Before the door of one of the supremely respectable and aristocratic but somewhat gloomy-looking houses in Cavendish Square, whose mauve plate-glass windows and link-extinguishers are like fossils of a past era of civilisation, three riding horses were being walked up and down, two with side-saddles and one for a gentleman. They were taken aside as a four-wheel drove up, while a female voice exclaimed—

“Ah! we are just it time!”

Cards and a note were sent in with a request to see Miss Menella.

Word came back that Miss Menella was just going out riding; but on the return of a message that the visitors came from Mrs. Brownlow on important business, they were taken up-stairs to an ante-room.

They were three—Mr. Wakefield and Mr. Gould, and, to the great discontentment of the former, Mrs. Gould likewise. Fain would he have shaken her off; but as she truly said, who could deprive her of her rights as kinswoman, and wife to the young lady’s guardian?

After they had waited a few moments in the somewhat dingy surroundings of a house seldom used by its proper owners, Elvira entered in plumed hat and habit, a slender and exquisite little figure, but with a haughty twitch in her slim waist, superb indifference in the air of her little head, and a grasp of her coral-handled whip as if it were a defensive weapon, when Lisette flew up to offer an embrace with—

“Joy, joy, my dear child! Remember, I was the first to give you a hint.”

“Good morning,” said Elvira, with a little bend of her head, presenting to each the shapely tip of a gauntleted hand, but ignoring her uncle and aunt as far as was possible. “Is there anything that need detain me, Mr. Wakefield? I am just going out with Miss Evelyn and Lord Fordham, and I cannot keep them waiting.”

“Ah! it is you that will have to be waited for now, my sweet one,” began Mrs. Gould.

“Here is a note from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mr. Wakefield, holding it to Elvira, who looked like anything but a sweet one. “I imagine it is to prepare you for the important disclosure I have to make.”

A hot colour mounted in the fair cheek. Elvira tore open the letter and read—

“MY DEAR CHILD,—I can only ask your pardon for the unconscious wrong which I have so long been doing to you, and which shall be repaired as soon as the processes of the law render it possible for us to change places.

“Your ever loving,

“MOTHER CAREY.”

“What does it all mean?” cried the bewildered girl.

“It means,” said the lawyer, “that Mrs. Brownlow has discovered a will of the late Mr. Barnes more recent than that under which she inherited, naming you, Miss Elvira Menella, as the sole inheritrix.”

“My dear child, let me be the first to congratulate you on your recovery of your rights,” said Mrs. Gould, again proffering an embrace, but again the whip was interposed, while Elvira, with her eyes fixed on Mr. Wakefield, asked “What?” so that he had to repeat the explanation.

“Then does it all belong to me?” she asked.

“Eventually it will, Miss Menella. You are sole heiress to your great uncle, though you cannot enter into possession till certain needful forms of law are gone through. Mrs. Brownlow offers no obstruction, but they cannot be rapid.”

“All mine!” repeated Elvira, with childish exultation. “What fun! I must go and tell Sydney Evelyn.”

“A few minutes more, Miss Menella,” said Mr. Wakefield. “You ought to hear the terms of the will.”

And he read it to her.

“I thought you told me it was to be mine. This is all you and uncle George.”

“As your trustees.”

“Oh, to manage as the Colonel does. You will give me all the money I ask you for. I want some pearls, and I must have that duck of a little Arab. Uncle George, how soon can I have it?”

“We must go through the Probate Court,” he began, but his wife interrupted—

“Ways and means will be forthcoming, my dear, though for my part I think it would be much better taste in Mrs. Brownlow to put you in possession at once.”

“Mr. Wakefield explained, my dear,” said her husband, “that, much as Mrs. Brownlow wishes to do so, she cannot; she has no power. It is her trustees.”

“Oh yes, I know every excuse will be found for retaining the property as long as possible,” said the lady.

“Then I shall have to wait ever so long,” said the young lady. “And I do so want the Arab. It is a real love, and Allen would say so.”

“I have another letter for you,” said Mr. Wakefield, on hearing that name. “We will leave it with you. If you wish for further information, I would call immediately on receiving a line at my office.”

Just then a message was brought from Mrs. Evelyn inviting Miss Menella’s friends to stay to luncheon. It incited Elvira, who knew neither awe nor manners, to run across the great drawing-room, leaving the doors open behind her, to the little morning-room, where sat Mrs. Evelyn, with Sydney, in her habit standing by the mantelpiece.

“Oh, Mrs. Evelyn,” Elvira began, “it is Mr. Wakefield and my uncle and his wife. They have come to say it is all mine; Uncle Barnes left it all to me.”

“So I hear from Mrs. Brownlow,” said Mrs. Evelyn gravely.

“Oh, Elfie, I am so sorry for you. Don’t you hate it?” cried Sydney.

“Oh, but it is such fun! I can do everything I please,” said the heiress.

“Yes, that’s the best part,” said Sydney. “I do envy you the day when you give it all back to Allen.”

That reminded Elvira to open the note, and as she read it her great eyes grew round.

“SWEETEST AND DEAREST,—How I have always loved, and always shall love you, you know full well. But these altered circumstances bring about what you have so often playfully wished. Say the word and you are free, no longer bound to me by anything that has passed between us, though the very fibres of my heart and life are as much as ever entwined about you. Honour bids my dissolution of our engagement, and I await your answer, though nothing can ever make me other than

“Your wholly devoted,

“ALLEN.”

Mrs. Evelyn had been prepared by a letter from her friend for what was now taking place; Mr. Wakefield had likewise known the main purport of Allen’s note, and had allowed that Mr. Brownlow could not as a gentleman do otherwise than release the young lady; though he fully believed that it would be only as a matter of form, and that Elvira would not hear of breaking off. He had in fact spent much eloquence in persuading Mrs. Brownlow to continue to take the charge of the heiress during the three years before her majority. Begun in generous affection by Allen long ago, the engagement seemed to the lawyer, as well as to others, an almost providential means of at least partial restitution.

He had meant Elvira to read her letter alone, but she had opened it before the two ladies, and her first exclamation was a startled, incredulous—

“Ha! What’s this? He says our engagement is dissolved.”

“He is of course bound to set you free, my dear,” said Mrs. Evelyn, “but it only depends on yourself.”

“Oh! and I shall tease him well first,” cried Elvira, her face lighting up with fun and mischief. “He was so tiresome and did bother so! Now I shall have my swing! Oh, what fun! I won’t let him worry me again just yet, I can tell him!”

“You don’t seem to consider,” began Sydney,—but Mrs. Gould took this moment for advancing.

From the whole length of the large drawing-room the trio had been spectators, not quite auditors, though perhaps enough to perceive what line the Evelyns were taking.

So Mrs. Gould advanced into the drawing-room; Mrs. Evelyn came forward to assume the duties of hostess; and Sydney turned and ran away so precipitately that she shut the door on the trailing skirt of her habit and had to open it again to release herself.

Mr. Wakefield hoped the young ladies would pardon him for having spoilt their ride, and Elvira was going off to change her dress, when, to his dismay, Mrs. Evelyn desired her to take her aunt to her room to prepare for luncheon. He had seen enough of Mrs. Gould to know that this was a most unlucky measure of courtesy on good simple Mrs. Evelyn’s part, but of course he could do nothing to prevent it, and had to remain with Mr. Gould, both speaking in the strongest manner of Mrs. Brownlow’s uprightness and bravery in meeting this sudden change. Mr. Wakefield said he hoped to prevail on her to retain the charge of the young lady for the present, and Mr. Gould assented that she could not be in better hands. Then Mrs. Evelyn (by way of doing anything for her friend) undertook to make Elvira welcome as long as it might be convenient, and was warmly thanked. She further ascertained that the missing witness had been traced; and that the most probable course of action would be that there would be an amicable suit in the Probate Court and then another of ejectment. Until these were over, things would remain in their present state for how many weeks or months would depend upon the Law Courts, since Mrs. Brownlow’s trustees would be legally holders of the property until the decision was given against them, and Miss Menella would be as entirely dependent on her bounty as she had been all these years. Meanwhile, as Mrs. Brownlow had no inclination to come to London and exhibit herself as a disinherited heroine, Mr. Wakefield and the Colonel strongly advised her remaining on at Belforest.

All this, Mrs. Evelyn had been anxious to understand, and thus was more glad of the delay of Elvira and her aunt up-stairs than she would have been, if she could ever have guessed what work a designing, flattering tongue could make with a vain, frivolous, selfish brain, with the same essential strain of vulgarity and worldliness.

Still, Elvira was chiefly shallow and selfish, and all her affection and confidence naturally belonged to her home of the last eight years. She was bewildered, perhaps a little intoxicated at the sense of riches, but was really quite ready to lean as much as ever upon her natural friends and protectors.

However, Lisette’s congratulations and exultation rang pleasantly upon her ear, and she listened and talked freely, asking questions and rejoicing.

Now Mrs. Gould, to do her justice, measured others by herself, and really and truly believed that only accident had disconcerted a plan for concealing the will till Elvira should have been safely married to Allen Brownlow, and that thus it was the fixed purpose of the family to keep her and her fortune in their hands, a purpose which every instinct bade Mrs. Lisette Gould to traverse and overthrow, if only because she hated such artfulness and meanness. Unfortunately, too, as she had been a governess, and her father had been a Union doctor, she could put herself forward as something above a farmer’s wife, indeed “quite as good as Mrs. Brownlow.”

All Mrs. Evelyn’s civility had not redeemed her from the imputation of being “high,” and Elvira was quite ready to call hers a very dull house. In truth, there was only moderate gaiety, and no fastness. The ruling interests were religious and political questions, as befitted Fordham’s maiden session, the society was quietly high-bred, and intelligent, and there was much attention to health; for, strong as Sydney was, her mother would have dreaded the full whirl of the season as much for her body as for her mind.

At all this the frivolous, idle little soul chafed and fretted, aware that the circle was not a fashionable one, eager for far more diversion and less restraint, and longing to join the party in Hyde Corner, where she could always make Allen do what she pleased.

With the obtuseness of an unobservant, self-occupied mind, she was taken by surprise when Mrs. Gould said that Mrs. Brownlow was not coming to town, adding, “It would be very unbecoming in her, though of course she will hold on at Belforest as long as there is any quibble of the law.”

“Oh, I don’t want to lose the season; she promised me!”

Then Mrs. Gould made a great stroke.

“My dear, you could not return to her. Not when the young man has just broken with you. You would have more proper pride.”

“Poor Allen!” said Elvira. “If he would only let me alone, to have my fun like other girls.”

“You see he could not afford to let you gratify your youthful spirits. Too much was at stake, and it is most providential that things had gone no further, and that your own good sense has preserved you to adorn a much higher sphere.”

“Allen could be made something,” said Elvira, “I know, for he told me he could get himself made a baronet. He always does as I tell him. Will they be very poor, Lisette?”

“Oh no, my dear, generous child, Mrs. Brownlow was quite as well provided for as she had any right to expect. You need have no anxieties on that score.”

To Elvira, the change from River Hollow to the Pagoda had been from rustic to gentle life, and thus this reply sounded plausible enough to silence a not much awakened compassion, but she still said, “Why can’t I go home? I’ve nowhere else to go. I could not stay at the Farm,” she added in her usual uncomplimentary style.

“No, my dear, I should not think of it. An establishment must be formed, but in the meantime, it would be quite beneath you to return to Mrs. Brownlow, again to become the prey of underground machinations. Besides, how awkward it would be while the lawsuits are going on. Impossible! No my dear, you must only return to Belforest in a triumphal procession. Surely there must be a competition for my lovely child among more congenial friends.”

“Well,” said Elvira, “there were the Folliots. We met them at Nice, and Lady Flora did ask me the other day, but Mrs. Brownlow does not like them, and Allen says they are not good form.”

“Ah! I knew you could not want for friends. You are not bound by those who want to keep you to themselves for reasons of their own.”

Thus before Elvira brought her aunt down stairs, enough had been done to make her eager to be with one who would discuss her future splendour rather than deplore the change to her benefactor, and thus she readily accepted a proposal she would naturally have scouted, to go out driving with Mrs. Gould. She came back in a mood of exulting folly, and being far too shallow and loquacious to conceal anything, she related in full all Mrs. Gould’s insinuations, which, to do her justice, the poor child did not really understand. But Sydney did, and was furious at the ingratitude which could seem almost flattered. Mrs. Evelyn found the two girls in a state of hot reproach and recrimination, and cut the matter short by treating them as if they were little children, and ordering them both off to their rooms to dress for dinner.

Elvira went away sobbing, and saying that nobody cared for her; everybody was wrapped up in the Brownlows, who had been enjoying what was hers ever so long.

And Sydney presently burst into her mother’s room to pour out her disgust and indignation against the heartless, ungrateful, intolerable—

“Only foolish, my dear, and left all day in the hands of a flattering, designing woman.”

“To let such things be said. Mamma, did you hear—?”

“I had rather not hear, Sydney; and I desire you will not repeat them to any one. Be careful, if you talk to Jock to-night. To repeat words spoken in her present mood might do exceeding mischief.”

“She speaks as if she meant to cast them all off—Allen and all.”

“Very possibly she may see things differently when she wakes to-morrow. But Sydney, while she is here, the whole subject must be avoided. It would not be acting fairly to use any influence in favour of our friends.”

“Don’t you mean to speak to her, mamma?”

“If she consults me, of course I shall tell her what I think of the matter, but I shall not force my advice on her, or give these Goulds occasion to say that I am playing into Mrs. Brownlow’s hands.”

They were going to an evening party, and Lucas and Cecil came to dinner to go with them. Cecil looked grave and gloomy, but Jock rattled away so merrily that Sydney began to wonder whether all this were a dream, or whether he were still unaware of the impending misfortune.

But Jock only waited for the friendly cover of a grand piece of instrumental music to ask Mrs. Evelyn if she had heard from his mother, and she was very glad to go into details with him, while he was infinitely relieved that the silence was over, and he could discuss the matter with his friends.

“Tell me truly, Jock, will she be comfortably off?”

“Very fairly. Yes, indeed. My father’s savings were absolutely left to her, and have been accumulating all this time, and they will be a very fair maintenance for her and Babie.”

“There is no danger of her having to pay the mesne profits?”

“No, certainly not, as it stands. Mr. Wakefield says that cannot happen. Then the old house in Bloomsbury, where we were all born, is our own, and she likes the notion of returning thither. Mrs. Evelyn, after all you and Sir James have done for me, what should you think of my giving it up, and taking to the pestle and mortar?”

“My dear Lucas!” Then after a moment’s reflection, “I suppose it would be folly to think of going on as you are?”

“Raving insanity,” said Jock, “and this notion really does seem to please my mother.”

“Is it not just intolerable to hear him?” said Cecil, who had made his way to them.

“‘What is bred in the bone—‘” said Jock. “What’s that? Chopin? Sydney, will you condescend to the apothecary’s boy?”

As he led her to the dancing-room, she asked, “You can’t really mean this, Jock. Cecil is breaking his heart about it.”

“There are worse trades.”

“But it is such a cruel pity!”

“What? The execution I shall make,” he said lightly.

“For shame, Jock!”

But he went on teasing her, because their hearts were so very full. “‘Tis just the choice between various means of slaughter.”

“Don’t!” she exclaimed. “Something can be done to prevent your throwing yourself away. Why can’t you exchange?”

“It is too late to get into any corps where I should not be an expense to my mother,” said Jock, regretting his decision a good deal more when he found how she regarded it.

“Well, sacrifice is something!” sighed Sydney.

Jock defied strange feelings by a laugh and the reply, “Equal to the finest thing in the ‘Traveller’s Joy,’ and that was the knight who let the hyena eat up his hand that his lady might finish her rosary undisturbed.”

“It is as bad—or as good—to let the hyena eat up your sword hand as to cut yourself off from all that is great and noble—all we used to think you would do.”

So spoke Sydney Evelyn in her girlish prejudice, and the prospects that had recently seemed to Lucas so fair and kindly, suddenly clouded over and became dull, gloomy, and despicable. She felt as if she were saving him from becoming a deserter as she went on—

“I am sure Babie must be shocked!”

“I don’t know whether Babie has heard. She has serious thoughts of coming out as a lady-help, editing the ‘Traveller’s Joy’ as a popular magazine, giving lessons in Greek, or painting the crack picture in the Royal Academy. In fact, she would rather prefer to have the whole family on her hands.”

“It is all the spirit of self-sacrifice,” said Sydney; “but oh, Lucas, let it be any sacrifice but that of your sword! Think how we should all feel if there was a great glorious war, and you only a poor creature of a civilian, instead of getting—as I know you would—lots of medals and Victoria Crosses, and knighthood—real knighthood! Oh, Jock, think of that! When your mother thinks of that, she can’t want you to make any such mistaken sacrifice to her. Live on a crust if you like, but don’t—don’t give up your sword.”

“This is coming it strong,” muttered Jock. “I did not think anyone cared so much.”

“Of course I care.”

The words were swept off as they whirled together into the dance, where the clasping hands and flying feet had in them a strange impulse, half tenderness, half exultation, as each felt an importance to the other unknown before. Childishness was not exactly left behind in it, but a different stage was reached. Sydney felt herself to have done a noble work, and gloried in watching till her hero should have achieved greatness on a crust a day, and Jock was equally touched and elated at the intimation that his doings were so much to her.

Friendship sang the same note. Cecil, honest lad, had never more than the average amount either of brains or industry, and despised medicines to the full as much as did his sister. Abhorring equally the toil and the degradation, he deemed it a duty to prevent such a fall, and put his hope in his uncle. Nay, if his mother had not assured him that it was too late, he would have gone off at once to seek Sir James at his club.

Lord Fordham had been in bed long before the others returned, but in the morning a twisted note was handed to his mother, briefly saying he was running down to see how it was with them at Belforest.

When a station fly was seen drawing to the door, Allen, who was drearily leaning over the stone wall of the terrace, much disorganised by having received no answer to his letter, instantly jumped to the conclusion that Elvira had come home, sprang to the door, and when he only saw the tall figure emerge, he concluded that something dreadful had happened, grasped Fordham’s hand, and demanded what it was.

It fell flat that she had last been seen full-dressed going off to a party.

“Then, if there’s nothing, what brought you here? I mean,” said poor Allen, catching up his courtesy, “I’m afraid there’s nothing you or any one else can do.”

“Can I see your mother?”

Allen turned him into the library and went off to find his mother, and instruct her to discover from “that stupid fellow” how Elvira was feeling it. When, after putting away the papers she was trying to arrange, Caroline went downstairs, she had no sooner opened the door than Barbara flew up to her, crying out—

“Oh, mother, tell him not!”

“Tell him what, my dear?” as the girl hung on her, and dragged her into the ante-room. “What is the matter?”

“If it is nonsense, he ought not to have made it so like earnest,” said Babie, all crimson, but quite gravely.

“You don’t mean—”

“Yes, mother.”

“How could he?” cried Caroline, in her first annoyance at such things beginning with her Babie.

“You’ll tell him, mother. You’ll not let him do it again?”

“Let me go, my child. I must speak to him and find out what it all means.”

Within the library she was met by Fordham.

“Have I done very wrong, Mrs. Brownlow? I could not help it.”

“I wish you had not.”

“I always meant to wait till she was older, and I grew stronger, but when all this came, I thought if we all belonged to one another it might be a help—”

“Very, very kind, but—”

“I know I was sudden and frightened her,” he continued; “but if she could—”

“You forget how young she is.”

“No, I don’t. I would not take her from you. We could all go on together.”

“All one family? Oh, you unpractised boy!”

“Have we not done so many winters? But I would wait, I meant to have waited, only I am afraid of dying without being able to provide for her. If she would have me, she would be left better off than my mother, and then it would be all right for you and Armie. What are you smiling at?”

“At your notions of rightness, my dear, kind Duke. I see how you mean it, but it will not do. Even if she had grown to care for you, it would not be right for me to give her to you for years to come.”

“May not I hope till then?”

She could not tell how sorry she should be to see in her little daughter any dawnings of an affection which would be a virtual condemnation to such a life as his mother’s had been.

“You don’t guess how I love her! She has been the bright light of my life ever since the Engelberg,—the one hope I have lived for!”

“My poor Duke!”

“Then do you quite mean to deny me all hope?”

“Hope must be according to your own impressions, my dear Fordham. Of course, if you are well, and still wishing it four or five years hence, it would be free to you to try again. More, I cannot say. No, don’t thank me, for I trust to your honour to make no demonstrations in the meantime, and not to consider yourself as bound.”

It was a relief that Armine here came in, attracted by a report of his friend’s arrival, and Mrs. Brownlow went in search of her daughter, to whom she was guided by a sonata played with very unnecessary violence.

“You need not murder Haydn any more, you little barbarian,” she said, with a hand on the child’s shoulder, and looking anxiously into the gloomy face. “I have settled him.”

Babie drew a long breath, and said—

“I’m glad! It was so horrid! You’ll not let him do it any more?”

“Then you decidedly would not like it?” returned her mother.

“Like it? Poor Duke! Mother! As if I could ever! A man that can’t sit in a draught, or get wet in his feet!” cried Babie, with the utmost scorn; and reading reproof as well as amused pity in her mother’s eyes, she added, “Of course, I am very sorry for him; but fancy being very sorry for one’s love!”

“I thought you liked wounded knights?”

“Wounded! Yes, but they’ve done something, and had glorious wounds. Now Duke—he is very good, and it is not his fault but his misfortune; but he is such a—such a muff!”

“That’s enough, my dear; I am quite content that my Infanta should wait for her hero. Though,” she added, almost to herself, “she is too childish to know the true worth of what she condemns.”

She felt this the more when Babie, who had coaxed the housekeeper into letting her begin a private school of cookery, started up, crying—

“I must go and see my orange biscuits taken out of the oven! I should like to send a taste to Sydney!”

Yes, Barbara was childish for nearly sixteen, and, as it struck her mother at the moment, rather wonderfully so considering her cleverness and romance. It was better for her that the softening should not come yet, but, mother as she was, Caroline’s sympathies could not but be at the moment with the warm-hearted, impulsive, generous young man, moved out of all his habitual valetudinarian habits by his affection, rather than with the light-hearted child, who spurned the love she did not comprehend, and despised his ill-health. Had the young generation no hearts? Oh no—no—it could not be so with her loving Barbara, and she ought to be thankful for the saving of pain and perplexity.

Poor Armine was not getting much comfort out of his friend, who was too much preoccupied to attend to what he was saying, and only mechanically assented at intervals to the proposition that it was an inscrutable dispensation that the will and the power should so seldom go together. He heard all Armine’s fallen castles about chapels, schools, curates, and sisters, as in a dream, really not knowing whether they were or were not to be. And with all his desire to be useful, he never perceived the one offer that would have been really valuable, namely, to carry off the boy out of sight of the scene of his disappointment.

Fordham was compelled to stay for an uncomfortable luncheon, when there were spasmodic jerks of talk about subjects of the day to keep up appearances before the servants, who flitted about in such an exasperating way that their mistress secretly rejoiced to think how soon she should be rid of the fine courier butler.

Just as the pony-carriage came round for Armine to drive his friend back to the station, the Colonel came in, and was an astonished spectator of the farewells.

“So that’s your young lord,” he said. “Poor lad! if our nobility is made of no tougher stuff, I would not give much for it. What brought him here?”

“Kindness—sympathy—” said Caroline, a little awkwardly.

“Much of that he showed,” said Allen, “just knowing nothing at all about anybody! No! If it were not so utterly ridiculous I should think he had come to make an offer to Babie:” and as his sister flew out of the room, “You don’t mean that he has, mother?”

“Pray, don’t speak of it to any one!” said Caroline. “I would not have it known for the world. It was a generous impulse, poor dear fellow; and Babie has no feeling for him at all.”

“Very lucky,” said the uncle. “He looks as if his life was not worth a year’s purchase. So you refused him? Quite right too. You are a sensible woman, Caroline, in the midst of this severe reverse!”