

“Never were such children in all the world before, if you listen to Janet,” cried old Tamlyn, looking at her fondly—for he had learnt to love Janet as he would a daughter—and she laughed shyly and blushed.

“You don’t ask after mine,” put in Mr. Shuttleworth, quaintly; “my one girl. She is four years old now. Such a wonder! such a paragon! other babies are nothing to it; so Bessy says. Bessy is silly over that child, Tamlyn.”

Old Tamlyn just shook his head. They suddenly remembered the one only child he had lost, and changed the subject.

“And what about everything!” asked Mr. Shuttleworth, lighting a cigar, as we sat round the fire after our repast, Janet having gone out to see to a room for Shuttleworth, or perhaps to contemplate her sleeping babies. “I am glad you have at last given up the parish work.”

“There’s enough to do without it; the practice increases daily,” cried Tamlyn. “Arnold is much liked.”

“How are all the old patients?”

“That is a comprehensive question,” smiled Tamlyn. “Some are flourishing, and some few are, of course, dead.”

“Is Dockett with you still?”

“No. Dockett is in London at St. Thomas’s. Sam Jenkins is with us in his place. A clever young fellow; worth two of Dockett.”

“Who is Sam Jenkins?”

“A nephew of Lady Jenkins—you remember her? At least, of her late husband’s.”

“I should think I do remember Lady Jenkins,” laughed Shuttleworth. “How is she? Flourishing about the streets as usual in that red-wheeled carriage of hers, dazzling as the rising sun?”

“Lady Jenkins is not well,” replied Tamlyn, gravely. “She gives me some concern.”

“In what way does she give you concern?”

“Chiefly because I can’t find out what it is that’s amiss with her?”

“Has she been ill long?”

“For some months now. She is not very ill: goes out in her carriage to dazzle the town, as you observe, and has her regular soirÉes at home. But I don’t like her symptoms: I don’t understand them, and they grow worse. She has never been well, really well, since that French journey.”

“What French journey?”

“At the end of last summer, my Lady Jenkins must needs get it into her head that she should like to see Paris. Stupid old thing, to go all the way to France for the first time in her life! She did go, taking Mina Knox with her—who is growing up as pretty a girl as you’d wish to see. And, by the way, Shuttleworth, Mina is in luck. She has had a fortune left her. An old gentleman, not related to them at all, except that he was Mina’s godfather, left her seven thousand pounds last year in his will. Arnold is trustee.”

“I am glad of it. Little Mina and I used to be great friends. Her mother is as disagreeable as ever, I suppose?”

“As if she’d ever change from being that!” returned Tamlyn. “I have no patience with her. She fritters away her own income, and then comes here and worries Arnold’s life out with her embarrassments. He does for her more than I should do. Educates young Dicky, for one thing.”

“No doubt. Knox always had a soft place in his heart. But about Lady Jenkins?”

“Lady Jenkins went over to Paris with her maid, taking Mina as her companion. It was in August. They stayed three weeks there, racketing about to all kinds of show-places, and overdoing it, of course. When they arrived at Boulogne on their way back, expecting to cross over at once, they found they had to wait. A gale was raging, and the boats could not get out. So they put up at an hotel there; and, that night, Lady Jenkins was taken alarmingly ill—the journey and the racketing and the French living had been too much for her. Young people can stand these things, Johnny Ludlow; old ones can’t,” added Tamlyn, looking at me across the hearth.

“Very true, sir. How old is Lady Jenkins?”

“Just seventy. But you wouldn’t have thought her so much before that French journey. Until then she was a lively, active, bustling woman, with a good-natured, pleasant word for every one. Now she is weary, dull, inanimate; seems to be, half her time, in a sort of lethargy.”

“What was the nature of the illness?” asked Shuttleworth. “A seizure?”

“No, nothing of that sort. I’m sure I don’t know what it was,” added old Tamlyn, rubbing back his scanty grey hair in perplexity. “Any way, they feared she was going to die. The French doctor said her getting well was a miracle. She lay ill ten days, keeping her bed, and was still ill and very weak when she reached home. Mina believes that a lady who was detained at the same hotel by the weather, and who came forward and offered her services as nurse, saved Lady Jenkins’s life. She was so kind and attentive; never going to her bed afterwards until Lady Jenkins was up from hers. She came home with them.”

“Who did? This lady?”

“Yes; and has since remained with Lady Jenkins as companion. She is a Madame St. Vincent; a young widow——”

“A Frenchwoman!” exclaimed Mr. Shuttleworth.

“Yes; but you wouldn’t think it. She speaks English just as we do, and looks English. A very nice, pleasant young woman; as kind and loving to Lady Jenkins as though she were her daughter. I am glad they fell in with her. She—— Oh, is it you, Sam?”

A tall smiling young fellow of eighteen, or so, had come in. It was Sam Jenkins: and, somehow, I took to him at once. Mr. Shuttleworth shook hands and said he was glad to hear he promised to be a second Abernethy. Upon which Sam’s wide mouth opened in laughter, showing a set of nice teeth.

“I thought Dr. Knox was here, sir,” he said to Mr. Tamlyn, as if he would apologize for entering.

“Dr. Knox is gone over to the Brook, but I should think he’d be back soon now. Why? Is he wanted?”

“Only a message, sir, from old Willoughby’s. They’d like him to call there as soon as convenient in the morning.”

“Now, Sam, don’t be irreverent,” reproved his master. “Old Willoughby! I should say Mr. Willoughby if I were you. He is no older than I am. You young men of the present day are becoming very disrespectful; it was different in my time.”

Sam laughed pleasantly. Close upon that, Dr. Knox came in. He was more altered than Janet, looking graver and older, his light hair as wild as ever. He was just thirty now.

Mr. Shuttleworth left in the morning, and afterwards Dr. Knox took me to see his step-mother. Her house (but it was his house, not hers), Rose Villa, was in a suburb of the town, called the London Road. Mrs. Knox was a dark, unpleasing-looking woman; her voice harsh, her crinkled black hair untidy—it was never anything else in a morning. The two eldest girls were in the room. Mina was seventeen, Charlotte twelve months younger. Mina was the prettiest; a fair girl with a mild face and pleasant blue eyes, her manner and voice as quiet as her face. Charlotte seemed rather strong-minded.

“Are you going to the soirÉe next door to-night, Arnold?” cried Mrs. Knox, as we were leaving.

“I think not,” he answered. “Janet wrote to decline.”

“You wished her to decline, I dare say!” retorted Mrs. Knox. “You always did despise the soirÉes, Arnold.”

Dr. Knox laughed pleasantly. “I have never had much time for soirÉes,” he said; “and Janet does not care for them. Besides, we think it unkind to leave Mr. Tamlyn alone.” At which latter remark Mrs. Knox tossed her head.

“I must call on Lady Jenkins, as I am up here,” observed Dr. Knox to me, when we were leaving. “You don’t mind, do you, Johnny?”

“I shall like it. They were talking about her last night.”

It was only a few yards higher up. A handsome dwelling, double the size of Rose Villa, with two large iron gates flanked by imposing pillars, on which was written in gold letters, as large as life, “Jenkins House.”

Dr. Knox laughed. “Sir Daniel Jenkins re-christened it that,” he said, dropping his voice, lest any ears should be behind the open windows: “it used to be called ‘Rose Bank.’ They moved up here four years ago; he was taken ill soon afterwards and died, leaving nearly all his money to his wife unconditionally: it is over four thousand a-year. He was in business as a drysalter, and was knighted during the time he was mayor.”

“Who will come in for the money?”

“That is as Lady Jenkins pleases. There are lots of relations, Jenkinses. Sir Daniel partly brought up two orphan nephews—at least, he paid for their schooling and left each a little money to place them out in life. You have seen the younger of them, Sam, who is with us; the other, Dan, is articled to a solicitor in the town, old Belford. Two other cousins are in the drysalting business; and the ironmonger, Sir Daniel’s youngest brother, left several sons and daughters. The old drysalter had no end of nephews and nieces, and might have provided for them all. Perhaps his widow will do so.”

Not possessing the faintest idea of what “drysalting” might be, unless it had to do with curing hams, I was about to inquire, when the house-door was thrown open by a pompous-looking gentleman in black—the butler—who showed us into the dining-room, where Lady Jenkins was sitting. I liked her at first sight. She was short and stout, and had pink cheeks and a pink turned-up nose, and wore a “front” of flaxen curls, surmounted by a big smart cap with red roses and blue ribbons in it; but there was not an atom of pretence about her, and her blue eyes were kindly. She took the hands of Dr. Knox in hers, and she shook mine warmly, saying she had heard of Johnny Ludlow.

Turning from her, I caught the eyes of a younger lady fixed upon me. She looked about seven-and-twenty, and wore a fashionable black-and-white muslin gown. Her hair was dark, her eyes were a reddish brown, her cheeks had a fixed bloom upon them. The face was plain, and it struck me that I had seen it somewhere before. Dr. Knox greeted her as Madame St. Vincent.

When we first went in, Lady Jenkins seemed to wake up from a doze. In two minutes she had fallen into a doze again, or as good as one. Her eyelids drooped, she sat perfectly quiet, never speaking unless spoken to, and her face wore a sort of dazed, or stupid look. Madame St. Vincent talked enough for both of them; she appealed frequently to Lady Jenkins—“Was it not so, dear Lady Jenkins?”—or “Don’t you remember that, dear Lady Jenkins?” and Lady Jenkins docilely answered “Yes, dear,” or “Yes, Patty.”

That Madame St. Vincent was a pleasant woman, as Mr. Tamlyn had said, and that she spoke English as we did, as he had also said, there could not be a doubt. Her tongue could not be taken for any but a native tongue; moreover, unless my ears deceived me, it was native Worcestershire. Ever and anon, too, a homely word would be dropped by her in the heat of conversation that belonged to Worcestershire proper, and to no other county.

“You will come to my soirÉe this evening, Mr. Ludlow,” Lady Jenkins woke up to say to me as we were leaving.

“Johnny can come; I dare say he would like to,” put in Dr. Knox; “although I and Janet cannot——”

“Which is very churlish of you,” interposed Madame St. Vincent.

“Well, you know what impediments lie in our way,” he said, smiling. “Sam can come up with Johnny, if you like, Lady Jenkins.”

“To be sure; let Sam come,” she answered, readily. “How is Sam? and how does he get on?”

“He is very well, and gets on well.”

Dr. Knox walked down the road in silence, looking grave. “Every time I see her she seems to me more altered,” he observed presently, and I found he was speaking of Lady Jenkins. “Something is amiss with her, and I cannot tell what. I wish Tamlyn would let me take the case in hand!”

Two peculiarities obtained at Lefford. The one was that the universal dinner hour, no-matter how much you might go in for fashion, was in the middle of the day; the other was that every evening gathering, no matter how unpretentious, was invariably called a “soirÉe.” They were the customs of the town.

The soirÉe was in full swing when I reached Jenkins House that night—at six o’clock. Madame St. Vincent and Charlotte Knox sat behind the tea-table in a cloud of steam, filling the cups as fast as the company emptied them; a footman, displaying large white calves, carried round a tray of bread-and-butter and cake. Lady Jenkins sat near the fire in an easy-chair, wearing a red velvet gown and lofty turban. She nodded to the people as they came in, and smiled at them with quite a silly expression. Mina and Charlotte Knox were in white muslin and pink roses. Mina looked very pretty indeed, and as mild as milk; Charlotte was downright and strong-minded. Every five minutes or so, Madame St. Vincent—the white streamers on her rich black silk dress floating behind her—would leave the tea-table to run up to Lady Jenkins and ask if she wanted anything. Sam had not come with me: he had to go out unexpectedly with Dr. Knox.

“Mr. Jenkins,” announced the pompous butler, showing in a tall young fellow of twenty. He had just the same sort of honest, good-natured face that had taken my fancy in Sam, and I guessed that this was his brother, the solicitor. He came up to Lady Jenkins.

“How do you do, aunt?” he said, bending to kiss her. “Hearing of your soirÉe to-night, I thought I might come.”

“Why, my dear, you know you may come; you are always welcome. Which is it?” she added, looking up at him stupidly, “Dan, or Sam?”

“It is Dan,” he answered; and if ever I heard pain in a tone, I heard it in his.

“You are Johnny Ludlow, I know!” he said, holding out his hand to me in the warmest manner, as he turned from his aunt. “Sam told me about you this morning.” And we were friends from that moment.

Dan brought himself to an anchor by Mina Knox. He was no beauty certainly, but he had a good face. Leaning over Mina’s chair, he began whispering to her—and she whispered back again. Was there anything between them? It looked like it—at any rate, on his side—judging by his earnest expression and the loving looks that shot from his honest grey eyes.

“Are you really French?” I asked of Madame St. Vincent, while standing by her side to drink some tea.

“Really,” she answered, smiling. “Why?”

“Because you speak English exactly like ourselves.”

“I speak it better than I do French,” she candidly said. “My mother was English, and her old maid-servant was English, and they educated me between them. It was my father who was French—and he died early.”

“Was your mother a native of Worcestershire?”

“Oh dear, no: she came from Wales. What made you think of such a thing?”

“Your accent is just like our Worcestershire accent. I am Worcestershire myself: and I could have thought you were.”

She shook her head. “Never was there in my life, Mr. Ludlow. Is that why you looked at me so much when you were here with Dr. Knox this morning?”

“No: I looked at you because your face struck me as being familiar,” I frankly said: “I thought I must have seen you somewhere before. Have I, I wonder?”

“Very likely—if you have been much in the South of France,” she answered: “at a place called BrÉtage.”

“But I have never been at BrÉtage.”

“Then I don’t see how we can have met. I have lived there all my life. My father and mother died there: my poor husband died there. I only came away from it last year.”

“It must be my fancy, I suppose. One does see likenesses——”

“Captain Collinson,” shouted the butler again.

A military-looking man, got up in the pink of fashion, loomed in with a lordly air; you’d have said the room belonged to him. At first he seemed all hair: bushy curls, bushy whiskers, a moustache, and a fine flowing beard, all purple black. Quite a flutter stirred the room: Captain Collinson was evidently somebody.

After making his bow to Lady Jenkins, he distributed his favours generally, shaking hands with this person, talking with that. At last he turned our way.

“Ah, how do you do, madame?” he said to Madame St. Vincent, his tone ceremonious. “I fear I am late.”

It was not a minute that he stood before her, only while he said this: but, strange to say, something in his face or voice struck upon my memory. The face, as much as could be seen of it for hair, seemed familiar to me—just as madame’s had seemed.

“Who is he?” I whispered to her, following him with my eyes.

“Captain Collinson.”

“Yes, I heard the name. But—do you know anything of him?—who he is?”

She shook her head. “Not much; nothing of my own knowledge. He is in an Indian regiment, and is home on sick leave.”

“I wonder which regiment it is? One of our fellows at Dr. Frost’s got appointed to one in Madras, I remember.”

“The 30th Bengal Cavalry, is Captain Collinson’s. By his conversation, he appears to have spent nearly the whole of his life in India. It is said he is of good family, and has a snug private fortune. I don’t know any more about him than that,” concluded Madame St. Vincent, as she once more rose to go to Lady Jenkins.

“He may have a snug private fortune, and he may have family, but I do not like him,” put in Charlotte Knox, in her decisive manner.

“Neither do I, Lotty,” added Dan—who was then at the tea-table: and his tone was just as emphatic as Charlotte’s.

He had come up for a cup of tea for Mina. Before he could carry it to her, Captain Collinson had taken up the place he had occupied at Mina’s elbow, and was whispering to her in a most impressive manner. Mina seemed all in a flutter—and there was certainly no further room for Dan.

“Don’t you want it now, Mina?” asked Dan, holding the cup towards her, and holding it in vain, for she was too much occupied to see it.

“Oh, thank you—no—I don’t think I do want it now. Sorry you should have had the trouble.”

Her words were just as fluttered as her manner. Dan brought the tea back and put it on the tray.

“Of course, she can’t spare time to drink tea while he is there,” cried Charlotte, resentfully, who had watched what passed. “That man has bewitched her, Dan.”

“Not quite yet, I think,” said Dan, quietly. “He is trying to do it. There is no love lost between you and him, I see, Lotty.”

“Not a ghost of it,” nodded Lotty. “The town may be going wild in its admiration of him, but I am not; and the sooner he betakes himself back to India to his regiment, the better.”

“I hope he will not take Mina with him,” said Dan, gravely.

“I hope not, either. But she is silly enough for anything.”

“Who is that, that’s silly enough for anything?” cried Madame St. Vincent, whisking back to her place.

“Mina,” promptly replied Charlotte. “She asked for a cup of tea, and then said she did not want it.”

Some of the people sat down to cards; some to music; some talked. It was the usual routine at these soirÉes, Mrs. Knox condescended to inform me—and, what more, she added, could be wished for? Conversation, music, and cards—they were the three best diversions of life, she said, not that she herself much cared for music.

Poor Lady Jenkins did not join actively in any one of the three: she for the most part dozed in her chair. When any one spoke to her, she would wake up and say Yes or No; but that was all. Captain Collinson stood in a corner, talking to Mina behind a sheet of music. He appeared to be going over the bars with her, and to be as long doing it as if a whole opera were scored there.

At nine o’clock the supper-room was thrown open, and Captain Collinson handed in Lady Jenkins. Heavy suppers were not the mode at Lefford; neither, as a rule, did the guests sit down, except a few of the elder ones; but the table was covered with dainties. Sandwiches, meats in jelly, rissoles, lobster salad, and similar things that could be eaten with a fork, were supplied in abundance, with sweets and jellies.

“I hope you’ll be able to make a supper, my dear,” said Lady Jenkins to me in her comfortable way—for supper seemed to wake her up. “You see, if one person began to give a grand sitting-down supper, others would think themselves obliged to do it, and every one can’t afford that. So we all confine ourselves to this.”

“And I like this best,” I said.

“Do you, my dear? I’m glad of that. Dan, is that you? Mind you make a good supper too.”

We both made a famous one. At least, I can answer for myself. And, at half-past ten, Dan and I departed together.

“How very good-natured Lady Jenkins seems to be!” I remarked.

“She is good-nature itself, and always was,” Dan warmly answered. “She has never been a bit different from what you see her to-night—kind to us all. You should have known her though in her best days, before she grew ill. I never saw any one so altered.”

“What is it that’s the matter with her?”

“I don’t know,” answered Dan. “I wish I did know. Sam tells me Tamlyn does not know. I’m afraid he thinks it is the break-up of old age. I should be glad, though, if she did not patronize that fellow Collinson so much.”

“Every one seems to patronize him.”

“Or to let him patronize them,” corrected Dan. “I can’t like the fellow. He takes too much upon himself.”

“He seems popular. Quite the fashion.”

“Yes, he is that. Since he came here, three or four months ago, the women have been running after him. Do you like him, Johnny Ludlow?” abruptly added Dan.

“I hardly know whether I do or not: I’ve not seen much of him,” was my answer. “As a rule, I don’t care for those people who take much upon themselves. The truth is, Dan,” I laughed jokingly, “you think Collinson shows too much attention to Mina Knox.”

Dan walked on for a few moments in silence. “I am not much afraid of that,” he presently said. “It is the fellow himself I don’t like.”

“And you do like Mina?”

“Well—yes; I do. If Mina and I were older and my means justified it, I would make her my wife to-morrow—I don’t mind telling you so much. And if the man is after her, it is for the sake of her money, mind, not for herself. I’m sure of it. I can see.”

“I thought Collinson had plenty of money of his own.”

“So he has, I believe. But money never comes amiss to an extravagant and idle man; and I think that Mina’s money makes her attraction in Collinson’s eyes. I wish with all my heart she had never had it left her!” continued Dan, energetically. “What did Mina want with seven thousand pounds?”

“I dare say you would not object to it, with herself.”

“I’d as soon not have it. I hope I shall make my way in my profession, and make it well, and I would as soon take Mina without money as with it. I’m sure her mother might have it and welcome, for me! She is always hankering after it.”

“How do you know she is?”

“We do her business at old Belford’s, and she gets talking about the money to him, making no scruple of openly wishing it was hers. She bothers Dr. Knox, who is Mina’s trustee, to lend her some of it. As if Knox would!—she might just as well go and bother the moon. No! But for that confounded seven thousand pounds Collinson would let Mina alone.”

I shook my head. He could not know it. Mina was very pretty. Dan saw my incredulity.

“I will tell you why I judge so,” he resumed, dropping his voice to a lower key. “Unless I am very much mistaken, Collinson likes some one else—and that’s Madame St. Vincent. Sam thinks so too.”

It was more than I thought. They were cool to one another.

“But we have seen them when no one else was by,” contended Dan: “when he and she were talking together alone. And I can tell you that there was an expression on his face, an anxiousness, an eagerness—I hardly know how to word it—that it never wore for Mina. Collinson’s love is given to madame. Rely upon that.”

“Then why should he not declare it?”

“Ah, I don’t know. There may be various reasons. Her poverty perhaps—for she has nothing but the salary Lady Jenkins pays her. Or, he may not care to marry one who is only a companion: they say he is of good family himself. Another reason, and possibly the most weighty one, may be, that madame does not like him.”

“I don’t think she does like him.”

“I am sure she does not. She gives him angry looks, and she turns away from him with ill-disguised coldness. And so, that’s about how the state of affairs lies up there,” concluded Dan, shaking hands with me as we reached the door of his lodgings. “Captain Collinson’s love is given to Madame St. Vincent, on the one hand, and to Mina’s money on the other; and I think he is in a pretty puzzle which of the two to choose. Good-night, Johnny Ludlow. Be sure to remember this is only between ourselves.”

II.

A week or so passed on. Janet was up to her eyes in preparations, expecting a visitor. And the visitor was no other than Miss Cattledon—if you have not forgotten her. Being fearfully particular in all ways, and given to fault-finding, as poor Janet only too well remembered, of course it was necessary to have things in apple-pie order.

“I should never hear the last of it as long as Aunt Jemima stayed, if so much as a speck of dust was in any of the rooms, or a chair out of place,” said Janet to me laughingly, as she and the maids dusted and scrubbed away.

“What’s she coming for, Janet?”

“She invited herself,” replied Janet: “and indeed we shall be glad to see her. Miss Deveen is going to visit some friends in Devonshire, and Aunt Jemima takes the opportunity of coming here the while. I am sorry Arnold is so busy just now. He will not have much time to give to her—and she likes attention.”

The cause of Dr. Knox’s increased occupation, was Mr. Tamlyn’s illness. For the past few days he had had feverish symptoms, and did not go out. Few medical men would have found the indisposition sufficiently grave to remain at home; but Mr. Tamlyn was an exception. He gave in at the least thing now: and it was nothing at all unusual for Arnold Knox to find all the patients thrown on his own hands.

Amongst the patients so thrown this time was Lady Jenkins. She had caught cold at that soirÉe I have just told of. Going to the door in her old-fashioned, hospitable way, to speed the departure of the last guests, she had stayed there in the draught, talking, and began at once to sneeze and cough.

“There!” cried Madame St. Vincent, when my lady got back again, “you have gone and caught a chill.”

“I think I have,” admitted Lady Jenkins. “I’ll send for Tamlyn in the morning.”

“Oh, my dear Lady Jenkins, we shall not want Tamlyn,” dissented madame. “I’ll take care of you myself, and have you well in no time.”

But Lady Jenkins, though very much swayed by her kind companion, who was ever anxious for her, chose to have up Mr. Tamlyn, and sent him a private message herself.

He went up at once—evidently taking madame by surprise—and saw his patient. The cold, being promptly treated, turned out to be a mere nothing, though Madame St. Vincent insisted on keeping the sufferer some days in bed. By the time Mr. Tamlyn was ill, she was well again, and there was not much necessity for Dr. Knox to take her: at least, on the score of her cold. But he did it.

One afternoon, when he was going up there late, he asked me if I would like the drive. And, while he paid his visit to Lady Jenkins, I went in to Rose Villa. It was a fine, warm afternoon, almost like summer, and Mrs. Knox and the girls were sitting in the garden. Dicky was there also. Dicky was generally at school from eight o’clock till six, but this was a half-holiday. Dicky, eleven years old now, but very little for his age, was more troublesome than ever. Just now he was at open war with his two younger sisters and Miss Mack, the governess, who had gone indoors to escape him.

Leaning against the trunk of a tree, as he talked to Mrs. Knox, Mina, and Charlotte, stood Captain Collinson, the rays of the sun, now drawing westward, shining full upon him, bringing out the purple gloss of his hair, whiskers, beard, and moustache deeper than usual. Captain Collinson incautiously made much of Dicky, had told him attractive stories of the glories of war, and promised him a commission when he should be old enough. The result was, that Dicky had been living in the seventh heaven, had bought himself a tin sword, and wore it strapped to his waist, dangling beneath his jacket. Dicky, wild to be a soldier, worshipped Captain Collinson as the prince of heroes, and followed him about like a shadow. An inkling of this ambition of Dicky’s, and of Captain Collinson’s promise, had only reached Mrs. Knox’s ears this very afternoon. It was a ridiculous promise of course, worth nothing, but Mrs. Knox took it up seriously.

“A commission for Dicky!—get Dicky a commission!” she exclaimed in a flutter that set her bracelets jangling, just as I arrived on the scene. “Why, what can you mean, Captain Collinson? Do you think I would have Dicky made into a soldier—to be shot at? Never. He is my only son. How can you put such ideas into his head?”

“Don’t mind her,” cried Dicky, shaking the captain’s coat-tails. “I say, captain, don’t you mind her.”

Captain Collinson turned to young Dicky, and gave him a reassuring wink. Upon which, Dicky went strutting over the grass-plat, brandishing his sword. I shook hands with Mrs. Knox and the girls, and, turning to salute the captain, found him gone.

“You have frightened him away, Johnny Ludlow,” cried Charlotte: but she spoke in jest.

“He was already going,” said Mina. “He told me he had an engagement.”

“And a good thing too,” spoke Mrs. Knox, crossly. “Fancy his giving dangerous notions to Dicky!”

Dicky had just discovered our loss. He came shrieking back to know where the captain was. Gone away for good, his mother told him. Upon which young Dicky plunged into a fit of passion and kicking.

“Do you know how Lady Jenkins is to-day?” I asked of Charlotte, when Dicky’s noise had been appeased by a promise of cold apple-pudding for tea.

“Not so well.”

“Not so well! I had thought of her as being much better.”

“I don’t think her so,” continued Charlotte. “Madame St. Vincent told Mina this morning that she was all right; but when I went in just now she was in bed and could hardly answer me.”

“Is her cold worse?”

“No; I think that is gone, or nearly so. She seemed dazed—stupid, more so than usual.”

“I certainly never saw any one alter so greatly as Lady Jenkins has altered in the last few months,” spoke Mrs. Knox. “She is not like the same woman.”

“I’m sure I wish we had never gone that French journey!” said Mina. “She has never been well since. Oh, here’s Arnold!”

Dr. Knox had come straight into the garden from Jenkins House. Dicky rushed up to besiege his arms and legs; but, as Dicky was in a state of flour—which he had just put upon himself in the kitchen, or had had put upon him by the maids—the doctor ordered him to keep at arm’s-length; and the doctor was the only person who could make himself obeyed by Dicky.

“You have been to see Lady Jenkins, Arnold,” said his step-mother. “How is she?”

“Nothing much to boast of,” lightly answered Dr. Knox. “Johnny, are you ready?”

“I am going to be a soldier, Arnold,” put in Dicky, dancing a kind of war-dance round him. “Captain Collinson is going to make me a captain like himself.”

“All right,” said Arnold. “You must grow a little bigger first.”

“And, Arnold, the captain says—— Oh, my!” broke off Dicky, “what’s this? What have I found?”

The boy stooped to pick up something glittering that had caught his eye. It proved to be a curiously-shaped gold watch-key, with a small compass in it. Mina and Lotty both called out that it was Captain Collinson’s, and must have dropped from his chain during a recent romp with Dicky.

“I’ll take it in to him at Lady Jenkins’s,” said Dicky.

“You will do nothing of the sort, sir,” corrected his mother, taking the key from him: she had been thoroughly put out by the suggestion of the “commission.”

“Should you chance to see the captain when you go out,” she added to me, “tell him his watch-key is here.”

The phaeton waited outside. It was the oldest thing I ever saw in regard to fashion, and might have been in the firm hundreds of years. Its hood could be screwed up and down at will; just as the perch behind, where Thomas, the groom, generally sat, could be closed or opened. I asked Dr. Knox whether it had been built later than the year One.

“Just a little, I suppose,” he answered, smiling. “This vehicle was Dockett’s special aversion. He christened it the ‘conveyance,’ and we have mostly called it so since.”

We were about to step into it, when Madame St. Vincent came tripping out of the gate up above. Dr. Knox met her.

“I was sorry not to have been in the way when you left, doctor,” she said to him in a tone of apology: “I had gone to get the jelly for Lady Jenkins. Do tell me what you think of her?”

“She does not appear very lively,” he answered; “but I can’t find out that she is in any pain.”

“I wish she would get better!—she does give me so much concern,” warmly spoke madame. “Not that I think her seriously ill, myself. I’m sure I do everything for her that I possibly can.”

“Yes, yes, my dear lady, you cannot do more than you do,” replied Arnold. “I will be up in better time to-morrow.”

“Is Captain Collinson here?” I stayed behind Dr. Knox to ask.

“Captain Collinson here!” returned Madame St. Vincent, tartly, as if the question offended her. “No, he is not. What should bring Captain Collinson here?”

“I thought he might have called in upon leaving Mrs. Knox’s. I only wished to tell him that he dropped his watch-key next door. It was found on the grass.”

“I don’t know anything of his movements,” coldly remarked madame. And as I ran back to Dr. Knox, I remembered what Dan Jenkins had said—that she did not like the captain. And I felt Dan was right.

Dr. Knox drove home in silence, I sitting beside him, and Thomas in the perch. He looked very grave, like a man preoccupied. In passing the railway-station, I made some remark about Miss Cattledon, who was coming by the train then on its way; but he did not appear to hear me.

Sam Jenkins ran out as we drew up at Mr. Tamlyn’s gate. An urgent message had come for Dr. Knox: some one taken ill at Cooper’s—at the other end of the town.

“Mr. Tamlyn thinks you had better go straight on there at once, sir,” said Sam.

“I suppose I must,” replied the doctor. “It is awkward, though”—pulling out his watch. “Miss Cattledon will be due presently and Janet wanted me to meet her,” he added to me. “Would you do it, Johnny?”

“What—meet Miss Cattledon? Oh yes, certainly.”

The conveyance drove on, with the doctor and Thomas. I went indoors with Sam. Janet said I could meet her aunt just as well as Arnold, as I knew her. The brougham was brought round to the gate by the coachman, Wall, and I went away in it.

Smoothly and quietly glided in the train, and out of a first-class carriage stepped Miss Cattledon, thin and prim and upright as ever.

“Dear me! is that you, Johnny Ludlow?” was her greeting to me when I stepped up and spoke to her; and her tone was all vinegar. “What do you do here?”

“I came to meet you. Did you not know I was staying at Lefford?”

“I knew that. But why should they send you to meet me?”

“Dr. Knox was coming himself, but he has just been called out to a patient. How much luggage have you, Miss Cattledon?”

“Never you mind how much, Johnny Ludlow: my luggage does not concern you.”

“But cannot I save you the trouble of looking after it? If you will get into the brougham, I will see to the luggage and bring it on in a fly, if it’s too much to go on the box with Wall.”

“You mean well, Johnny Ludlow, I dare say; but I always see to my luggage myself. I should have lost it times and again, if I did not.”

She went pushing about amongst the porters and the trucks, and secured the luggage. One not very large black box went up by Wall; a smaller inside with us. So we drove out of the station in state, luggage and all, Cattledon holding her head bolt upright.

“How is Janet, Johnny Ludlow?”

“Quite well, thank you.”

“And those two children of hers—are they very troublesome?”

“Indeed, no; they are the best little things you ever saw. I wanted to bring the boy with me to meet you, but Janet would not let me.”

“Um!” grunted Cattledon: “showed a little sense for once. What is that building?”

“That’s the Town Hall. I thought you knew Lefford, Miss Cattledon?”

“One cannot be expected to retain the buildings of a town in one’s head as if they were photographed there,” returned she in a sharp tone of reproof. Which shut me up.

“And, pray, how does that young woman continue to conduct herself?” she asked presently.

“What young woman?” I said, believing she must be irreverently alluding to Janet.

“Lettice Lane.”

Had she mentioned the name of some great Indian Begum I could not have been more surprised. That name brought back to memory all the old trouble connected with Miss Deveen’s emeralds, their loss and their finding: which, take it for all in all, was nothing short of a romance. But why did she question me about Lettice Lane. I asked her why.

“I asked it to be answered, young man,” was Cattledon’s grim retort.

“Yes, of course,” I said, with deprecation. “But how should I know anything about Lettice Lane?”

“If there’s one thing I hate more than another, Johnny Ludlow, it is shuffling. I ask you how that young woman is going on; and I request you to answer me.”

“Indeed, I would if I could. I don’t understand why you should ask me. Is Lettice Lane not living still with you—with Miss Deveen?”

Cattledon evidently thought I was shuffling, for she looked daggers at me. “Lettice Lane,” she said, “is with Janet Knox.”

“With Janet Knox! Oh dear, no, she is not.”

“Don’t you get into a habit of contradicting your elders, Johnny Ludlow. It is very unbecoming in a young man.”

“But—see here, Miss Cattledon. If Lettice were living with Janet, I must have seen her. I see the servants every day. I assure you Lettice is not one of them.”

She began to see that I was in earnest, and condescended to explain in her stiff way. “Janet came to town last May to spend a week with us,” she said. “Before that, Lettice Lane had been complaining of not feeling strong: I thought it was nothing but her restlessness; Miss Deveen and the doctor thought she wanted country air—that London did not agree with her. Janet was parting with her nurse at the time; she engaged Lettice to replace her, and brought her down to Lefford. Is the matter clear to you now, young man?”

“Quite so. But indeed, Miss Cattledon, Lettice is not with Janet now. The nurse is named Harriet, and she is not in the least like Lettice Lane.”

“Then Lettice Lane must have gone roving again—unless you are mistaken,” said Cattledon, severely. “Wanting country air, forsooth! Change was what she wanted.”

Handing over Miss Cattledon, when we arrived, to the care of Janet, who took her upstairs, and told me tea would be ready soon, I went into Mr. Tamlyn’s sitting-room. He was in the easy-chair before the fire, dozing, but opened his eyes at my entrance.

“Visitor come all right, Johnny?”

“Yes, sir; she is gone to take her cloaks off. Janet says tea is nearly ready.”

“I am quite ready for it,” he remarked, and shut his eyes again.

I took up a book I was reading, “Martin Chuzzlewit,” and sat down on the broad window-seat, legs up, to catch the now fading light. The folds of the crimson curtain lay between me and Mr. Tamlyn—and I only hoped Mrs. Gamp would not send me into convulsions and disturb him.

Presently Dr. Knox came in. He went up to the fire, and stood at the corner of the mantelpiece, his elbow on it, his back to me; and old Tamlyn woke up.

“Well,” began he, “what was the matter at Cooper’s, Arnold?”

“Eldest boy fell off a ladder and broke his arm. It is only a simple fracture.”

“Been very busy to-day, Arnold?”

“Pretty well.”

“Hope I shall be out again in a day or two. How did you find Lady Jenkins?”

“Not at all to my satisfaction. She was in bed, and—and in fact seemed hardly to know me.”

Tamlyn said nothing to this, and a silence ensued. Dr. Knox broke it. He turned his eyes from the fire on which they had been fixed, and looked full at his partner.

“Has it ever struck you that there’s not quite fair play going on up there?” he asked in a low tone.

“Up where?”

“With Lady Jenkins.”

“How do you mean, Arnold?”

“That something is being given to her?”

Tamlyn sat upright in his chair, pushed back his scanty hair, and stared at Dr. Knox.

“What do you mean, Knox? What do you suspect?”

“That she is being habitually drugged; gradually, slowly——”

“Merciful goodness!” interrupted Tamlyn, rising to his feet in excitement. “Do you mean slowly poisoned?”

“Hush!—I hear Janet,” cried Dr. Knox.