"That pleases me, Lydia, because I believe you. But such things are
better left unsaid. They seem to belong to the art of pleasing,
which you will perhaps soon be tempted to practise, because it seems
to ail young people easy, well paid, amiable, and a mark of good
breeding. In truth it is vulgar, cowardly, egotistical, and
insincere: a virtue in a shopman; a vice in a free woman. It is
better to leave genuine praise unspoken than to expose yourself to
the suspicion of flattery."

Shortly after this, at his desire, she spent a season in London, and
went into English polite society, which she found to be in the main
a temple for the worship of wealth and a market for the sale of
virgins. Having become familiar with both the cult and the trade
elsewhere, she found nothing to interest her except the English
manner of conducting them; and the novelty of this soon wore off.
She was also incommoded by her involuntary power of inspiring
affection in her own sex. Impulsive girls she could keep in awe; but
old women, notably two aunts who had never paid her any attention
during her childhood, now persecuted her with slavish fondness, and
tempted her by mingled entreaties and bribes to desert her father
and live with them for the remainder of their lives. Her reserve
fanned their longing to have her for a pet; and, to escape them, she
returned to the Continent with her father, and ceased to hold any
correspondence with London. Her aunts declared themselves deeply
hurt, and Lydia was held to have treated them very injudiciously;
but when they died, and their wills became public, it was found that
they had vied with one another in enriching her.

When she was twenty-five years old the first startling event of her
life took place. This was the death of her father at Avignon. No
endearments passed between them even on that occasion. She was
sitting opposite to him at the fireside one evening, reading aloud,
when he suddenly said, "My heart has stopped, Lydia. Good-bye!" and
immediately died. She had some difficulty in quelling the tumult
that arose when the bell was answered. The whole household felt
bound to be overwhelmed, and took it rather ill that she seemed
neither grateful to them nor disposed to imitate their behavior.

Carew's relatives agreed that he had made a most unbecoming will. It
was a brief document, dated five years before his death, and was to
the effect that he bequeathed to his dear daughter Lydia all he
possessed. He had, however, left her certain private instructions.
One of these, which excited great indignation in his family, was
that his body should be conveyed to Milan, and there cremated.
Having disposed of her father's remains as he had directed, she came
to set her affairs in order in England, where she inspired much
hopeless passion in the toilers in Lincoln's Inn Fields and Chancery
Lane, and agreeably surprised her solicitors by evincing a capacity
for business, and a patience with the law's delay, that seemed
incompatible with her age and sex. When all was arranged, and she
was once more able to enjoy perfect tranquillity, she returned to
Avignon, and there discharged her last duty to her father. This was
to open a letter she had found in his desk, inscribed by his hand:
"For Lydia. To be read by her at leisure when I and my affairs shall
be finally disposed of." The letter ran thus:

"MY DEAR LYDIA,--I belong to the great company of disappointed men.
But for you, I should now write myself down a failure like the rest.
It is only a few years since it first struck me that although I had
failed in many ambitions with which (having failed) I need not
trouble you now, I had achieved some success as a father. I had no
sooner made this discovery than it began to stick in my thoughts
that you could draw no other conclusion from the course of our life
together than that I have, with entire selfishness, used you
throughout as my mere amanuensis and clerk, and that you are under
no more obligation to me for your attainments than a slave is to his
master for the strength which enforced labor has given to his
muscles. Lest I should leave you suffering from so mischievous and
oppressive an influence as a sense of injustice, I now justify
myself to you.

"I have never asked you whether you remember your mother. Had you at
any time broached the subject, I should have spoken quite freely to
you on it; but as some wise instinct led you to avoid it, I was
content to let it rest until circumstances such as the present
should render further reserve unnecessary. If any regret at having
known so little of the woman who gave you birth troubles you, shake
it off without remorse. She was the most disagreeable person I ever
knew. I speak dispassionately. All my bitter personal feeling
against her is as dead while I write as it will be when you read. I
have even come to cherish tenderly certain of her characteristics
which you have inherited, so that I confidently say that I never,
since the perishing of the infatuation in which I married, felt more
kindly toward her than I do now. I made the best, and she the worst,
of our union for six years; and then we parted. I permitted her to
give what account of the separation she pleased, and allowed her
about five times as much money as she had any right to expect. By
these means I induced her to leave me in undisturbed possession of
you, whom I had already, as a measure of precaution, carried off to
Belgium. The reason why we never visited England during her lifetime
was that she could, and probably would, have made my previous
conduct and my hostility to popular religion an excuse for wresting
you from me. I need say no more of her, and am sorry it was
necessary to mention her at all.

"I will now tell you what induced me to secure you for myself. It
was not natural affection; I did not love you then, and I knew that
you would be a serious encumbrance to me. But, having brought you
into the world, and then broken through my engagements with your
mother, I felt bound to see that you should not suffer for my
mistake. Gladly would I have persuaded myself that she was (as the
gossips said) the fittest person to have charge of you; but I knew
better, and made up my mind to discharge my responsibility as well
as I could. In course of time you became useful to me; and, as you
know, I made use of you without scruple, but never without regard to
your own advantage. I always kept a secretary to do whatever I
considered mere copyist's work. Much as you did for me, I think I
may say with truth that I never imposed a task of absolutely no
educational value on you. I fear you found the hours you spent over
my money affairs very irksome; but I need not apologize for that
now: you must already know by experience how necessary a knowledge
of business is to the possessor of a large fortune.

"I did not think, when I undertook your education, that I was laying
the foundation of any comfort for myself. For a long time you were
only a good girl, and what ignorant people called a prodigy of
learning. In your circumstances a commonplace child might have been
both. I subsequently came to contemplate your existence with a
pleasure which I never derived from the contemplation of my own. I
have not succeeded, and shall not succeed in expressing the
affection I feel for you, or the triumph with which I find that what
I undertook as a distasteful and thankless duty has rescued my life
and labor from waste. My literary travail, seriously as it has
occupied us both, I now value only for the share it has had in
educating you; and you will be guilty of no disloyalty to me when
you come to see that though I sifted as much sand as most men, I
found no gold. I ask you to remember, then, that I did my duty to
you long before it became pleasurable or even hopeful. And, when you
are older and have learned from your mother's friends how I failed
in my duty to her, you will perhaps give me some credit for having
conciliated the world for your sake by abandoning habits and
acquaintances which, whatever others may have thought of them, did
much while they lasted to make life endurable to me.

"Although your future will not concern me, I often find myself
thinking of it. I fear you will soon find that the world has not yet
provided a place and a sphere of action for wise and well-instructed
women. In my younger days, when the companionship of my fellows was
a necessity to me, I voluntarily set aside my culture, relaxed my
principles, and acquired common tastes, in order to fit myself for
the society of the only men within my reach; for, if I had to live
among bears, I had rather be a bear than a man. Let me warn you
against this. Never attempt to accommodate yourself to the world by
self-degradation. Be patient; and you will enjoy frivolity all the
more because you are not frivolous: much as the world will respect
your knowledge all the more because of its own ignorance.

"Some day, I expect and hope, you will marry. You will then have an
opportunity of making an irremediable mistake, against the
possibility of which no advice of mine or subtlety of yours can
guard you. I think you will not easily find a man able to satisfy in
you that desire to be relieved of the responsibility of thinking out
and ordering our course of life that makes us each long for a guide
whom we can thoroughly trust. If you fail, remember that your
father, after suffering a bitter and complete disappointment in his
wife, yet came to regard his marriage as the happiest event in his
career. Let me remind you also, since you are so rich, that it would
he a great folly for you to be jealous of your own income, and to
limit your choice of a husband to those already too rich to marry
for money. No vulgar adventurer will be able to recommend himself to
you; and better men will be at least as much frightened as attracted
by your wealth. The only class against which I need warn you is that
to which I myself am supposed to belong. Never think that a man must
prove a suitable and satisfying friend for you merely because he has
read much criticism; that he must feel the influences of art as you
do because he knows and adopts the classification of names and
schools with which you are familiar; or that because he agrees with
your favorite authors he must necessarily interpret their words to
himself as you understand them. Beware of men who have read more
than they have worked, or who love to read better than to work.
Beware of painters, poets, musicians, and artists of all sorts,
except very great artists: beware even of them as husbands and
fathers. Self-satisfied workmen who have learned their business
well, whether they be chancellors of the exchequer or farmers, I
recommend to you as, on the whole, the most tolerable class of men I
have met.

"I shall make no further attempt to advise you. As fast as my
counsels rise to my mind follow reflections that convince me of
their futility.

"You may perhaps wonder why I never said to you what I have written
down here. I have tried to do so and failed. If I understand myself
aright, I have written these lines mainly to relieve a craving to
express my affection for you. The awkwardness which an
over-civilized man experiences in admitting that he is something
more than an educated stone prevented me from confusing you by
demonstrations of a kind I had never accustomed you to. Besides, I
wish this assurance of my love--my last word--to reach you when no
further commonplaces to blur the impressiveness of its simple truth
are possible.

"I know I have said too much; and I feel that I have not said
enough. But the writing of this letter has been a difficult task.
Practised as I am with my pen, I have never, even in my earliest
efforts, composed with such labor and sense of inadequacy----"

Here the manuscript broke off. The letter had never been finished.






CHAPTER II





In the month of May, seven years after the flight of the two boys
from Moncrief House, a lady sat in an island of shadow which was
made by a cedar-tree in the midst of a glittering green lawn. She
did well to avoid the sun, for her complexion was as delicately
tinted as mother-of-pearl. She was a small, graceful woman, with
sensitive lips and nostrils, green eyes, with quiet, unarched brows,
and ruddy gold hair, now shaded by a large, untrimmed straw hat. Her
dress of Indian muslin, with half-sleeves terminating at the elbows
in wide ruffles, hardly covered her shoulders, where it was
supplemented by a scarf through which a glimpse of her throat was
visible in a nest of soft Tourkaris lace. She was reading a little
ivory-bound volume--a miniature edition of the second part of
Goethe's "Faust."

As the afternoon wore on and the light mellowed, the lady dropped
her book and began to think and dream, unconscious of a prosaic
black object crossing the lawn towards her. This was a young
gentleman in a frock coat. He was dark, and had a long, grave face,
with a reserved expression, but not ill-looking.

"Going so soon, Lucian?" said the lady, looking up as he came into
the shadow.

Lucian looked at her wistfully. His name, as she uttered it, always
stirred him vaguely. He was fond of finding out the reasons of
things, and had long ago decided that this inward stir was due to
her fine pronunciation. His other intimates called him Looshn.

"Yes," he said. "I have arranged everything, and have come to give
an account of my stewardship, and to say good-bye."

He placed a garden-chair near her and sat down. She laid her hands
one on the other in her lap, and composed herself to listen.

"First," he said, "as to the Warren Lodge. It is let for a month
only; so you can allow Mrs. Goff to have it rent free in July if you
still wish to. I hope you will not act so unwisely."

She smiled, and said, "Who are the present tenants? I hear that they
object to the dairymaids and men crossing the elm vista."

"We must not complain of that. It was expressly stipulated when they
took the lodge that the vista should be kept private for them. I had
no idea at that time that you were coming to the castle, or I should
of course have declined such a condition."

"But we do keep it private for them; strangers are not admitted. Our
people pass and repass once a day on their way to and from the
dairy; that is all."

"It seems churlish, Lydia; but this, it appears, is a special
case--a young gentleman, who has come to recruit his health. He
needs daily exercise in the open air; but he cannot bear
observation, and he has only a single attendant with him. Under
these circumstances I agreed that they should have the sole use of
the elm vista. In fact, they are paying more rent than would be
reasonable without this privilege."

"I hope the young gentleman is not mad."

"I satisfied myself before I let the lodge to him that he would be a
proper tenant," said Lucian, with reproachful gravity. "He was
strongly recommended to me by Lord Worthington, whom I believe to be
a man of honor, notwithstanding his inveterate love of sport. As it
happens, I expressed to him the suspicion you have just suggested.
Worthington vouched for the tenant's sanity, and offered to take the
lodge in his own name and be personally responsible for the good
behavior of this young invalid, who has, I fancy, upset his nerves
by hard reading. Probably some college friend of Worthington's."

"Perhaps so. But I should rather expect a college friend of Lord
Worthington's to be a hard rider or drinker than a hard reader."

"You may be quite at ease, Lydia. I took Lord Worthington at his
word so far as to make the letting to him. I have never seen the
real tenant. But, though I do not even recollect his name, I will
venture to answer for him at second-hand."

"I am quite satisfied, Lucian; and I am greatly obliged to you. I
will give orders that no one shall go to the dairy by way of the
warren. It is natural that he should wish to be out of the world."

"The next point," resumed Lucian, "is more important, as it concerns
you personally. Miss Goff is willing to accept your offer. And a
most unsuitable companion she will be for you!"

"Why, Lucian?"

"On all accounts. She is younger than you, and therefore cannot
chaperone yon. She has received only an ordinary education, and her
experience of society is derived from local subscription balls. And,
as she is not unattractive, and is considered a beauty in
Wiltstoken, she is self-willed, and will probably take your
patronage in bad part."

"Is she more self-willed than I?"

"You are not self-willed, Lydia; except that you are deaf to
advice."

"You mean that I seldom follow it. And so you think I had better
employ a professional companion--a decayed gentlewoman--than save
this young girl from going out as a governess and beginning to decay
at twenty-three?"

"The business of getting a suitable companion, and the pleasure or
duty of relieving poor people, are two different things, Lydia."

"True, Lucian. When will Miss Goff call?"

"This evening. Mind; nothing is settled as yet. If you think better
of it on seeing her you have only to treat her as an ordinary
visitor and the subject will drop. For my own part, I prefer her
sister; but she will not leave Mrs. Goff, who has not yet recovered
from the shock of her husband's death."

Lydia looked reflectively at the little volume in her hand, and
seemed to think out the question of Miss Goff. Presently, with an
air of having made up her mind, she said, "Can you guess which of
Goethe's characters you remind me of when you try to be worldly-wise
for my sake?"

"When I try--What an extraordinary irrelevance! I have not read
Goethe lately. Mephistopheles, I suppose. But I did not mean to be
cynical."

"No; not Mephistopheles, but Wagner--with a difference. Wagner
taking Mephistopheles instead of Faust for his model." Seeing by his
face that he did not relish the comparison, she added, "I am paying
you a compliment. Wagner represents a very clever man."

"The saving clause is unnecessary," he said, somewhat sarcastically.
"I know your opinion of me quite well, Lydia."

She looked quickly at him. Detecting the concern in her glance, he
shook his head sadly, saying, "I must go now, Lydia. I leave you in
charge of the housekeeper until Miss Goff arrives."

She gave him her hand, and a dull glow came into his gray jaws as he
took it. Then he buttoned his coat and walked gravely away. As he
went, she watched the sun mirrored in his glossy hat, and drowned in
his respectable coat. She sighed, and took up Goethe again.

But after a little while she began to be tired of sitting still, and
she rose and wandered through the park for nearly an hour, trying to
find the places in which she had played in her childhood during a
visit to her late aunt. She recognized a great toppling Druid's
altar that had formerly reminded her of Mount Sinai threatening to
fall on the head of Christian in "The Pilgrim's Progress." Farther
on she saw and avoided a swamp in which she had once earned a
scolding from her nurse by filling her stockings with mud. Then she
found herself in a long avenue of green turf, running east and west,
and apparently endless. This seemed the most delightful of all her
possessions, and she had begun to plan a pavilion to build near it,
when she suddenly recollected that this must be the elm vista of
which the privacy was so stringently insisted upon, by her invalid
tenant at the Warren Lodge. She fled into the wood at once, and,
when she was safe there, laughed at the oddity of being a trespasser
in her own domain. She made a wide detour in order to avoid
intruding a second time; consequently, after walking for a quarter
of an hour, she lost herself. The trees seemed never ending; she
began to think she must possess a forest as well as a park. At last
she saw an opening. Hastening toward it, she came again into the
sunlight, and stopped, dazzled by an apparition which she at first
took to be a beautiful statue, but presently recognized, with a
strange glow of delight, as a living man.

To so mistake a gentleman exercising himself in the open air on a
nineteenth-century afternoon would, under ordinary circumstances,
imply incredible ignorance either of men or statues. But the
circumstances in Miss Carew's case were not ordinary; for the man
was clad in a jersey and knee-breeches of white material, and his
bare arms shone like those of a gladiator. His broad pectoral
muscles, in their white covering, were like slabs of marble. Even
his hair, short, crisp, and curly, seemed like burnished bronze in
the evening light. It came into Lydia's mind that she had disturbed
an antique god in his sylvan haunt. The fancy was only momentary;
for she perceived that there was a third person present; a man
impossible to associate with classic divinity. He looked like a well
to do groom, and was contemplating his companion much as a groom
might contemplate an exceptionally fine horse. He was the first to
see Lydia; and his expression as he did so plainly showed that he
regarded her as a most unwelcome intruder. The statue-man, following
his sinister look, saw her too, but with different feelings; for his
lips parted, his color rose, and he stared at her with undisguised
admiration and wonder. Lydia's first impulse was to turn and fly;
her next, to apologize for her presence. Finally she went away
quietly through the trees.

The moment she was out of their sight she increased her pace almost
to a run. The day was too warm for rapid movement, and she soon
stopped and listened. There were the usual woodland sounds; leaves
rustling, grasshoppers chirping, and birds singing; but not a human
voice or footstep. She began to think that the god-like figure was
only the Hermes of Praxiteles, suggested to her by Goethe's
classical Sabbat, and changed by a day-dream into the semblance of a
living reality. The groom must have been one of those incongruities
characteristic of dreams--probably a reminiscence of Lucian's
statement that the tenant of the Warren Lodge had a single male
attendant. It was impossible that this glorious vision of manly
strength and beauty could be substantially a student broken down by
excessive study. That irrational glow of delight, too, was one of
the absurdities of dreamland; otherwise she should have been ashamed
of it.

Lydia made her way back to the castle in some alarm as to the state
of her nerves, but dwelling on her vision with a pleasure that she
would not have ventured to indulge had it concerned a creature of
flesh and blood. Once or twice it recurred to her so vividly that
she asked herself whether it could have been real. But a little
reasoning convinced her that it must have been an hallucination.

"If you please, madam," said one of her staff of domestics, a native
of Wiltstoken, who stood in deep awe of the lady of the castle,
"Miss Goff is waiting for you in the drawing-room."

The drawing-room of the castle was a circular apartment, with a
dome-shaped ceiling broken into gilt ornaments resembling thick
bamboos, which projected vertically downward like stalagmites. The
heavy chandeliers were loaded with flattened brass balls, magnified
fac-similes of which crowned the uprights of the low, broad,
massively-framed chairs, which were covered in leather stamped with
Japanese dragon designs in copper-colored metal. Near the fireplace
was a great bronze bell of Chinese shape, mounted like a mortar on a
black wooden carriage for use as a coal-scuttle. The wall was
decorated with large gold crescents on a ground of light blue.

In this barbaric rotunda Miss Carew found awaiting her a young lady
of twenty-three, with a well-developed, resilient figure, and a
clear complexion, porcelain surfaced, and with a fine red in the
cheeks. The lofty pose of her head expressed an habitual sense of
her own consequence given her by the admiration of the youth of the
neighborhood, which was also, perhaps, the cause of the neatness of
her inexpensive black dress, and of her irreproachable gloves,
boots, and hat. She had been waiting to introduce herself to the
lady of the castle for ten minutes in a state of nervousness that
culminated as Lydia entered.

"How do you do, Miss Goff, Have I kept you waiting? I was out."

"Not at all," said Miss Goff, with a confused impression that red
hair was aristocratic, and dark brown (the color of her own) vulgar.
She had risen to shake hands, and now, after hesitating a moment to
consider what etiquette required her to do next, resumed her seat.
Miss Carew sat down too, and gazed thoughtfully at her visitor, who
held herself rigidly erect, and, striving to mask her nervousness,
unintentionally looked disdainful.

"Miss Goff," said Lydia, after a silence that made her speech
impressive, "will you come to me on a long visit? In this lonely
place I am greatly in want of a friend and companion of my own age
and position. I think you must be equally so."

Alice Goff was very young, and very determined to accept no credit
that she did not deserve. With the unconscious vanity and conscious
honesty of youth, she proceeded to set Miss Carew right as to her
social position, not considering that the lady of the castle
probably understood it better than she did herself, and indeed
thinking it quite natural that she should be mistaken.

"You are very kind," she replied, stiffly; "but our positions are
quite different, Miss Carew. The fact is that I cannot afford to
live an idle life. We are very poor, and my mother is partly
dependent on my exertions."

"I think you will be able to exert yourself to good purpose if you
come to me," said Lydia, unimpressed. "It is true that I shall give
you very expensive habits; but I will of course enable you to
support them."

"I do not wish to contract expensive habits," said Alice,
reproachfully. "I shall have to content myself with frugal ones
throughout my life."

"Not necessarily. Tell me, frankly: how had you proposed to exert
yourself? As a teacher, was it not?"

Alice flushed, but assented.

"You are not at all fitted for it; and you will end by marrying. As
a teacher you could not marry well. As an idle lady, with expensive
habits, you will marry very well indeed. It is quite an art to know
how to be rich--an indispensable art, if you mean to marry a rich
man."

"I have no intention of marrying," said Alice, loftily. She thought
it time to check this cool aristocrat. "If I come at all I shall
come without any ulterior object."

"That is just what I had hoped. Come without condition, or second
thought of any kind."

"But--" began Alice, and stopped, bewildered by the pace at which
the negotiation was proceeding. She murmured a few words, and waited
for Lydia to proceed. But Lydia had said her say, and evidently
expected a reply, though she seemed assured of having her own way,
whatever Alice's views might be.

"I do not quite understand, Miss Carew. What duties?--what would you
expect of me?"

"A great deal," said Lydia, gravely. "Much more than I should from a
mere professional companion."

"But I am a professional companion," protested Alice.

"Whose?"

Alice flushed again, angrily this time. "I did not mean to say--"

"You do not mean to say that you will have nothing to do with me,"
said Lydia, stopping her quietly. "Why are you so scrupulous, Miss
Goff? You will be close to your home, and can return to it at any
moment if you become dissatisfied with your position here."

Fearful that she had disgraced herself by ill manners; loath to be
taken possession of as if her wishes were of no consequence when a
rich lady's whim was to be gratified; suspicious--since she had
often heard gossiping tales of the dishonesty of people in high
positions--lest she should be cheated out of the salary she had come
resolved to demand; and withal unable to defend herself against Miss
Carew, Alice caught at the first excuse that occurred to her.

"I should like a little time to consider," she said.

"Time to accustom yourself to me, is it not? You can have as long as
you plea-"

"Oh, I can let you know tomorrow," interrupted Alice, officiously.

"Thank you. I will send a note to Mrs. Goff to say that she need
not expect you back until tomorrow."

"But I did not mean--I am not prepared to stay," remonstrated Alice,
feeling that she was being entangled in a snare.

"We shall take a walk after dinner, then, and call at your house,
where you can make your preparations. But I think I can supply you
with all you will require."

Alice dared make no further objection. "I am afraid," she stammered,
"you will think me horribly rude; but I am so useless, and you are
so sure to be disappointed, that--that--"

"You are not rude, Miss Goff; but I find you very shy. You want to
run away and hide from new faces and new surroundings." Alice, who
was self-possessed and even overbearing in Wiltstoken society, felt
that she was misunderstood, but did not know how to vindicate
herself. Lydia resumed, "I have formed my habits in the course of my
travels, and so live without ceremony. We dine early--at six."

Alice had dined at two, but did not feel bound to confess it.

"Let me show you your room," said Lydia, rising. "This is a curious
drawingroom," she added, glancing around. "I only use it
occasionally to receive visitors." She looked about her again with
some interest, as if the apartment belonged to some one else, and
led the way to a room on the first floor, furnished as a lady's
bed-chamber. "If you dislike this," she said, "or cannot arrange it
to suit you, there are others, of which you can have your choice.
Come to my boudoir when you are ready."

"Where is that?" said Alice, anxiously.

"It is--You had better ring for some one to show you. I will send
you my maid."

Alice, even more afraid of the maid than of the mistress, declined
hastily. "I am accustomed to attend to myself, Miss Carew," with
proud humility.

"You will find it more convenient to call me Lydia," said Miss
Carew. "Otherwise you will be supposed to refer to my grandaunt, a
very old lady." She then left the room.

Alice was fond of thinking that she had a womanly taste and touch in
making a room pretty. She was accustomed to survey with pride her
mother's drawing-room, which she had garnished with cheap
cretonnes, Japanese paper fans, and knick-knacks in ornamental
pottery. She felt now that if she slept once in the bed before her,
she could never be content in her mother's house again. All that she
had read and believed of the beauty of cheap and simple ornament,
and the vulgarity of costliness, recurred to her as a hypocritical
paraphrase of the "sour grapes" of the fox in the fable. She
pictured to herself with a shudder the effect of a sixpenny Chinese
umbrella in that fireplace, a cretonne valance to that bed, or
chintz curtains to those windows. There was in the room a series of
mirrors consisting of a great glass in which she could see herself
at full length, another framed in the carved oaken dressing-table,
and smaller ones of various shapes fixed to jointed arms that turned
every way. To use them for the first time was like having eyes in
the back of the head. She had never seen herself from all points of
view before. As she gazed, she strove not to be ashamed of her
dress; but even her face and figure, which usually afforded her
unqualified delight, seemed robust and middle-class in Miss Carew's
mirrors.

"After all," she said, seating herself on a chair that was even more
luxurious to rest in than to look at; "putting the lace out of the
question--and my old lace that belongs to mamma is quite as
valuable--her whole dress cannot have cost much more than mine. At
any rate, it is not worth much more, whatever she may have chosen to
pay for it."

But Alice was clever enough to envy Miss Carew her manners more than
her dress. She would not admit to herself that she was not
thoroughly a lady; but she felt that Lydia, in the eye of a
stranger, would answer that description better than she. Still, as
far as she had observed, Miss Carew was exceedingly cool in her
proceedings, and did not take any pains to please those with whom
she conversed. Alice had often made compacts of friendship with
young ladies, and had invited them to call her by her Christian
name; but on such occasions she had always called themn "dear" or
"darling," and, while the friendship lasted (which was often longer
than a month, for Alice was a steadfast girl), had never met them
without exchanging an embrace and a hearty kiss.

"And nothing," she said, springing from the chair as she thought of
this, and speaking very resolutely, "shall tempt me to believe that
there is anything vulgar in sincere affection. I shall be on my
guard against this woman."

Having settled that matter for the present, she resumed her
examination of the apartment, and was more and more attracted by it
as she proceeded. For, thanks to her eminence as a local beauty, she
had not that fear of beautiful and rich things which renders abject
people incapable of associating costliness with comfort. Had the
counterpane of the bed been her own, she would have unhesitatingly
converted it into a ball-dress. There were toilet appliances of
which she had never felt the need, and could only guess the use. She
looked with despair into the two large closets, thinking how poor a
show her three dresses, her ulster, and her few old jackets would
make there. There was also a dressing-room with a marble bath that
made cleanliness a luxury instead of one of the sternest of the
virtues, as it seemed at home. Yet she remarked that though every
object was more or less ornamental, nothing had been placed in the
rooms for the sake of ornament alone. Miss Carew, judged by her
domestic arrangements, was a utilitarian before everything. There
was a very handsome chimney piece; but as there was nothing on the
mantel board, Alice made a faint effort to believe that it was
inferior in point of taste to that in her own bedroom, which was
covered with blue cloth, surrounded by fringe and brass headed
nails, and laden with photographs in plush frames.

The striking of the hour reminded her that she had forgotten to
prepare for dinner. Khe hastily took off her hat, washed her hands,
spent another minute among the mirrors, and was summoning courage to
ring the bell, when a doubt occurred to her. Ought she to put on her
gloves before going down or not? This kept her in perplexity for
many seconds. At last she resolved to put her gloves in her pocket,
and be guided as to their further disposal by the example of her
hostess. Then, not daring to hesitate any longer, she rang the bell,
and was presently joined by a French lady of polished manners--Miss
Carew's maid who conducted her to the boudoir, a hexagonal apartment
that, Alice thought, a sultana might have envied. Lydia was there,
reading. Alice noted with relief that she had not changed her dress,
and that she was ungloved.

Miss Goff did not enjoy the dinner. There was a butler who seemed to
have nothing to do but stand at a buffet and watch her. There was
also a swift, noiseless footman who presented himself at her elbow
at intervals and compelled her to choose on the instant between
unfamiliar things to eat and drink. She envied these men their
knowledge of society, and shrank from their criticism. Once, after
taking a piece of asparagus in her hand, she was deeply mortified at
seeing her hostess consume the vegetable with the aid of a knife and
fork; but the footman's back was turned to her just then, and the
butler, oppressed by the heat of the weather, was in a state of
abstraction bordering on slumber. On the whole, by dint of imitating
Miss Oarew, who did not plague her with any hostess-like vigilance,
she came off without discredit to her breeding.

Lydia, on her part, acknowledged no obligation to entertain her
guest by chatting, and enjoyed her thoughts and her dinner in
silence. Alice began to be fascinated by her, and to wonder what she
was thinking about. She fancied that the footman was not quite free
from the same influence. Even the butler might have been meditating
himself to sleep on the subject. Alice felt tempted to offer her a
penny for her thoughts. But she dared not be so familiar as yet.
And, had the offer been made and accepted, butler, footman, and
guest would have been plunged into equal confusion by the
explanation, which would have run thus:

"I saw a vision of the Hermes of Praxiteles in a sylvan haunt
to-day; and I am thinking of that."






CHAPTER III.





Next day Alice accepted Miss Carew's invitation. Lydia, who seemed
to regard all conclusions as foregone when she had once signified
her approval of them, took the acceptance as a matter of course.
Alice thereupon thought fit to remind her that there were other
persons to be considered. So she said, "I should not have hesitated
yesterday but for my mother. It seems so heartless to leave her."

"You have a sister at home, have you not?"

"Yes. But she is not very strong, and my mother requires a great
deal of attention." Alice paused, and added in a lower voice, "She
has never recovered from the shock of my father's death."

"Your father is then not long dead?" said Lydia in her usual tone.

"Only two years," said Alice, coldly. "I hardly know how to tell my
mother that I am going to desert her."

"Go and tell her today, Alice. You need not be afraid of hurting
her. Grief of two years' standing is only a bad habit."

Alice started, outraged. Her mother's grief was sacred to her; and
yet it was by her experience of her mother that she recognized the
truth of Lydia's remark, and felt that it was unanswerable. She
frowned; but the frown was lost: Miss Carew was not looking at her.
Then she rose and went to the door, where she stopped to say,

"You do not know our family circumstances. I will go now and try to
prevail on my mother to let me stay with you."

"Please come back in good time for dinner," said Lydia, unmoved. "I
will introduce you to my cousin Lucian Webber. I have just received
a telegram from him. He is coming down with Lord Worthington. I do
not know whether Lord Worthington will come to dinner or not. He has
an invalid friend at the Warren, and Lucian does not make it clear
whether he is coming to visit him or me. However, it is of no
consequence; Lord Worthington is only a young sportsman. Lucian is a
clever man, and will be an eminent one some day. He is secretary to
a Cabinet Minister, and is very busy; but we shall probably see him
often while the Whitsuntide holidays last. Excuse my keeping you
waiting at the door to hear that long history. Adieu!" She waved her
hand; Alice suddenly felt that it was possible to be very fond of
Miss Carew.

She spent an unhappy afternoon with her mother. Mrs. Goff had had
the good-fortune to marry a man of whom she was afraid, and who made
himself very disagreeable whenever his house or his children were
neglected in the least particular. Making a virtue of necessity, she
had come to be regarded in Wiltstoken as a model wife and mother. At
last, when a drag ran over Mr. Goff and killed him, she was left
almost penniless, with two daughters on her hands. In this extremity
she took refuge in grief, and did nothing. Her daughters settled
their father's affairs as best they could, moved her into a cheap
house, and procured a strange tenant for that in which they had
lived during many years. Janet, the elder sister, a student by
disposition, employed herself as a teacher of the scientific
fashions in modern female education, rumors of which had already
reached Wiltstoken. Alice was unable to teach mathematics and moral
science; but she formed a dancing-class, and gave lessons in singing
and in a language which she believed to be current in France, but
which was not intelligible to natives of that country travelling
through Wiltstoken. Both sisters were devoted to one another and to
their mother. Alice, who had enjoyed the special affection of her
self-indulgent father, preserved some regard for his memory, though
she could not help wishing that his affection had been strong enough
to induce him to save a provision for her. She was ashamed, too, of
the very recollection of his habit of getting drunk at races,
regattas, and other national festivals, by an accident at one of
which he had met his death.

Alice went home from the castle expecting to find the household
divided between joy at her good-fortune and grief at losing her; for
her views of human nature and parental feeling were as yet pure
superstitions. But Mrs. Goff at once became envious of the luxury
her daughter was about to enjoy, and overwhelmed her with
accusations of want of feeling, eagerness to desert her mother, and
vain love of pleasure. Alice, who loved Mrs. Goff so well that she
had often told her as many as five different lies in the course of
one afternoon to spare her some unpleasant truth, and would have
scouted as infamous any suggestion that her parent was more selfish
than saintly, soon burst into tears, declaring that she would not
return to the castle, and that nothing would have induced her to
stay there the night before had she thought that her doing so could
give pain at home. This alarmed Mrs. Goff, who knew by experience
that it was easier to drive Alice upon rash resolves than to shake
her in them afterwards. Fear of incurring blame in Wiltstoken for
wantonly opposing her daughter's obvious interests, and of losing
her share of Miss Carew's money and countenance, got the better of
her jealousy. She lectured Alice severely for her headstrong temper,
and commanded her, on her duty not only to her mother, but also and
chiefly to her God, to accept Miss Carew's offer with thankfulness,
and to insist upon a definite salary as soon as she had, by good
behavior, made her society indispensable at the castle. Alice,
dutiful as she was, reduced Mrs. Goff to entreaties, and even to
symptoms of an outburst of violent grief for the late Mr. Goff,
before she consented to obey her. She would wait, she said, until
Janet, who was absent teaching, came in, and promised to forgive her
for staying away the previous night (Mrs. Goff had falsely
represented that Janet had been deeply hurt, and had lain awake
weeping during the small hours of the morning). The mother, seeing
nothing for it but either to get rid of Alice before Janet's return
or to be detected in a spiteful untruth, had to pretend that Janet
was spending the evening with some friends, and to urge the
unkindness of leaving Miss Carew lonely. At last Alice washed away
the traces of her tears and returned to the castle, feeling very
miserable, and trying to comfort herself with the reflection that
her sister had been spared the scene which had just passed.

Lucian Webber had not arrived when she reached the castle. Miss
Carew glanced at her melancholy face as she entered, but asked no
questions. Presently, however, she put down her book, considered for
a moment, and said,

"It is nearly three years since I have had a new dress." Alice
looked up with interest. "Now that I have you to help me to choose,
I think I will be extravagant enough to renew my entire wardrobe. I
wish you would take this opportunity to get some things for
yourself. You will find that my dress-maker, Madame Smith, is to be
depended on for work, though she is expensive and dishonest. When we
are tired of Wiltstoken we will go to Paris, and be millinered
there; but in the meantime we can resort to Madame Smith."

"I cannot afford expensive dresses," said Alice.

"I should not ask you to get them if you could not afford them. I
warned you that I should give you expensive habits."

Alice hesitated. She had a healthy inclination to take whatever she
could get on all occasions; and she had suffered too much from
poverty not to be more thankful for her good-fortune than humiliated
by Miss Carew's bounty. But the thought of being driven, richly
attired, in one of the castle carriages, and meeting Janet trudging
about her daily tasks in cheap black serge and mended gloves, made
Alice feel that she deserved all her mother's reproaches. However,
it was obvious that a refusal would be of no material benefit to
Janet, so she said,

"Really I could not think of imposing on your kindness in this
wholesale fashion. You are too good to me."

"I will write to Madame Smith this evening," said Lydia.

Alice was about to renew her protest more faintly, when a servant
entered and announced Mr. Webber. She stiffened herself to receive
the visitor. Lydia's manner did not alter in the least. Lucian,
whose demeanor resembled Miss Goff's rather than his cousin's, went
through the ceremony of introduction with solemnity, and was
received with a dash of scorn; for Alice, though secretly
awe-stricken, bore herself tyrannically towards men from habit.

In reply to Alice, Mr. Webber thought the day cooler than yesterday.
In reply to Lydia, he admitted that the resolution of which the
leader of the opposition had given notice was tantamount to a vote
of censure on the government. He was confident that ministers would
have a majority. He had no news of any importance. He had made the
journey down with Lord Worthington, who had come to Wiltstoken to
see the invalid at the Warren. He had promised to return with him in
the seven-thirty train.

When they went down to dinner, Alice, profiting by her experience of
the day before, faced the servants with composure, and committed no
solecisms. Unable to take part in the conversation, as she knew
little of literature and nothing of politics, which were the staple
of Lucian's discourse, she sat silent, and reconsidered an old
opinion of hers that it was ridiculous and ill-bred in a lady to
discuss anything that was in the newspapers. She was impressed by
Lucian's cautious and somewhat dogmatic style of conversation, and
concluded that he knew everything. Lydia seemed interested in his
information, but quite indifferent to his opinions.

Towards half-past seven Lydia proposed that they should walk to the
railway station, adding, as a reason for going, that she wished to
make some bets with Lord Worthington. Lucian looked grave at this,
and Alice, to show that she shared his notions of propriety, looked
shocked. Neither demonstration had the slightest effect on Lydia. On
their way to the station he remarked,

"Worthington is afraid of you, Lydia--needlessly, as it seems."

"Why?"

"Because you are so learned, and he so ignorant. He has no culture
save that of the turf. But perhaps you have more sympathy with his
tastes than he supposes."

"I like him because I have not read the books from which he has
borrowed his opinions. Indeed, from their freshness, I should not be
surprised to learn that he had them at first hand from living men,
or even from his own observation of life."

"I may explain to you, Miss Goff," said Lucian, "that Lord
Worthiugton is a young gentleman--"

"Whose calendar is the racing calendar," interposed Lydia, "and who
interests himself in favorites and outsiders much as Lucian does in
prime-ministers and independent radicals. Would you like to go to
Ascot, Alice?"

Alice answered, as she felt Lucian wished her to answer, that she
had never been to a race, and that she had no desire to go to one.

"You will change your mind in time for next year's meeting. A race
interests every one, which is more than can be said for the opera or
the Academy."

"I have been at the Academy," said Alice, who had made a trip to
London once.

"Indeed!" said Lydia. "Were you in the National Gallery?"

"The National Gallery! I think not. I forget."

"I know many persons who never miss an Academy, and who do not know
where the National Gallery is. Did you enjoy the pictures, Alice?"

"Oh, very much indeed."

"You will find Ascot far more amusing."

"Let me warn you," said Lucian to Alice, "that my cousin's pet
caprice is to affect a distaste for art, to which she is
passionately devoted; and for literature, in which she is profoundly
read."

"Cousin Lucian," said Lydia, "should you ever be cut off from your
politics, and disappointed in your ambition, you will have an
opportunity of living upon art and literature. Then I shall respect
your opinion of their satisfactoriness as a staff of life. As yet
you have only tried them as a sauce."

"Discontented, as usual," said Lucian.

"Your one idea respecting me, as usual," replied Lydia, patiently,
as they entered the station.

The train, consisting of three carriages and a van, was waiting at
the platform. The engine was humming subduedly, and the driver and
fireman were leaning out; the latter, a young man, eagerly watching
two gentlemen who were standing before the first-class carriage, and
the driver sharing his curiosity in an elderly, preoccupied manner.
One of the persons thus observed was a slight, fair-haired man of
about twenty-five, in the afternoon costume of a metropolitan dandy.
Lydia knew the other the moment she came upon the platform as the
Hermes of the day before, modernized by a straw hat, a
canary-colored scarf, and a suit of a minute black-and-white
chess-board pattern, with a crimson silk handkerchief overflowing
the breast pocket of the coat. His hands were unencumbered by stick
or umbrella; he carried himself smartly, balancing himself so
accurately that he seemed to have no weight; and his expression was
self-satisfied and good-humored. But--! Lydia felt that there was a
"but" somewhere--that he must be something more than a handsome,
powerful, and light-hearted young man.

"There is Lord Worthington," she said, indicating the slight
gentleman. "Surely that cannot be his invalid friend with him?"

"That is the man that lives at the Warren," said Alice. "I know his
appearance."

"Which is certainly not suggestive of a valetudinarian," remarked
Lucian, looking hard at the stranger.

They had now come close to the two, and could hear Lord Worthington,
as he prepared to enter the carriage, saying, "Take care of
yourself, like a good fellow, won't you? Remember! if it lasts a
second over the fifteen minutes, I shall drop five hundred pounds."