I and mothers and only sons, or of anything else, and her face, and herself creeping up to Mrs. except the success or failure of our two lives. Malleson. And if I see it much longer I shall go said that I loved her, and she loved me; she mad," said Randulf, drawing a long, sobbing gathered herself up, as it were, and said coldly, breath. "Right before my eyes it has been ever 'No; you are mistaken. Now will you let me since, so that I couldn't sleep. It looked at me go?' Oh, sir, I ought to have let her go, I know. out of my glass while I dressed, till I flung a But I felt quite beside myself when I heard her handkerchief over it. It was just before my eyes say that. I refused to believe her. I repeated in the field all the morning. Why do you suppose that it was not true that I knew she loved I rode as I did?—not for the pleasure of catching a fox, but because her face was there before me, in its misery, just out of my reach, and I felt as if I must catch her, and kiss some life back into her eyes and her lips, or break my neck. And it's here now-there, just before me." me" "You did wrong," said Sir Gabriel sternly and coldly; "and I cannot understand how a gentle man "Don't say that to me!" said Randulf, looking at him with so haggard a face, lips that twitched so ominously that his father became silent. "I cannot understand it now. I must have been mad. I'm concealing nothing from you. I went on telling her that I knew she loved me, and that she should never perjure herself while I could prevent it. I reminded her of this thing and that thing that she had said and done, and I asked her what they all meant, if not that she loved me. But I came to my senses at last, for I saw that she looked frightened "And it required that to bring you to your senses-shame on you!" said his father, very angrily indeed. "Yes, it required that," replied Randulf, without noticing his father's tone. "But when I did come to myself again I humbly asked her pardon. I threw the door wide open, and said I would take her to Mrs. Malleson, or anywhere that she liked to go. I made her look at me, and I told her, 'When I know you are married to another man, then I will believe you do not love me, but not till then.'"' "And what did she say?" Randulf turned his white face toward his father, and said, with a kind of wrathful triumph: "She said nothing-she looked away. She took my arm, and we got into the drawing-room somehow; and she sat down beside Mrs. Mallesonah, poor child !-with a white face, and a look in her eyes like you see in a bird's eyes when you've just shot it, and you pick it up and look at it. And I heard Mrs. Malleson say that she looked cold; and she shivered a little, and said yes, she was rather, and very tired. I said nothing; I think I bowed to her and came away. He shuddered and drew his hand across his eyes. Sir Gabriel was too disturbed to reply at once; too much astonished and, as it were, paralyzed at the discovery of this fiery drama which had been going on under his very eyes without his knowing it, to speak. Yet he heard Randulf say darkly, half to himself: "My poor little Delphine! What have they done to her? What have they said to her that she should turn and stab herself and me in this way?" Sir Gabriel was still silent, trying in vain to make what he called "sense" out of the story. When Randulf had first mentioned Delphine's name, his father's feeling had been one of strong disapproval. Lovely as she was, and charming, she had had neither the training, the position, nor the acquaintance with the world and society. which he would have wished for in a girl who was not only to be Randulf's bride, but sometime Lady Danesdale. Be it said for Sir Gabriel that by this time he had forgotten that, and considered only the deeper issues-his son's future happiness -the question of his joy or sorrow. He at last looked up, meaning to ask another question or two; he met Randulf's eyes, dull and clouded, now that his narrative was over, looking at him rather appealingly. Prudent questions, conventional doubts, were forgotten. "My poor lad, I wish I could help you!" "Ah, I knew you would understand," said Randulf. "But no one can help me now-except time. If she had consented, then your help. would have been everything; now it is nothing.' "Suppose I saw her?" suggested Sir Gabriel. "Perhaps I could induce her to state her ob But I've seen nothing, nothing since but her eyes jection. It may be a shadow, after all. Girls do make important things out of such very them; their long ride together, and the emotions trifles." "They ought not to be in poverty; though if Aglionby's feelings" "Do not misjudge Aglionby. He has been repulsed too. He would give his right hand to help them they are his kinswomen, as he says. Every advance he attempts is repelled. He is in despair about it." "That's very odd." "Yes, very. But I do not know that we have any right to inquire into their reasons for what they do." They rode on in silence again, for a long time, through Yoresett town and all along the lovely road to Stanniforth, and thence to Danesdale. It was shortly before they entered their own park that Randulf began again: "And now, sir, you won't resent it, if I am not counted in the list of Miss Bird's or Miss Anybody's suitors, at present ?" "Heaven forbid ! We understand one another now. After all, to look at it from a selfish point of view, you will be all my own for so much the longer. 'My son's my son till he gets him a wife,' you know. All I ask, my boy, is that you will be as open with me after a time, when any fresh scheme comes into your mind, or if you decide upon anything. You shall find me more than willing to arrange things as you wish them, if it is possible." "I know you will," said Randulf. I suppose these things can be lived down. It pleases me to think that you would have done as I wished; you would have taken it into consideration. Sometime, when the time comes, and years are past, I suppose I shall find a wife-not like her, but some one who will marry me." Sir Gabriel did not answer this. He did not like it. It did not suit him. He would have preferred almost anything to this calm looking forward to a joyless future. It had grown dark, and the wind was rising, as they drove into the court-yard of the castle. They had to put on one side all that had passed between which filled both their hearts. The house was full of visitors. There would be fifteen or twenty guests at dinner; all the ball, and the hunt, and the dresses, and the incidents to be discussed. They took their part in it all bravely; and this courage brought with it balm, as moral courage, well carried out, infallibly does. CHAPTER XXVII.-LIZZIE'S CONSENT. TOWARD noon, on that same first of January, Miss Vane came slowly strolling into the parlor at Scar Foot, yawning undisguisedly, and looking around her with half-open eyes. "Law, Bernard! you don't need any sleep, I do believe! You look as if nothing had happened." Aglionby forced a smile, and touched her forehead with his lips. As is usual in such cases, the less he felt to care for her, the more anxiously did he make himself aux petits soins on her behalf, drawing an easy-chair to the fire for her, placing a footstool, putting a screen into her hand-delicate attentions which a year ago, when he first had the felicity of calling her his own, it had never entered into his head to render. "I am not fatigued, certainly," he said. "My aunt has been down-stairs a good while too." "Oh, but she wasn't dancing; I was. My word! But it is a grand house, Bernard, that Danesdale Castle; and they are grand people too. I don't like Miss Danesdale a bit, though. Stiff little thing! And I thought some of the other ladies were very stiff, too. I guess some of them didn't like sitting out when the gentlemen were talking to me." "Very likely not," said Bernard, with a praiseworthy endeavor to appreciate the joke. "I heard one of them say," pursued Lizzie, with a musing and complacent smile-" she said, 'Why on earth doesn't Mr. Aglionby look after her? It's atrocious! So you see you were not considered to be doing your duty. I dare say if you, or anybody else, had been looking after her, she wouldn't have felt so ill-tempered." Lizzie laughed, and Bernard's face flushed, for he interpreted the remark in a wholly different and less flattering sense than that suggested by Lizzie. "I hope the Hunt ball will be half as jolly," pursued Miss Vane. Eh, and did you see those Miss Conisbroughs, Bernard? But of course you did, because I saw you talking to one of them. I wonder you condescended to speak to them, after all their designs to keep you out—” She paused suddenly, with her remark arrested, her eyes astonished, gazing into Aglionby's face. "You are quite mistaken," said he, in a voice which, though quiet, bit even her. "You must not speak in that manner of my cousins. They had no 'designs,' as you call them. They have been most shamefully treated, and in short, my dear, I will not allow you to mention them unless you can speak more becomingly of them." "Upon my word! Well, they can't be so badly off, anyhow; and look at their dresses! Lovely dresses they were! and that youngest one is sweetly pretty, only she does her hair so queerly; there's no style about it, all hanging loose in loops, where every one else wears hers small and neat. But she is pretty, certainly. The eldest one I don't admire a bit, she's like a marble figure." "Are you talking about the lady Bernard took in to supper?" asked Mrs. Bryce, joining in the colloquy for the first time. "Yes, I am, Mrs. Bryce." "I thought her one of the truest gentlewomen I ever saw," said Mrs. Bryce, counting the stitches of her knitting. "Her manners are perfect, wherever they were acquired; but I should say that 'grand air' is natural to her, isn't it, Bernard ?" more like that of the young ladies we have been talking about, and then perhaps there will not be so many comments passed upon it as I heard last night." "Comments!" cried Miss Vane angrily. "What do you mean? Does any one dare to say that I behaved badly?" "Not badly, my dear; but what, in the society you were in last night, means almost the same thing-ignorantly. At the Hunt ball, if I were you, I would not put on that pink gown, and I would keep a little more with Bernard and myself, and "I'll just tell you this-I won't go to the Hunt ball at all," said Lizzie, with passionate anger, wounded in her tenderest feelings. "I hate all these grand, stuck-up people with their false ways like that nasty proud Miss Conisbrough. I won't go near the Hunt ball. They may whistle for me. (Mrs. Bryce's face assumed an expression of silent anguish as these amenities of speech were hurled at her.) "And what's more, I shall tell Bernard, this very day, that I wouldn't live at this horrid, dull old place, if he would give me twice the money he has. I must have society. I must have my f-friends," sobbed Miss Vane, breaking down. "Mrs. Bryce smiled slightly, but said nothing. She had a strong impression that her nephew, and not Lizzie, would decide, both whether they went to the Hunt ball or not, and whether they lived at Scar Foot. He came in again at that moment, with a letter-bag. Lizzie speedily dried her eyes, "Yes, I thought so. One can see at once when and watched him while he opened it, came behind that sort of thing is natural." "Well, I thought her the stiffest, proudest creature I ever saw. I couldn't tell why she gave herself such airs," said Miss Vane. Here Bernard abruptly left the room, unable to bear it any longer, and Mrs. Bryce continued calmly: "I am afraid you are no judge of manner, my dear; and I wonder at your speaking in that way of Bernard's cousins." "Cousins, indeed! Pretty cousins! Much notice they would have taken of him if they had come into the money." "And à propos of manner," continued Mrs. Bryce, who seemed resolved thoroughly to do her duty as chaperon, "let me recommend you to tone yours down a little. Try to make it rather his chair, in fact, and looked at all the envelopes, as he took them out. "That's for me," she said, stretching out a slim hand from over his shoulder. "It's from Lucy Golding. She promised to write." "Did Percy promise to write too?" asked Bernard, arresting the same slim fingers as they made. a snatch at the next letter. "Because if this isn't Percy's fist, I'll—” "You need not say what you'll do, sir," was the coquettish reply. "It is Percy's 'fist,' as you call it. Most likely it's a New Year's card. We are old friends. I sent him one at Christmas, and I don't see why he shouldn't return the compliment." "Oh, certainly. There is absolutely no just cause or impediment to my knowledge," replied Bernard, with supreme indifference. "There's pair of beguiling blue eyes; how densely blind he must have been to have imagined that the soul, or what did duty for the soul behind that face, could ever satisfy him. But it was done: it must be carried through. "Aunt, here is one for you, the last of the batch," he said, rising and taking it to her; while he collected together his own, which looked chiefly like business letters, newspapers, etc., and took them to a side-table. Mrs. Bryce read her letter and then remarked that she would go into the drawing-room and answer it at once. Lizzie and Bernard were left alone. He began to open his papers; his mind pure of any speculation on the subject of her correspondence. Why did she take herself as far away from him as possible, as she opened her letters? In perusing one of them, at least, her face flushed; her foot tapped the floor. She finished them, put them all into her pocket, and took up the strip of lace she was supposed to be working. Perhaps the prolonged silence struck Bernard, for, suddenly raising his face from the intent perusal of a leading article, he perceived Lizzie, said to himself, "Now for it," laid his paper down, and went to her side. Perhaps he began somewhat abruptly. At least she looked very much startled as he said: "Put down your work, Lizzie. I want to have a talk with you. How many months in the year do you think you can spend at Scar Foot, when we are married?” "Months, Bernard!" she cried; "oh, don't ask me to do that? I'm very sorry, I am really, because I know you like this place, though I can't for the life of me imagine why, but I really couldn't live here. I should go melancholy mad.” "Then you shall not live here," said he promptly. "I shall keep the place up, because I shall often run down myself and spend a few days at it." (In imagination, he felt the soothing influence of the place, the asylum it would be, the refuge, from Irkford and from Lizzie.) "But you shall live in town, since you prefer it, and you shall yourself choose the house and the neighborhood." "I "Oh, that will be nice!" said Lizzie. shall like that. Then I shall have all my old friends round me. Bernard, it's a load off my mind-it is really." He took her hand. She looked at him hastily, and turned first red, then pale, so that he congratulated himself on having taken a straightforward course, for she loved him, poor Lizzie, and it would have been shameful indeed to play her false. During the sleepless vigil he had kept last night, he had made up his mind as to his immediate course. He would talk to Lizzie to-day, make her fix the day for their marriage, as early a day as he could get her to name. Then they would "I am glad if it pleases you, dear. And now, be married, and he supposed things would some- one other thing, Lizzie. Houses can be looked how work themselves right after that event. He after any time, and there are plenty of them to be could live a calm, if joyless, life; plan out some had at Irkford. But when will you let me take scheme of work that would take up a good deal of you to live in that house we are speaking of?" time. One could not go on being wretched forever, and one's feet by degrees harden to suit a stony path. He had got engaged to this girl; she had not refused him in his poverty; he had kept her to himself for a year, and thus hindered her from having any other chances. To try to break it off, now that he was in such utterly different circumstances, would indeed be a pitiful proceeding. He knew that, and it was a proceeding of which he was not going to be guilty. He knew now that she was everything he would rather she had not been. It was now a matter of constant astonishment to him that he could ever even have thought himself in love with her. A sense of shame and degradation burnt through him every time he realized how easily he had yielded to the sensuous spell exercised by a pretty face and a "When?" faltered Lizzie, and looked at him and thought how dark and grim-looking he was, and how much graver and sterner he had become since he left Irkford. If he were always going to be like this-he never now said anything soothing or pleasant to her; he was dreadfully severelooking. "Yes; when, dear? I suppose the house is not to be taken just to stand empty. Some one will have to go and live in it—you and I, surely." "Yes, yes; I suppose so," said Lizzie slowly and constrainedly, and dropping her eyes. “Well, all I want to know is, when? Sometime soon, surely. There can be nothing in the way now. For my part, I don't see why it should be put off more than a week or two." "Oh, no! Impossible!" she cried, crimsoning, and speaking with such vehemence as surprised him. "Recollect, we have been engaged more than a year. We have only been waiting till we could be married. Now that we can, why put it off any longer?" "It is so fearfully sudden," said she, startled out of her affectation, and fumbling nervously with her handkerchief. As a lover he was sombre enough. As a husband-almost immediately? There must be no more New Year's cards from old friends, when Bernard was her husband. the very first when his imperious manner and tones had almost repelled her, and when yet he had contrived to gain his own way. He gained it again. He made her promise that they should be married at the end of April: he promised her on his side all manner of things. He completely reversed her decision about the Hunt ball. She would go with him, she meekly said. All these things she promised and vowed, and at last he let her go, having promised, on his part, to take her home to Irkford the day after the Hunt ball. She said that if they were to be married so soon she would want all her time for preparation-and to be with her mother, Lizzie added, almost piteously. And then she made her escape, looking exceedingly tired, and very much disturbed. He being left alone, realized with a singular clearness and vividness these comforting facts: First, that it was with the greatest difficulty that he had succeeded in maintaining a tranquil and affectionate manner toward his dearest Lizzie. Secondly, that never had there been so little sympathy or even mutual understanding between them as now, when they had just agreed upon the very day of their marriage. Thirdly, that though she was a willful girl, with plenty of likes and dislikes, "Fix your own time, then, dear; only don't yet he was completely her master the instant it put it off too long." "Suppose we said the end of May or the beginning of June," suggested Lizzie, plaiting her handkerchief into folds, which she studied with the deepest interest. He uttered an exclamation of dismay. Five months longer of unrest, misery, suspense, waiting for a new order of things. The idea was terrible. He felt that he could not face it. He could make the sacrifice if it were to be done at once, but to have to wait-it could not be. He set himself to plead in earnest with his betrothed-at least with him it was pleading, to her it seemed more like an imperious demand. He said he thought there was a little estrangement between them, which caused him pain. He begged her not to be so hard. His gravity and earnestness oppressed her more and more. The darkest forebodings assailed Lizzie as to her future happiness with this Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. She had no fixed plan; he had: therefore he prevailed. He would have prevailed in any case, by his superior strength of will, as he had done at VOL. XVII.-33. pleased him to be so. That he could make her yield to him and obey him in whatsoever he chose, but that he could not-charm he never so wisely make her agree with him by light of reason and understanding, could not make her like his way, or like doing it-could not, in a word, change her nature, though he could subdue it: a pleasing discovery, perhaps, for the tyrant by nature, who loves always to have the whip in his hand, and to see his slaves crouch as he comes in sight, but a most galling one to Bernard Aglionby. A cheering prospect! he thought. A wife who, if he left her entirely to her own devices, would constantly be doing things which would jar upon all his feelings and wishes-who had not force of character enough to heartily oppose him-who would unwillingly, servilely obey, puzzled and uncomfortable, but not approving. What a noble, elevated character he would feel himself, with such a life-companion by his side! Perhaps in time. she would become like some women whom he had seen now and then-quite broken in; having no will or opinion of their own, turning appealing eyes to their lords upon every question. Hideous |